M A Hossain,
The most dangerous moments are not when aggressors announce themselves loudly, but when the guardians of order respond with hesitation, caveats, and procedural throat-clearing. The 1930s taught that lesson at a staggering cost. What made Hitler possible was not merely German revanchism or fascist ideology; it was the slow, almost gentlemanly tolerance of acts that should have been stopped early, decisively, and collectively. Appeasement was not naïveté. It was policy dressed as prudence.
Today’s world is not the world of 1938. Yet the structural similarities are uncomfortable. The reported U.S. seizure of Venezuela’s president, followed by a declaration of American “control,” marks something far more consequential than another episode of muscular interventionism. It represents a frontal assault on the post-1945 consensus that sovereignty cannot be nullified by power alone. What is more alarming is not the act itself, but the reaction to it—or rather, the lack of one.
International law, for all its flaws, survives on enforcement and stigma. When violations occur and are met only with rhetorical scolding, the law does not merely weaken; it dissolves. The response from Europe, the United Nations, and even Washington’s supposed strategic rivals—Russia and China—has been a masterclass in impotence. Condemnations were issued, concerns were voiced, principles were reaffirmed. Nothing followed. In geopolitics, that sequence is another word for permission.
The precedent is corrosive. If a superpower can unilaterally seize the leader of a sovereign state and assert control without consequences, the entire edifice of territorial integrity becomes negotiable. That logic is already familiar. Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory did not begin with tanks rolling across borders; it began with ambiguity, denials, and carefully calibrated violations that tested the limits of Western resolve. Each test passed. Each response was cautious. The result is a Europe once again haunted by the question of borders settled by force.
China has been watching closely. Beijing’s interest in Taiwan has never been a secret, but its timing has always depended on global conditions. A world in which international norms are openly discarded—and selectively enforced—offers opportunity. When violations are normalized by rivals and allies alike, restraint becomes irrational. The lesson Xi Jinping is likely drawing is not that aggression is condemned, but that it is survivable.
What makes the current moment particularly dangerous is the convergence of interests among powers that are, on paper, adversaries. Washington’s hardening stance against Ukraine, combined with a sudden warmth toward Moscow, suggests a transactional worldview in which spheres of influence are bartered rather than restrained. The idea that great powers might tacitly agree to look the other way while each pursues territorial ambitions is not new. It has a name. It was once called the Axis.
The paralysis of institutions meant to prevent such outcomes is striking. The emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council following the Venezuela episode should have been an occasion for clarity. Instead, it became an exercise in equivocation. Some states questioned the legitimacy of Venezuela’s leadership, as though doubts about governance confer a license for invasion. They do not. International law does not operate on moral approval; it operates on sovereignty. To forget that distinction is to invite chaos.
There were, to be fair, exceptions. France and Denmark articulated what others preferred to mumble. Their diplomats warned, correctly, that violations by permanent members of the Security Council strike at the foundation of the international order. Spain went further, refusing to recognize an intervention that tramples international law and destabilizes an entire region. These statements mattered not because they changed policy, but because they named the problem honestly. Yet moral clarity without leverage is insufficient. History’s verdict on those who warned but failed to act is rarely generous.
More telling was the response of Russia and China. Their condemnations of American behavior were loud, theatrical, and empty. Moscow spoke of “international banditry.” Beijing expressed shock. Neither proposed concrete measures. Neither mobilized allies. Neither risked retaliation. One suspects this restraint is not accidental. A system that tolerates unilateral force today may prove useful tomorrow.
The United Nations, meanwhile, played its familiar role: custodian of norms without the means to enforce them. The secretary-general’s lament that the “power of the law must prevail” sounded less like a principle than a confession. Institutions without enforcement capacity are not neutral arbiters; they are spectators. The tragedy is not that the U.N. lacks an army, but that its authority erodes every time its resolutions are ignored by those most responsible for upholding them.
Compounding the danger is the dismantling of deterrent architectures that once constrained ambition. The suspension of momentum toward NATO membership for Ukraine, and the stagnation of the Quad as a counterweight in the Indo-Pacific, have left strategic vacuums. Vacuums in international politics are never empty for long. They are filled by power, usually the kind least concerned with legality.
The rhetoric emerging from Washington only deepens the unease. Threats of similar actions elsewhere in Latin America, casual references to coercing distant states, and predictions of regime collapse elsewhere suggest an approach to global order grounded not in rules, but in dominance. It is a worldview that sees sovereignty as conditional and legality as optional. That worldview does not remain confined to one capital. It spreads.
None of this requires believing in a formal conspiracy or secret pact among great powers. History shows that alignment often occurs through parallel interests rather than explicit agreements. In the 1930s, the Axis powers did not initially coordinate every move; they learned from one another’s successes. Each unpunished violation emboldened the next. The pattern was visible long before war became inevitable.
The central danger today is not that the world is ruled by autocrats alone. It is that democracies, exhausted and divided, have lost the will to enforce the rules they once wrote. Neutrality in the face of aggression is not balance; it is abdication. The postwar order was built on the painful realization that peace requires more than good intentions. It requires deterrence, solidarity, and the willingness to impose costs.
If the lesson of the twentieth century is ignored, the twenty-first will not be kinder. A world governed by “might is right” does not remain stable; it becomes a marketplace of force where every grievance is an invitation to violence. The erosion of norms rarely announces itself as collapse. It begins with silence, then rationalization, then habit.
The question, then, is not whether a new axis formally exists. It is whether the rest of the world is prepared to act as though one does. History suggests that by the time the answer becomes obvious, the price of response has already multiplied.
M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com
This article published at :
1. New Age, BD : 09 January, 26
No comments:
Post a Comment