sang this was a textbook case. i suggest the gentleman actually look at the ruling of the world court, for example, which reached a near unanimous decision that this is genocide. they called it a plausible genocide, as much of a label as you can give it until years after the fact. this is genocide if there ever was and it is unfortunate, as a jew growing up after the holocaust -- my grandfather's name was israel. my parent's families fled persecution in eastern europe. so, i grew up understanding that genocide is a horrible thing and it must never happen again, not to anyone. host: that will be our last word. jill stein, green party presidential candidate. thank you so much for joining us today. guest: thank you. host: that's all the time we

have for today's washington journal. we will be back tomorrow morning , 7 a.m. eastern. have a great day, we will take you to the event at brookings looking at the russia crane war, the war in gaza, local events and how they affecting international law and competition. >> in this moment of global upheaval and disruption, can western countries uphold international order based on the principles of the united nations charter? is the current -- framework for international law adequate to govern engagement between nations as well as with nonstate actors? or does it need rethinking? how can multilateral institutions help to preserve international law and ensure accountability? i am pleased to welcome dr. matias spektor, whose profound insight and expertise uniquely positioned him to discuss the complex issues at hand.

he's a professor of politics and international relations and founder of the school of international relations at the vargas foundation in são paulo, a top think tank in latin america. he was a visiting fellow at the princeton university institute for international regional studies and is currently a fellow at the georgetown americas institute and specializes in international security, transnational repression, climate politics, and other issues with a focus on brazil, latin america, and the global south. following his keynote, he will be joined by my colleague for a brief moderated conversation. constanze steizenmuller is the director of the united states and europe and the chair of german relations here at brookings and has led the organization of the lecture for several years since taking it on from our colleague, ted, who

established it here at brookings. thank you to ted and the team of our europe center for such excellent coordination on this event. after the conversation, we will be joined by a distinguished group of panelists to discuss how western institutions have responded to the wars in ukraine and gaza and what role the globe can play in revitalizing a robust international order based on transparency and accountability. let me introduce them briefly. john bellinger iii is an adjunct fellow at the council on foreign relations and cochair of the global law public policy group at arnold and porter. oona hathaway is a professor at yellow law school and was the keynote speaker for our 2023 briar lecture on the russia aggression against ukraine and the international legal order. we are delighted to have her back with us today.

bruce jones is our colleague here at brookings and is a senior fellow at the strobe talbert center for security, strategy, and technology, and our center for asia policy studies. our moderator today is ishaan tharoor, anchor of "today's worldview," the posts's daily column on politics. we are currently streaming live and on the record. we will be taking questions from viewers that can be submitted by email or through social media, using the hashtag international law. let me turn the floor over to our distinguished guests. [applause] ishaan: thank you very much, suzanne. good morning, everyone. it's almost 10 years ago to the day that stephen breyer stood here in the auditorium of brookings and delivered his first speech, a fear -- with a

series of 10 afterwards in his name. earlier this week, i stood in his office. an office that he called home when he served in the supreme court for 28 years. i had the privilege to meet justice brown jackson. she had not only replaced him on the bench, but in his office as well. she really made it her office. i stood there in the room, where justice stephen breyer spent 28 years thinking about important decisions that affected millions of americans. i could see the capital through the window in his office. i imagine that the view him of the important balance of power between politics and the judiciary, a separation of powers so instrumental to our democracies. while in the office and on the court, justice breyer was aware that the will of law doesn't stop at the border, it plays an

international role in our world. in that first lecture, stephen breyer analyzed five areas in which he developed the development of law in other parts of the world having a direct effect on u.s. judicial decision-making. in doing so, he began his annual lecture series on exploring critical issues around the intersection of international law, justice, and foreign, looking to offer effective solutions from legal and policy experts that they can implement and -- in our increasingly interconnected world. the relevance of the topic has only increased, as we all know, since that first lecture. the rule based international order has become more contested in the last decade, as opposed to before. it's critical we emphasize the importance of rules based order, rules-based intellectual order. today, professor matias spektor

will ask the question, can these countries uphold the international order? it was established during a time of u.s. supremacy and we now obviously live in a time of a more contested era. is the current international framework adequate to govern engagement between nations? the netherlands are strong supporters of the international rule of law, which is why recently in the netherlands, together with ukraine and the european commission, we hosted restorative justice for ukraine at the world forum in the hague. from the start, the international community has rallied to ensure justice for the victims in ukraine and hold the perpetrators of these crimes and violations accountable. nevertheless, the bulk of the work lies ahead of us and it will take considerable time and effort from the community to support ukraine's continued fight for justice during an ongoing war.

but, we need to remain united in our quest for justice in ukraine. it's not easy, but it is important, and sometimes what is most important is also difficult. it is a test, a test to see if multilateral institutions that we have relied upon in the last 75 years can carry us through to the next 75 and beyond. thank you very much. [applause] matias: good morning, everybody. this year, my hometown celebrated the 125th year anniversary of the first hague peace conference. in 1899, someone hundred delegates from 26 countries gathered for three months at the royal residence in the hague. it was a major milestone.

standards for conflict resolution between nations were set and it was the start of the coming-of-age of the hague as an international site of peace and justice and i'm proud that many of the institutions set up in the last 125 years to uphold the international rules based order are hosted by my city, including the u.n. international court of justice and the international criminal court. the city of the hague continues to do its part to support the rule of law following the russian invasion of ukraine. the international center for the crime of aggression is being operated from the hague. the hague also backs the ongoing initiative for the creation of an international anticorruption work to tackle the abuse of public power for private gains by national leaders. but there is still a long way to go.

the last two years have shown a decreasing respect for rules-based international order and the current policies of western governments that helped to establish it. we see this behavior is related to the breaches around international law and in the lack of support for the imposing of sanctions against authoritarian regimes in a year in which half of the world population will be represented at elections, it's a huge cause for concern and, therefore, i'm grateful to the brookings institute and the support of the netherlands and missy for organizing today's discussion. allowing for further reflection on what's needed for international law to continue to matter against the backdrop of these new realities. standards like those set in 1899, are they still up to date? or are fundamental changes

needed? just as the permanent court of arbitration for radical -- was a radical innovation in its time, there is no a clear need for innovation making international law and citizens more resilient. i am sure that this edition of justice stephen breyer's lecture will be a special one and that the speakers will give us plenty of food for thought. thank you. [applause] ishaan: good morning, we don't need a fourth introduction. matias, you have been introduced, we are looking forward to your lecture and then you and i will engage in conversation. come on up. [applause] matias: thank you. it's a real treat to be here.

it's a treat to be delivering the 2024 justice breyer lecture. the list of previous lectures is extremely inspiring unless you are of course standing where i am, in which case it is extremely daunting. the requirement of the lecture is that the lecture explores -- critical issues at the intersection of international law, justice, and foreign policy . this is what decided me to try to say something about how we might think about the impact of great power change, great power competition, on international law. the question i wanted to tackle today in particular is this -- what is in store for the global legal order now that the west, for all of its power and influence, seems to no longer be hegemonic. in other words, as we enter a new age of strategic comfort to, should we be concerned about the

so-called rules based order? and if so, crucially, what should be the precise nature of our concern? finding answers here, it's rather urgent at this time. if you move in transatlantic circles or you read newspapers or magazines in the english language, you will find that there is a very specific storyline that is taking place and gaining a lot of traction. the bumper sticker version of these stories, which are not that new, it is a rehash of an older story, but in a new forum it could be the liberal west against the illiberal west. this storyline is everywhere. it holds that the future of international law hinges upon the changing balance of power between liberals and there represent -- and their enemies. the enemies include liberals inside the west, the basket of deplorables, illiberal great

powers like autocratic russia and autocratic china, and the collection, multitude, of non-western states that are apparently devoid of any strong moral commitments and are unwilling to take sides. they are taking the opportunity to hedge their bets in this changing global geopolitical landscape. this storyline deeply influences how we converse about the issues of the day. if you consider commentaries in the west about the war in ukraine, here's the narrative. as the west has levied a punishing sanctions against russia, the chinese support for russia has seriously complicated the enforcement of international law. at the same time, the vast majority of developing countries have condemned russian aggression at the un's general assembly but they have refused to impose sanctions, which also

complicates the implementation of international law. if a postcolonial world is not willing to punish such glaring violations of the principle of self-determination that in theory they fought for for such a long time, the argument goes, it must be because either they don't really like rules, or because they resent to the west somehow, or because they are beholden to putin. and, of course, add to this narrative that is taking shape, there seems to be a readiness on the parts of electorates across the west to reassess support for ukraine potentially jeopardizing, big time, the norm of territorial integrity. we can turn to the war in gaza and you see the same narrative taking shape. in the aftermath of the atrocities committed by hamas,

western commentators have found it challenging to interpret the ensuing events. one issue, of course, has been making sense of the south african accusations of genocide against israel at the icj. another has been to make sense of the widespread support that the accusation has received from countries as varied as ireland and pakistan. so, not just countries from the global south. furthermore, many postcolonial states, as you know, have refrained from designating hamas a terrorist organization. add to this, western societies, as you know better than i do, have been deeply divided along demographic lines on the issue of israel, further complicating the capacity of the international community to provide some sort of mediation. although explanations as to what's going on on these fears has varied in norma's leak, depending on what you read, they

inevitably circle back to these ideas that there are changes in the global distribution of power and influence that could very seriously impact the global legal order moving forward. it's easy to see why the liberal west versus the illiberal west motto could be so attractive. the idea of a law-abiding western community confronting rivals who are bent on upending the existing legal order is appealing in its simplicity. but today i want to argue that this mode of thinking is empirically on accurate and dangerous. -- inaccurate and dangerous. it assumes that the rules based order is an artifact of the west, rather than the outcome of hard-fought political battles across cultural and regional divides. inaccurate also because it ignores the extent to which the

west often hurts the very legal principles it helped create and the degree to which its officials have been willing to sacrifice norms of the legal order when convenient. the west against the rest framework is politically dangerous, i would argue, because it fails to acknowledge that winning the battle against liberalism -- against illiberalism at home and applaud involves connecting voices in the west and outside the west. so, if we are to properly protect the global legal order had a time of strategic competition between great powers, we should retire the us versus them approach and come up with something better. so, to begin, i want to turn to history. i want to tell you a little something about the evolution of the modern legal order, by which i mean the codified norms,

rules, and institutions that govern relations between states. retelling the story on the standpoint of 2014, i think is important because much of the contemporary debate in its telling assumes that we are really talking about a western invention. this has a lot of problems attached to it. in the european order of the 17th and 18th century, the colonial system determined who enjoyed legal standing, who could trade, where migrants would flow, and whose culture would provide acceptable pathways for progress. by the late 18th and early 19th centuries, european dominance on the international legal system had come under serious challenge. the challenge came from the countries leading the revolt, the united states, japan, india, china, haiti in the caribbean, and the bulk of the newly

independent latin america. the legal opposition against empire opened the door to key struggles over freedom that would play out well into the 20th century. think of the struggle for sovereignty and self cologne -- self-determination for racial equality and economic justice, for cultural liberation. from the 19 century onwards, this network of laws and legal procedures began to feature some very limited but nonetheless important liberal ingredients, ingredients drawn from the legal tradition of political philosophy. for example, the idea that he's can -- peace can be fostered by global wealth and global wealth can be fostered by free-trade. or the idea that one should have formal limits on the use of force and these should be crafted in ways that protect the weak against the strong. or the idea that slavery should be banned and the rights of

individuals should be protected by the international community. or the idea that self-determination and sovereignty rights should provide a substitute for empire. of course, there can be no doubt that first europe, than the united states, played a phenomenal role in setting up these liberal rules. but it would be a big historical mistake to assume that the resulting laws are the produce of their agency alone. examples here abound of international law as a battlefield and the legal system that we now have is the result of these battles. so, in the wake of the first world war, for example, the victorious powers in paris for sure laid it down the roots of what would become the covenant of the league of nations, but what were the -- one of the unintended consequences was the spread of self-determination in

ways that western countries could not control. in the wake of the second world war, the victorious powers again created the united nations, but the institutional designs that emerged where the outcome of hard-fought battles over core principles and the distribution of power and influence around the un security council and the general assembly. similarly, if you want to understanding origins of the bretton would system, american and british officials were at the heart of the design, but the actual implementation of the institutions we cannot understand without taking into account the degree to which they had purchased support from the latin americans, which were bound to be there first clients. by the same token, the building of the u.s. alliance system, both in the atlantic and pacific , is not a story of american officials deploying carrots to subordinate states, but

difficult negotiations between superpowers and weaker counterparts. take a treaty for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. no doubt this was concocted by great powers, great power collusion at its best to oppose the limits of the spread of these technologies, but you cannot begin to make sense of the text of the treaty and the consequences of the treaty if you do not take into account the many years that it took the great powers to actually deliver a treaty that could be sold, could hold, and be so successful as to what we have seen. what i am suggesting to you is that what we call the rules based order, and many of its liberal components, were not created by western fiat. the global liberal order has been billed around these battles confronting north and south,

east and west. the nonaligned conference at the suez conference in the middle east in the 1950's set the stage for countries to legally challenge empire, which was at the time a dominant rule among the major powers of the day. resistance to western dominance from vietnam to algeria paved the way for many of the rules constraining the use of force today. the trade laws that we know now are the products of former colonial countries trying to ensure that they could have sovereign jurisdiction over there commodities. and of course, we cannot begin to understand the world of the wto without realizing how these countries united to push back against not western free trade, but western protectionism. but there is more to this than that.

if we turn to the human rights revolution of the 70's and 80's, how can we understand what happened under the carter administration in this country without reference to transnational networks of global individuals, south and north, working together in the hill to try to constrain abuse of power and try to constrain the american ability to support friendly dictators across the world. the same goes for the neoliberal revolution. this is not going to make me popular with my friends in the global south, but during the 1980's and 1990's we saw western reemergence. we saw dominance on multiple fronts pushing for market reform, deregulation, selective democracy promotion, what have you. of course, the united states in particular worked around the law

to make sure it wouldn't be constrained by international law, that it could project internationally and apply it extra-territorially. lots of changes, there. but the sad piece is that the world that we now call the neoliberal revolution, we cannot understand it without the many connections between the washington consensus in washington and its counterparts around the globe. this is not a top down imposition. this is a process that at the heart entails deep involvement of transnational networks of international panels and courts and communities of central bankers, of scholars the west versus the rest idea is therefore deeply problematic, i

think, because, as i say, the rules based order was not concocted by an enlightened liberal west facing a backwards illiberal opponent. nor is the global legal order about a dominant master effectively controlling a helpless subordinate devoid of agency. in the pursuit of their own distinctive interests, states have weaponized international law, transforming the global legal landscape in the process. so, the global legal landscape has been constituted by the west and the rest. this said, before we retire the us versus them story that i'm trying to retire, we must grapple with two important issues it brings to the forefront and we need to engage this seriously. the first is this -- implied in the framework of the west versus

the rest is the notion that the end of western hegemony can seriously hurt the rules based order and is significantly rules-based components, the underlying idea being that the recent connection between the balance of power on the one hand and the changing character of international law on the other, that standard narrative that has been revived is the notion that western hegemony has been a precondition for the global rule of law and liberal rule of law. but is this indeed the case? i would like to invite you to cast your mind back to the moment that best represents the height of western hegemony, what we called the unipolar moment. that time between the end of the cold war and the 2000 tends, when the united states was the only great power in the international system and the global legal order seemed ripe for transformation.

yet in the wake of 9/11, the war on terror taught us the bigger lesson, that great powers went unchecked by other great powers, by competitors, they can break the rules of the game and do a lot of illiberal things, even if they are liberal great powers. the policy decisions that followed 9/11 marked a major departure from the decades long consolidation of the rules based order. powerful constraints on the use of force were appended in iraq and libya. liberal america debated the conditions under which torture can be legal and how best to avoid accountability for targeted killings in foreign lands. the responsibility to protect doctrine for international intervention that to all practical effect suspended standard conceptions of state sovereignty, ideas emerging at that time that really revived

things that have been dormant for a century. for example, the utility of protectorates for global governance, or the idea that sovereignty can be graduated from countries that deserve sovereignty more than others. self-determination and human rights suffered in or mislead as a result of this time. consider the effects of the unipolar moment on global economic governments. the push for the embedded liberalism that had been a feature of the global liberal border during the cold war unleashed economic transformations and dynamics that are now fueling demands for lots of illiberal things. protectionism, mercantilist thinking, the abandonment of the wto. so, by the 2000 tends, rules based order was under serious threat, but the threat did not come from the rest. it didn't necessarily come from

domestic enemies to freedom. it came from liberals, often times unchecked. so, it should be no wonder that in much of the world, including the diehard liberals around the world, these people should welcome the end of western preponderance. the argument here is not trivial and we didn't hear it much, but pay attention to this. it is an argument made time and again in the 19th century that if you care about freedom and liberty but you are weak, then the balance of power is critical. when power is hegemonic, the strong get to go the -- throw the power out the window and lay the law on the week. from this perspective, multi-polarity can be virtuous because it protects the weaker members of international systems.

and indeed there is a deep-rooted western liberal thought gorsuch the balance of power makes the preservation of freedom possible in the first place. from this vantage point, the balance of power also contributes to the legitimacy of international law precisely because of the domination from the strong becoming harder to obtain. so, through this particular lens, the end of western hegemony might bode well for the future of the global legal order and some will argue even its illiberal components. but of course, does this make any sense at a time when the alternative to western dominance is illiberal autocratic china and russia? can multipolarity be any good for the resilience of international law if the new poles of power are dictatorial regimes with no commitment to

liberalism? hear what i want to do is highlight a point that normally gets no attention at all in the contemporary discussion on the relationship between great powers, great power competitions, and the legal order. for many countries around the globe today, and i would argue for the majority of countries around the globe today, there is no doubt that russia and china are winning and are increasingly able to revise and even break international law, breaking the laws they are not happy with, and they will do this selectively. i would also argue that for the majority of these countries, it is equally clear that neither beijing nor moscow are willing to burn down the rules based order. at least from a global south perspective, i would say that the dominant view is that russia and china have used international law in recent

years precisely to cement their ascent. they have used the language and practices of legal argument to legitimize their growing authority and they need to do this because they are not that strong. from this standpoint, neither russia nor china can be described as radically revisionist, even if of course russia has illegally conquered territory and is conducting an illegal war and even if china is challenging maritime law. so, on this view, china and russia, like all great powers, including the united states, will break the rules they don't like, try as much as possible to push for the rules they do like, and to be hypocritical when justifying their ways. from such a perspective, the option we are confronted with now is not on between a world safe for democracy versus a world safe for autocracy, but a world where the strong have a

free pass versus a world where they are somehow constrained by checks imposed by p or competitors --peer -- pee competitors. take the chinese relationship with human rights law. rbeijing has developed a strategy of redefining the discourse on human rights, placing the state, not the individual, as the arbiter of rights. leveraging their influence in the u.n. human rights council, china has sought to realign the council's operational focus to cultivate coalition and advance resolutions that resonate with the global south while at the same time excluding critical ngos. so, this approach might china has sought to recalibrate the normative basis of human rights, re-centering it around sovereignty, noninterference, and collective rights.

china has therefore weaponized international law and legal argument to its preference and in the process is challenging the west and western conceptions of human rights. but at least up until now, it has done this through existing institutions and forms of legal argumentation. this has to be noticed, because this is no longer the revolutionary china of the maoist era that didn't follow any of these rules. china is investing heavily in multilateral diplomacy to remake international law into its image and is working assiduously, i would say sometimes more than the united states, to garner the support of the tacit players and the rest of the world. this is far better than the old, which is more -- war.

the other story that comes to the four that we need to tackle head-on -- fore that we need to tackle head-on is the difference hooping culture and order. there is long thinking in international law that links the law to not so much of the state's negotiating international deals and agreements, but the law as a product of a shared community of values, rooted originally in christianity and then civilization. the so-called standard of civilization was at the heart of western conceptions of the legal order well into the 20th century and was of course used to justify not only territorial conquest and colonization but also international legal norms and treaties that often undermined the sovereignty and cultural practices of non-western people. it would be very wrong of us to

assume that the standards of civilization are a relic of the past. these standards haven't really fully died. in the 20th century, the view that ruled the norms of sustained international order breaking those lines was everywhere. spangler, in his 1922 decline of the west, look at the idea that the global political dynamics follow civilizational cycles. in the 1930's in the study of history they argued that the chief purpose of this is precisely to revise and fight for civilization in the face of challengers. in the 1990's, samuel huntington revived these talks with the clash of civilization, positing that at the end of the cold war, international conflict would be primarily around culture. in two thousand 10, henry

kissinger, if you look at him a global order, the subtitle is the character of nations. the character of nations assumes that countries have particular cultural traits that are both the essence, if you want to keep international order alive -- that are of the essence, if you want to keep international order alive. the west versus the rest is a rehash of this traditional story. we know full well that there are many criticisms against this kind of talk, right? it's discriminatory, it legitimizes the subjugation of non-western people, it imposes homogenized models that ignore the wealth and diversity of political life, it's emblematic of injustice, so on and so forth . but the point i want to raise with you now is a different dimension that i think is really important. one of the major problems with the idea of a standard civilization is that it ignores

the fact that liberalism has been a powerful force not only in the west, but beyond of the west. liberal voices have been prominent and deeply courageous in some places way outside the north atlantic. this multiplicity of liberal voices is normally lost in the conversation about rules based order, when it should not. so, rather than fictionalize those differences between the enlightened liberal west and backwards rest, around these standards should we not be pursuing the universal spender's truth instead? wouldn't that be the proper liberal project? this would require us to go beyond our narrow, petty, parochial interests. our narrow national origins and familiar cultural attachments, developing an ability to see the

world through the eyes of others. if we are to succeed, we might conclude that if we condemn indiscriminate use of violence by our enemies, we should be able to hold our own allies and partners, indeed ourselves, to the same standard. in this lecture, i have tried to suggest that the liberal west versus the liberal rest concept is so ubiquitous that it limits our capacity to think about how to go about protecting the global legal order at a time of great power competition. i have argued that historically, the construction of the global legal order cannot be described as a western invention. that over time, brought on board, the lesser nations of the world, as i have also argued, these threats do not come exclusively from illiberal actors at home and abroad, but

from unchecked power in the hands of live liberalism is a rich tradition with a multitude of expressions beyond the west. to close, let me leave you with four thoughts. first, we must let go of the expectation that countries grappling with the evolution of the global legal order will coalesce around some kind of moral consensus. in a world of multiple centers of international power and authority, all we can hope for is heated deliberation, a lot of contestation, and if lucky, uncoerced persuasion. a world where the major powers of the day confront each other in international institutions through the language of international law is a good one, because the alternative is war. the west is now confronting many charges of hypocrisy coming from all over the world.

we know that hypocrisy comes when foreign policy becomes divorced from stated principles that are couched in a language of moral superiority. for a long time, western countries could afford to shrug these charges off, justifying their behavior by stating these facts -- and it is a fact -- policymakers always have to make difficult trade-offs to ration. the problem, and rule of multiple great powers, being seen as a hypocrite becomes costlier. those who feel hit -- victimized by hypocrisy field power to deny cooperation to the alleged hypocrite. it's more credible for these alternative sources for global public goods or private goods. in a more competitive world, therefore, the west might do

well to consider a different this funds to the hypocrisy charge. perhaps rather than shrug it off , it should react to the politics of aspiration, specifying the measures it will and can possibly take -- plausibly take to comply with the principles that the behavior violates. third, in recent years policymakers to the right and left have signal that they are willing to abandon many of the rules of the postwar order to compete with china and russia, including the adoption of economic policies in the fed, fighting with brutal dictators as long as they are friendly, helping unpopular regimes, even if democratically elected, and it could entail the use of force

for binding human resolutions. for the majority of the countries of the world, this seems hardly a credible commitment to the rule of law into the liberal elements within the global legal order. finally, in the aftermath of the second world war, the architects of the western order understood full well that their political project with buyer social engagement, active social engagement, across the atlantic. as a result, they work very hard to build transatlantic connections that could sustain liberal opinion in america, europe, and japan. we haven't seen a similar effort to bridge the gap between liberals in the west and outside the west. no doubt, american universities and think tanks like brookings and governments have long engaged democratic leaders,

activists, and scholars from a broad range of backgrounds. there hasn't been any serious attempt at mapping and engaging liberal opinion in the non-western world to ensure that the content and rhetoric that the west uses moving forward facilitates engagement rather than fuel backlash coming from the non-western world. if illiberal social movements, as we know, are working hard to create transnational connections to help sustain them, should liberals not help to do the same pushing in the opposite direction? for those working in opposition to global order in an age of strategic competition, the priority should be to better integrate like-minded leaders from the west and from the rest. the dichotomy of us versus them did nobody any good in the unipolar era and it is not

likely to do any good during the current multipolar one. thank you. [applause] ishaan: thank you so much for this. i'm delighted that we chose you as our anniversary speaker. this was a rich and meaty lecture. particularly for me and my colleagues here, it's a delight to watch you develop your thinking over several drafts. some of you here know that we at the center for the u.s. and europe feel we have a reputation for sophistication to keep up. we have a manner of drinks and drafts in which we discussed the first lecture over actual drinks and we had a meeting with matias a couple of days ago

where we went through the first draft, and i see what you sent us yesterday you have been working on yesterday day. you have literally argued your way through this, that you have the material for a book here. i would be very, very pleased if you could continue to talk to us about that. we have a little bit of time before the 11:00, and this panel will expand, and i do have questions, i confess. let me start off with the first one. i think it is incredibly helpful that you reminded us that the construction of the international liberal order cannot be described as the western governments decreed to the rest of the world. that's sleep narrowminded of

western liberals to think that they invented all and that the liberal powers connect it liberally. we have seen that and it behooves us, right, to take that charge very seriously and to respond to it gracefully and honestly. but you know, this week marks two anniversaries. the 30th in a bursary of the rwanda genocide, which i covered as a journalist which the west, you will remember, declined to intervene until it was too late. it also saw the 75th inuit the washington treaty that created nato. the alliance was originally intended to defend against the soviets, but ended up overseeing a series of western u.s. led interventions in bosnia and afghanistan. i note that in new york list of

things we all got wrong, you left all of those out. so, my question to you in retrospect is -- were these decisions to intervene or not intervene correct or flawed? we don't have to go into every single one or every sigel aspect, but i would be quite curious to hear from you because you only mentioned 9/11 and the responsibility to protect. matias: this is great, actually. you are pushing me to think through the things we got right. of course, the only reason why i didn't go into any detail is because you also gave me only half an hour. [laughter] ishaan: lecturers always say that. [laughter] matias: kidding. absolutely, there are so many things, to be sure, that were gotten right, and as i no doubt showed you in my talk, i am one of the global south liberals i'm speaking about.

so absolutely, so many of the rules that developed the west and emerged in the west were critical to protecting human life. i was born in 1970 seven in south america's most brutal dictatorship, argentina. you know, thinking president carter is not a dominant thing in my life, because prior administrations have supported that tater ship. did it make a difference to the part of the world and from? absolutely. i would agree with the idea that i am actually screaming at the sins of the west though recognizing the wonderful things that develop as a result of western interpretation of international law. let me try to give you a slightly different approach to your question. nietzsche used to say that

concepts that can be defined are concepts that have no history. concepts that have history cannot be defined because the definition is the object of intense struggle over meaning. so, if we were to try to pin down the liberal components of international order, if we were to run a survey, we would get very different responses. not only from americans versus indians, who would tell you a very different story as to what counts as liberal, but even within some countries republicans and democrats would today tell you a different story. as well as across generations. it's hard to have a single criteria whereby we can judge where liberalism got it right and where it got it wrong. the story you tell about central europe, thank goodness for

intervention. what changed that we didn't get intervention in rwanda? my point is slightly different. back then we could have books written about the inability of the west to act properly. sometimes, we might repeat history, not acting now because we haven't learned the lessons of the past. many in this country are arguing that what is going on now in gaza is genocide. without wanting to get into that fight, the fact is that when you look at the terms of public debate and official responses to the debate, one wonders if we have learned anything at all. maybe my way out of your difficult question is to say do we have the capacity of self reflecting individuals who can look back on this and say -- maybe at the time these decisions were justified, but

are we making that mistake now on the back of what we learn from that experience back then? ishaan: thank you, that was a very thoughtful answer. we could go on for several hours digging into it, but i want to move to something else. i was fascinated by your idea, or the world that you depict, of a viewpoints come with the differences of rule and if lucky including uncoerced persuasion. as he later went on to say, that doesn't fully explain what's happening right now. we asked about coercion and are seeing it in liberal actors, direct and indirect. so, the question is, how does this world deal with the most

dangerous actors, who deceive and kill, who believe that might is right and how does -- how does the multipolar work to address this challenge? matias: you may need a hegemony, but if it is unchecked, the hegemony becomes a threat to the institution, so there is this tradition of thinking that says you need to have constraints on the most powerful. those constraints may not suffice to be the law. you may need to have other centers of power to counterbalance. that is what opens up space for the protection of the week. that's the overall general argument. ishaan: but i'm talking about something else, actually. there are probably enough liberals in this particular room and elsewhere in washington who are willing to say -- you know

what? we are fine with the end of the un polar environmenti. there were a number of americans who would have been fine with it ending earlier than it did to. but i'm talking about something else, talking about great powers checking to achieve dominance of their own in a form that american ever perpetrated, with all the mistakes and pocketed a made. you are talking about the world of mary a full. -- mariupol. how do the liberals of the world address the existence of a putinized russia that engages in killing or g in ukraine? -- killing orgies in ukraine?

matias: first of all, the answer to that is containment. it's the only way up when you have a member of the international community willing to perpetrate atrocities at this level. you need to push factor containment. if they are allies, you need to credibly threaten them with suspending support they are targeting civilians discriminate. it's a problem. what i find problematic is to have double standards. to have one take on mariupol and a completely different take on gaza, even if we can disagree as to the degree of destruction and justifications, so on and so forth, and i will give you an example that really member -- mobilized me and my students

in brazil. the same month, we had ursula vendor lien chiding the -- ursula vendor lien -- van der lyen calling the reduction of water and electricity to ukraine a crime. it is a crime. in the same month, there she was in fatigues with the idf at a time when we know things there are a humanitarian catastrophe. in a multipolar world where most countries have alternatives, the crucial thing is that liberals need to commit to their principles and live by their principles. sacrificing principles -- you must not let the opponent when the day, because what the opponent wants exactly is to say the west is just tiktok.

it is all trivial stuff. constanze: fair enough. i think a lot of us are probably willing to be self-inflicted on that. you are seeing western governments, including in this country, shifting their position quite notably, right? i am left with a final question i want to throw at you before i move off of this podium, and that is i am intrigued but also sort of mildly left wanting by the figure of the nonwestern liberal, who is such an important witness in your lecture for your thesis, that the liberal order was not just crated by western powers. and you suggest that present-day liberals are an important source of legitimacy in this multipolar order. again, granted that western

liberals have been and are guilty of double standards and hypocrisy -- he is charged. something we need to discuss. but aren't you -- i'm not sure that we don't engage on western liberals. my sense is that western governments and western think tanks, experts like you and me, are quite desperately looking for these people come and have rolodex is with a lot of names in them, right? i was writing for my newspaper in the 1990's, and my rolodex goes back 30 years. i have kept in touch with many of them, right? but honestly, i feel you are letting governments off the hook in this argument, right? you are putting all the burden on these liberals who often are beleaguered, are likely as not to flee their countries and seek

refuge in our countries. look at all the russians who now live in vilnius. i ask you, shouldn't we also ask elites in the nonwestern world? if we are willing to accept that we are guilty of double standards and hypocrisy, hello -- there is a war between gaza and egypt, right? where are the arabs on this? where are african governments on this? what are they saying about wash -- what russian militias are doing in africa? i would like not to be solely held responsible for that. that is my question to you. matias: that is wonderful. a couple of things. first of all, i don't want to leave you with the impression that i am arguing the multi-polar system is virtuous. all i'm saying is that multi-polarity opens

possibilities for countries that was not there before. whether it can be virtuous -- i entirely agree. i am at the center of international relations. international relations theory tells us the most unstable systems in the world are multipolar systems, far worse than bipolar or unipolar systems. so you run for the mountains, and i agree with that. but even though that is what we have, how do we deal with this? the way to deal with this, i think, is to try to preserve the global legal order and ensure these countries will complete -- compete through the law and through legal argument more than they do through weapons. that is my point. on the issue of the elites in the goal -- the global south, absolutely. hypocrisy is not a feature of the west. hypocrisy is widely distributed around the world. china and russia are deeply

hypocritical, and countries across the global south are profoundly hypocritical. no doubts about that. hypocrisy is not a bad thing, necessarily. i think it was harvard philosopher judith far -- barr who made the argument that in the world of politics, you need hypocrisy, because hypocrisy is what allows differences to be reconciled. far worse than a world of hypocrisy is a world of immorality, imagining a president of a major nation who is a moral -- -- amoral. it is better to have a world in which the president says we are committed to democracy, and then goes and shakes hands with a royal house in the middle east. that is better, because it allows critics to raise the flag and to push back. that is all we can expect on the issue of transnational

connections. i will leave you with this. i spent a year and a half in america recently on sabbatical leave. and one of the things that really struck me is that while i saw and attended two dozen meetings and seminars on the war in ukraine, not one of them featured russian liberals who have escaped the putin regime and are living in the united states, and these people are there. they are sharp. they resist. and if we expect russia to change, moving forward, these are the people we should be talking to. constanze: that is a really complicated topic on which we can talk at length. but i am sure we will have you here again, to which i look forward. now i am going to trickle off this panel and hand over to ishaan tharoor. it has been wonderful. [applause]

ishaan: thank you all, and thank you, constanze, and brookings. it has been a wonderful lecture so far. it has been wonderful to read early drafts of the speech, and i think we have already been kicked off in a very interesting direction. i'm sure there are many of you here with your own questions and i will hopefully make time for you to get those questions in. let's kick things off and give just a little break. luna -- oona, i will start with you. after the passage of the u.s. security council resolution on gaza that actually passed, where the u.s. abstained, had white

house officials described it as nonbinding. and this is presumably -- there is no greater body in the global legal order to determine these things than the security council. i'm curious your reaction to that. obviously, this is a way to get into some of the themes that matias was putting on the table. is it safe to say we are in a nonbinding rule-based order? oona: no, i don't think so. although it is true that nonbinding agreements have become quite a bit more common -- but i would not say that security council resolutions fall into that category. i would say that what we are seeing is a rise of many different modes of trying to encourage states to abide by international law. nonbinding agreements are actually growing significantly.

there are thousands of them every year being concluded by states, more so than binding agreements. security council resolutions don't fall into that category. what we are seeing -- this is one place where you have a strong argument. the united states pulled itself out as a central player in enforcing international law, and yet it is not always prepared to do that itself. gaza has been the case where rightfully there has been significant criticism of the united states for failing to hold its partners to the same principles and aims that it would hold other states of the world, most notably russia. so yeah. i think that is a long conversation to be hand. i think that is part of the argument about nonbinding agreements. we see increasing use of different forms of enforcement. they do not look like traditional legal enforcement. we are seeing that in gaza.

we are seeing that not so much any security council resolution, but we are seeing it through the rising calls for states that are providing arms to israel to cease doing so, and you are seeing this in canada. there is litigation happening. there is litigation that is taking place throughout many countries around the world. the netherlands, there was a case that determined that parts could not be sold to israel because of international prohibitions on supporting israel at a time when it was, in the court opinion, engaging in violations of international law. i think we see a spread of those kinds of enforcement. you would not call those traditional enforcement in the way we might think of security council resolutions being enforced, but it is a really important form of enforcement that is holding our partners that we engage in trade with to the same standards we hold others to. i think that is actually a

hopeful note here in a way in which international law is being enforced in a nontraditional way, but i think in a really powerful and ultimately extraordinarily important way. we will see now the u.s. -- we saw biden saying he was calling for aid in the phone call he had which suggested that maybe he did not quite threaten that he was going to withdraw u.s. support, but something was said in that call that seems to suggest something to netanyahu, and he is allowing more aid in. this is a way in which states can bring pressure on other states to abide by the principles of international law. and they are themselves obligated to do so under international law, because under international law, it is a state responsibility if you are aiding and assisting a state engaging in an internationally wrongful act. you are yourself engaging in an internationally wrongful act. ishaan: john, you were in the

white house is a permanent legal advisor at a time in matias's chronology of the unipolar moment. the idea of letting go with the illusion of the global legal order, that we will coalesce -- he suggested that in a more competitive world, the west would do well to actually respond to charges of hypocrisy. i would love to hear your reaction to that. john: let's think matias, conceptually, and also some history. my point on this actually tease off your last point, talking about international law and talking and not just having the west talking to each other. i think there is a problem of international lawyers -- and i approach this as a government

practitioner of international law. i was the u.s. government's chief international lawyer for a number of years. there is a problem. we do tend to just sort of talk to each other, the western countries talk to the other western countries, and we also only talk to other international lawyers. i talk to other international lawyers at conferences and so forth. but two things don't happen. one, international law is not really infused in higher-level conversations, except for -- one of her hosts here has been at these meetings, as i have. you are lucky if the words international law are thrown into a bullet point. you are lucky if you get that much. but foreign ministers, much less heads of state, are not talking about international law in deep detail. the international lawyers talk to each other, but that does not trickle out.

when i served, i put things we think -- i think we need to continue to push. one is what i call international legal diplomacy -- really talking about why international law is important to all people, not just to each other. and we need to have more of a conversation between the west and the rest. the second part is international legal public diplomacy, some not just the lawyers talking to lawyers, but talking more generally. i will end with this point because it is a deep concern to me. i used to give lots and lots of public talks about international issues and do really deep dives to explain the u.s. position on certain things. this gets to your hypocrisy point. i was quick to say, look, here are some things we have not gotten right. we recognize we disagree. tell me your position, and to be

honest about that. right now, for the u.s. alone, we are at a distinct disadvantage, because we have not had a confirmed legal advisor for five years. no legal advisor of the united states has given a public speech for six years. i used to give, and my successor used to give, a major speech probably every other month. so the united states right now is voiceless on international law. we are lucky if secretary blinken mentions the words, and that is not a criticism of him, but that is not what he talks about. we are voiceless. the nominee to be legal advisor of the state department is a former brookings fellow, and extraordinarily distinguished international lawyer who spent 10 years in the legal advisor' is office, currently the general counsel of usaid. but the senate has been holding

up her confirmation, so we have been voiceless as the united states, even to speak to the west, much less to the rest in a really significant level. the bottom line -- we need to talk more in detail about international law. i love the point you ended on, it was to make sure that we are talking not just amongst each other, but cross culturally across the west and the rest. ishaan: there are a couple of things i would like to pick up on, but let me circle back to bruce first. i would love you to react to the conversation that constanze and matias had around multipolarity and its virtues or lack thereof. you are somebody who i know has advocated for robust multi-nationalism, perhaps to a certain degree led by the united states. what are your thoughts on all that? bruce: i want to start by saying

bravo to matias for the lecture. i am hugely supportive of the overall argument, and i hope it drives a stake in the "rest versus the west" theme. i would like to drive a stake in the very phrase "rules-based order," which is distorted and deeply problematic. here is my main reaction to your question and to the end of your piece. i think this phrase on persuasion is very important, and the notion of what happens with multilateralism and support. but i worry that is what we are going to see. specifically, i am worried that the fight we are now having within multilateral institutions -- it is a fight, right? multilateral institutions have become a space of conflict. that is fine. we should take that contest more seriously than we do.

i have been a longtime critic of how anemic u.s. action in multilateral institutions is. but it is not the only fight, and i don't believe that the fact we are fighting within multilateral institutions is necessarily going to stop us from fighting elsewhere. it is possible we are going to live in a world where multilateral institutions are in conversation, but we are also going to see dynamics that will take us to conflict and war irrespective of that. so unfortunately, we could be in a world of both things, right? and it goes to a kind of broader point that i would like to make, which as that -- which is that part of the challenge in this space, and one of the reasons i loathe the phrase world -- rules-based order so much -- there are all sorts of things that happen in the world that you could describe as part of a broad sense of multilateralism, which are not grounded in

international law or rules. there is not a single phrase, word, or, in international law that says when there is an of ebola in the congo, the united states should send its premier health institution to stop it, but we do that all the time. we do things like that all the time. they are not bound to international law. they are not constrained by international law. they are just things we do in the world and a lot of countries see them as positive. when we come to international law, i think our standing is more complicated and difficult. for me, the united states in the last decade or so, it is odd to focus on that piece of multilateralism, versus much wider. there are all these things that happen in the world which are not described by international law, by multilateralism in the narrow sense, that bear on our standing in the world and i think have to be held in balance with looking at behavior within multilateral institutions. i have written on the same sort

of theme that is not just ripping up rules all over the place. it is tearing down rules other places, working within the rules some places. a lot of that is bad. the fact that it is happening within the rules does not change the fact that it is bad and an american liberal sense. there are things within the rules that we do that are bad. law are not new, within the institution, not the institution is not an adequate description. i think that is the world unfortunately we are going to live in. last, to constanze's question about how do you resist -- i think you gave part of this, matias. it is perfectly consistent with the principles of international law, if not with every letter of the charter, to resist aggression. the founding purpose of the charter was to resist aggression. nato was born as a way to clement part two of the charter

with a subset of actors if there was not going to be consensus. you might have to do things which, strictly speaking, violate the provision, but in the court in support of resist aggression, it has to be part of what we do. i think that is the right sentiment for russia. the challenge is that it is not yet the right sentiment for china. china is not undertaking aggression yet. but it is acting in ways that cause us to worry that it might. there is a whole series of things that happen there. so there is very dangerous stuff that is happening in a world of non-unit polarity -- non-uni polarity. it will not be captured by narrowly described international law. it will need this wider sense. oona: world-based order. ok. i think the idea of driving a stake in the heart of rules-based order got me going.

i think that is a mistake. the idea behind the rules-based order is that this is a set of rules that govern the international legal order, that govern the behavior of all states, and do not rely specifically on the powers of the states. absolutely, there is critique. is this reality or is it kind of a vision that is not always realized in practice. the idea that there is a set of rules that govern the international legal order that structure our interactions with one another, that bind all states equally, that all states are equally represented within the rules-based international order and there are a set of rules that govern behavior as opposed to it feeling -- being boiled down to power, authority, might -- i think it is essential to the modern system and is essential to the postwar legal order, which is a rules-based order. i hear you, although you should tell me if i got this wrong, saying we should throw the idea

of a rules-based order out the window. i hear the critique more as a question of first, on the one hand, they could treat that -- a critique that it is simply a project of the west to create a world -- a rules-based order, and is a process of co-creation, that these rules are not simply dictated from on high by a certain set of states onto others, but that this process of creating these rules is a process of co-creation and you cannot understand the rules without understanding the process of co-creation. i absolutely agree with that. and also a critique -- i'm not sure i am fully with you, but i see the validity of the critique that the u.s., and speaking on behalf of the rules-based order, is often acting hypocritically, violating the very rules it seems to be arguing in favor of in one place. it is not then making the same arguments in other places with

allies. that is a fair critique, i think. the place where you lose me on the argument is that therefore -- and maybe i misheard you -- that therefore a kind of multipolar world where states, russia and china, to be specific, are equally vying with the united states for authority is somehow going to cure that hypocrisy. and i worry a bit that the way you framed it suggests this peer competition is going to make it harder for the u.s. to be hypocritical, and i'm not sure that is true, because if you are competing with states that don't necessarily have the same vision of the rules-based order and do not have the same commitment to a world in which international law governs -- and i am the first to call out all the failings -- but have a vision of

mariupol or a world in which it is fair game to engage in these massive violations and then refuse to accept the legitimacy of the international legal order -- i'm not sure that is a world in which peer competition is actually going to lead to a better world for all of us, and not just the west. i guess that is where i am not sure, in terms of the diagnosis of what we do -- i guess i am with you up until the point where this is a question of what do we do, given this hypocrisy. what do we do, given this fact that there is this process of co-creation? but i guess i don't hear you, and maybe this will be a point that -- i do not hear you necessarily calling for throwing the rules-based order out altogether. bruce: i am not calling for throwing out international law. i think the rhetorical phrases

in the lytic leap problematic and a political disaster. that is not the point was making. ishaan: do you want to respond? matias: this is great. so absolutely the idea that international law is what protects the week against the strong is a powerful one, and i would not throw away international law. at all. the argument that has gained traction, i think, in the united states and in the west, when officials refer to the rules-based order, is a particular take on international law, in that particular take suggests that while we here are committed to rules, the others are uncommitted to rules. that element of the argument is what loses me, because from the standpoint of other countries, western commitment to international law has been

selective. in the way they portray -- if you talk to chinese diplomats or two russian diplomats, for that matter, they will produce these very long lists of instances in which they see themselves, genuinely i think, as defenders of international law. the point is, who is there to judge what proper and not proper commitment to international law, if there is no supranational body capable of adjudicating? countries will use international law not as a tool, but as a weapon. there is a lot of literature in international relations that describes international law as a tool for countries. i tend to see it more as a weapon. they will use this to fight. i point is, in a multipolar world, we won't see less hypocrisy. if anything, we will see more hypocrisy. now that russia and china are

more powerful, they are going to attract more charges against them. hypocrisy is all there is, but if hypocrisy is all there is, it is not that bad because we have space for legal arguments, for pushback. the danger, i think, is when we begin to frame global politics around the idea that some countries embody international law and the others are so beyond the pale, are such a threat to international law, that we begin to justify our own violations of international law because they are not committed to international law. i think that is really dangerous. and again, for a moment, i don't want to suggest that multipolarity is going to be more stable. every thing in my training tells me that multipolarity is going to be far more unstable than

what we have seen. my concern is that if we approach a multipolar system and not hegemonic system from the standpoint of we are those who protect the law and the other ones are the barbarians at the gate, we are going to push the international system into violence far more than if we take a more agnostic view and we challenge the hypocrisy in others by trying to curb our own hypotheses. -- hypocrisy. that is my political vision. oona: is it ok if i say one more thing? i am with you on that, but i think one of the challenges you face is that -- you talked in the early outset that that part of this west versus the west portrayal is that there is the western sort of argument in favor of international law, and then the rest are violent. there is a silent middle.

there is one answer to dealing with the hypocrisy problem, or trying to get the great powers to be less hypocritical, which is for states to stand up more for the international legal order. the honest truth is that a lot of states are quiet about what they see as the legal rules. if you look at, for instance, what is one of the major bases -- this idea of unable and unwilling theory. the idea that states are unable and unwilling to deal with threatening actors within their territory. then, another state is able to respond to the threat to them in self-defense. there is only about 30 states that have a public position on unable and unwilling. the majority of states that have taken a public position are in favor of using force. the states that are using force are saying we can use force

under this unable and unwilling theory. and they are using force in that theory. for those of us who are international lawyers who think this is not a good argument and is not consistent with the history of international law and the proper interpretation of article 51 -- there are very few states that are willing to say, actually, we think that is the wrong reading of international law. it would be great if more states in the rest would come out and say, no, this is our vision of what international law is, and ultimately i could be persuaded if other states thought this was the right reading of article 51. then i am wrong and that is great. but the silence makes this room for states who have the capacity to make the arguments that john was talking about to shake the law, and shake the law in ways that may not always be positive. so i guess part of this would be to call on the states who see hypocrisy and encourage them to call it out, and to articulate

what is their view of what the law is or should be, because that silence creates space for the states that are more hypocritical to be able to take their positions without any kind of blowback or pushback. this i guess is a little bit the point about, why don't we put responsibly on other states to take a position, not just calling out the west, also calling in states to participate more in this conversation. matias: i could not agree more. absolutely. 100%. bruce: a couple of thoughts here. one is hypocrisy is one way of looking at the issue. the other is selectivity. which issues do we choose to mobilize in defense of international order? it is my experience, watching american diplomats and western diplomats go to the u.n. in the ukraine campaign, and be surprised there was not this

rallying behind the west in critique of russia -- my question to those diplomats would be to what extent is your system whipped up over the 300 thousand people killed in ethiopia? those are different kinds of wars. there was an internal conflict. ok. but it was 300,000 dead. the west sent some diplomats to help deal with it. we did. we sent diplomats to help mediate. we did not mobilize our massive national infrastructure to try to deal with it in a major way. we did not spend $55 billion a year. so if i am an african state at the u.n. and i notice this massive pressure on me to create problems for myself with the russians and the chinese, i also wonder why the united states didn't care very much really about the 3000 ethiopian dead. we could talk about this

endlessly. so there are different international law issues, but the selectivity is problematic in the way this gets received in the international system writ large. it is a different framework than the international law question, but is consequential to this argument. ishaan: a crude journalistic summation of the gist of part of your argument is that you see a certain mode of orthodox western liberal internationalism that is no longer serving us, but you are still keen for a kind of liberal internationalism. and the difference between the two, i think, is really interesting to explore. i'm curious, what does this mean for the institutions that do exist, that do underpin the current so-called rules based order, whether it is the u.n., the august body that is in the hague, the icc, and other

institutions? and maybe john, if you want to weigh in as well -- given the shifting landscape you have charted for us, where are the institutions, seeing as there is so much discord and assumptions? where did they go from here? john: first of all, i watched with some amusement. it is hard to be a practitioner on stage with a group of academics. i will say one thing. i think on the rules based order, i agree with bruce on this. i think it is a not useful practical label. i think oona is defending the concept, but bruce is making a different point. bruce is not against international rules, nor am i. but i think what we are finding is domestically but even more internationally, it is not a useful label. i certainly domestically would not go up to our senate and say to the state department, the most important thing we need to do is to defend the international rules based order. i would get thrown out of a

republican senate. similarly, internationally, it is not much use to go and say we, the united states, are trying to defend an international rules based order. it looks to them like it is a western order. do i believe in international law and the rules, and explaining to other countries why these rules are important for everybody? yes, i do believe on that -- believing that. the institutions, international institutions are under enormous stress right now, primarily because of the russia invasion of ukraine. the russian invasion, you know, is not the same as the iraq war. i get the charges of hypocrisy, but nobody can say that these are the same thing. russia has committed the grossest invasion of a country

in, certainly since the creation of the u.n. charter, and continues to do so every day. it is having a toll on the population of a neighbor, continuing every day. it puts the u.n. the went security council -- when a charter member continues to do that -- under a lot of stress. what do we do in the security council is divided? you don't have an answer to that. we have had the general assembly try to do some things, but that has not fixed the problem. we have worked through the important institutions in the hague -- and there are many important institutions in the hague -- but both the icc and the icj. the icj stepped up rapidly. my former principal deputy, john donahue, was the president of the icj at the time, and they

issued very rapidly and extremely important condemnation of the invasion. can the icj force russia to pull out of ukraine? obviously they can't, and they have not. that does not mean they have no role. the icc -- this is really what the icc was set up to do. that is why i have written and spoken, despite u.s. historic concerns about the icc -- when the icc is doing what it is set up to do, the u.s. should support it. we have got a new prosecutor who is doing the right thing, and i hope will continue it. the point here is -- and probably the greatest point in the last 75 years -- we have the major international legal institutions, the yuan security council, the icj, the icc all under enormous stress, and they

are trying to rise to the occasion, and we need to try to support what it is that they are doing. ishaan: do you want to react to that? i think there are -- john, your point goes between the invasion of iraq and the russian campaign in ukraine, the ongoing invasion. i would suggest there are many in the middle east and iraq who see that as a distinct and without much of a difference. bruce: let me respond to that. i hate debates about the iraq war because i am not a defender of the iraq war as a matter of policy. but one has to actually confront these are not the same things. saddam had ignored the calls of the security council for years. ignoring the binding you went

security council resolutions, he had been committing gross human rights violations against the kurds. for 10 years, the u.n. had actually been authorizing the use of force against iraq. and then there was a limited and short invasion of iraq. the rest of it did not work out well. but it was brief at the time. russia, on the other hand, has without any -- any -- justification, invaded a neighbor, attacked directly its civilians. it is directly attacking and killing civilians and is doing that two years later. i get the charges of hypocrisy, but if you don't take this head-on and talk about this with others who say, wait a minute, these two things are different -- then, you do set yourself up for these charges of hypocrisy. but honestly, anybody who can't see that these are completely

different things, when a country is continuing to attack civilians in a neighboring country -- one has to have a detailed expo nation for that, and not shrink from it. ishaan: i think gaza is much more in the mind than iraq. and i agree we should not get bogged down there. the one thing i did want to bring up before we shift to an audience question -- and please prepare questions for us -- matias, you framed your argument around the shibboleth of the west versus the rest -- the us versus them. we are in this moment, especially in this city, where there is a lot of focus on competition with china, a great power competition in general. there are ways in which many

people see things go. we are also in a kind of illiberal versus liberal moment. you think about our dear friend from the netherlands, the party that won the most votes in recent elections, and the elections that will happen in november, what could happen thereafter, the european parliamentary elections, the status quo that is settling in, in india, and i could go on in the list. would it be possible to have an illiberal rules based order? matias: that is a great question. i kiss it would, conceptually. it would be feasible. what is the name of the tv show that runs the counterfactual what would have happened if hiller had won the second world war? "the man in the high castle" -- that would be an illiberal international order. there are institutions not pushing for liberal ideas, but the opposite.

but i don't think we are there, right? the west remains if not preponderant -- it is more permanent in all aspects of power than china or russia. most countries in the world have been socialized in a set of rules that focuses on the resolution we have been talking about. my guess is the best way to deal with the challenge is precisely to do what john just said. in the face of all these challenges, you need to double down on your commitment to international rules and norms, knowing full well that these will be the direct of enormous strain between countries. another difference between iraq and what russia is doing now in the ukraine is that in the case of direct, the u.s. government went through the motions of trying to get authorization.

it made a legal case. you can challenge the case, but a legal case was made. and that makes all the difference. from the front of the world where i am standing in, you are use to great powers doing as they wish, oftentimes. the fact that you have great powers that need to go through the motions of international law to try to justify their actions is actually a positive thing. my core message is the west versus the rest story really weakens our ability to confront these challenges now, because confronting these challenges will require people from across the board to double down on the global legal order, and the global legal order will not, and never was, a place of consensus, of moral consensus. again, international law is a weapon at the hands of the state. but we want to do the battle through those tools rather than through war.

it is at minimum an expectation about what the world will deliver, and the global legal order sits at the heart of it. and this is a global legal order and needs to be protected as such. ishaan: bruce, do you have quick reactions? i do have one more question for you, matias, before i turn to the audience. we see in the wake of the russian invasion of ukraine the kind of crystallization and hardening of a geopolitical west, and at the same time, certainly after the war in gaza, which unfolded in pretty hideous fashion, we have talked more concretely about the global south. uni i would both say our global south liberals. when we invoke the shorthand of

the global south, what does it mean to you? i think the president of the icg wrote this week in "foreign affairs." there are many countries in the global south that are more south than others. and they of course have a discordant set of interests. the briic grouping was the brainchild of the british economy at goldman sachs. what do you say about the global south? matias: this is a great question. if you open "the financial times ," every week, there is an article saying we should retire the concept of the global south. i think one is implying there is consensus among over 150 countries. it would be suggesting that the west is a cohesive form. all you have to do is listen to emmanuel macron and you will know there is diversity within the west -- enormous diversity within the west.

why would we expect otherwise with regards to the global south? the one thing the global south does, and i am not particularly defending this form, contrasted with the third world, is that it speaks to a shared experience of being the underdog, right? it speaks of an international system that is not in defense that all states are equal because there is no super net -- supranational authority able to mediate conflict. it faces an international system that is very hierarchical. and i think there is something to that. i think to me that for many people who are born and grew up in countries that have the experience of being at the receiving end of a hierarchy, there is a sensibility that might be shared. that said, i would be very critical of the idea of the global south because isn't it the case that north and south coexist in most countries?

look at what is happening in the united states, the experience with inequality and disposition. it is enormous and it translates into demographics that have a very hard time agreeing on what america's role in the world should be. so in many respects, north and south coexist inside countries. oftentimes, when i look at student protests in the country on the subject of gaza, there is more commonality in views between the students and diplomats in countries of the global south than between the students and other demographics inside the united states. so, like the west, the global south is a construct that we use to try and summarize a broad phenomenon. but that broad phenomenon is is

an experience of inequality when you are at the bad end of inequality. that is all it does. i would not expect it to deliver more than that. john: i really agree with something you have said here. there are conversations that go on between the legal advisors of western countries and maybe latin, south america, africa, smaller countries in asia, but they on technical issues, about a treaty. these big questions really trouble people, about hypocrisy. why are you lecturing me about not supporting the west and ukraine when i raise erect? our ambassadors -- i cannot imagine a u.s. ambassador -- maybe i have two minds on that. there is a rapid change of subject. there are answers to those questions.

when the other countries raise questions about hypocrisy or about the international rules -- aren't these just western rules? the point that you mention -- we have to have these conversations. they are extremely, extremely important. ishaan: we have a bit of time for questions. the gentleman in the back? >> yes, my name is roger and i am an editorial contributor on technology policy for "the hill" newspaper. in a previous incarnation, i was the head of public affairs for a principal foreign affairs agency in the u.s. government. my question revolves a little bit around that. i think it is probably not productive to try to talk about the difference between international law and rules-based international order, because you are quickly going to get into too much philosophical.

nor is it productive to talk about a rules-based international order, from my perspective, from my experience, on a global scale. the only way i can think about it is the u.s. perspective on the issue of a rules-based international order, and i don't think it is unreasonable to say that we have spent trillions of dollars and there have been millions of lives lost to defend , from the u.s. point of view, rules-based international order. politicians will refer to that. i think there is no amount of money we should not spend to defend it. on that issue, and wonder if any of the panelists would be willing to venture an answer to the question from a u.s. perspective -- who decides what a rule is in the u.s. perspective toward a rules-based international order? secondly, more importantly, who decides who decides that point?

so the question is, from a u.s. perspective, defending a rules-based international order -- we will spend trillions and have spent trillions. who decides what the rules-based international order is? and who decides who decides with a rules-based international order is? thank you. john: the answer is pretty simple, actually. inside the united states, the u.s. government, the legal advisor for the state department or the attorney general of the united states -- they decide what the u.s. interpretation is of international law. that is our perspective. that does not mean that other countries will agree. they often disagree. one of the things we recognize internally is, this is our position, but we know that others may disagree or do disagree about that.

who decides? this is the basic question that all of us who are international -- this is the first question. is there really international law if it is not enforceable? we do have various enforcement mechanisms. the international court of justice is the principal body for resolving international disputes. some countries, like china, refused to participate in international dispute resolution. the u.s. does. russia does. the u.k. does. other countries do. but that is how disputes are resolved. and then ultimately, if a country ignores a ruling of the international court of justice, it is up to the security council to order enforcement, but we know what the problem is there. many of the five permanent members of the security council can veto enforcement, and that

is exactly what has happened in a number of conflicts over the last 20 years. but that is the way the system works. ishaan: gentlemen in the middle. >> thank you. i am a retired member of the foreign service. let me weigh in a little bit on this phrase, rules-based international order. what would you use to describe the workings in international affairs of the international civil aviation organization, the international maritime organization, the tele-communications, the universal postal system? all of these information so that the world works is simply and effectively as it does. it seems to me there are rules and norms that people tend to obey. what would you call that system if not a rules-based international order? oona: i mean, i agree.

you know? i think this is critical. i think sometimes people -- i appreciate your raising these more technical treaties, including the itu, the oldest international agreement still in force. sometimes we will think of international law is exclusively being the u.n. charter, but there is an extortion or a web of international agreements around the world that govern everything from -- you can put a stamp on an envelope and have it delivered far, far away, across the world. that is governed by the universal postal unit. you can pick up the phone and call somebody in another country, and that is governed by the telecom union. there is this extraordinary system of interwoven international legal rules. and i think the question i guess for those who are critics of this idea of the rules-based order -- i could take the point here that you are not necessarily disagreeing with the idea of the value of what we are

calling a rules-based order, but disagreeing more with the label. i take that point. that is an important one. but you cannot beat something with nothing. what do you beat it with? it is a sort of useful way of trying to articulate this idea that there is a set of rules that apply to all states, and apply to all states equally. if we are not going to call it a rules-based order, what are we going to call it? is the international legal order any better? so i am in agreement. bruce: in a sense -- he pointed out the u.s. expensed treasure and lives in defense of the order. one of the most important ways we do that is we deploy the u.s. navy to enforce freedom of navigation globally, right? you cannot find a single phrase in any legal document which stipulates the united states

should be the guarantor of the law of the sea. that is not a legal concept. it is just a thing we do. it is a good thing we do. it is foundational to growth in all sorts of countries. i'm glad we do it. lots of countries, including china, profit massively from the fact that we do this. it is not a legal concept. i point here is there are lots of things we do in the world. some are very important, very powerful, and legal/not legal is not an adequate depiction of our character of action in the world, or an adequate depiction of china' is malicious action in the world. oona: i might disagree with that. i don't disagree that -- there is nothing that says the u.s. has to maintain the rules-based global order, and that it has to engage in these actions to try and enforce international law abroad. but one has to remember that what the u.s. is doing is enforcing the law by engaging in

these sometimes overflights and freedom of navigation. what is that law? the u.s. is actually not party to the law of the sea convention, but it has recognize that it is international law. the u.s. recognizes it as binding on all states of the world. what the u.s. is doing when it is engaging in those freedom of navigation exercises is asserting that the law applies to everyone. it is asserting that the law is effective. it is asserting that the law binds china, that the law binds states that are refusing to abide by the obligation. in the u.s. also recognizes that it is binding on the united states. when the u.s. is engaging and freedom of navigation exercises, it is doing so in compliance with international law, and it is doing so in order to support international law. what is interesting to see is that international law has shifted on the question of the law of the sea.

before the law of the sea convention, the u.s. position was that the territorial sea is only three miles, because that is how close they had to get to be able to listen to messaging with their submarines. when the law of the sea convention went into place, initially, the united states was an objector, but eventually agreed to comply with that and agreed to the 12 mile territorial sea, and now is engaged in the process of enforcing that. the u.s. abides by those rules, particularly when it is more powerful states try to break the rules against less powerful ones. they ensure that states can infect engage and freedom of navigation, and iran cannot cut off the most powerful and important trade routes in the world. china cannot declare that its control over the south china sea

-- and have that be effective. what the u.s. is doing, in fact -- it specifically says that what it is doing is enforcing the law on navigation exercises. i think that is a very important role the united states plays. ishaan: we are right against the cough and i want to thank you very much. mattie us? -- matias? matias: i just want to thank the wonderful panelists for sharing the podium with me. thank you all. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024]

>> president biden is involved of the collapsed baltimore bridge and will talk about his commitment to rebuild the bridge and reopen the port of baltimore live at 2:30 p.m. eastern. this week we have been showing recent supreme court cases that the high court is expected to rule on by the end of this term. we have been talking to reporters about some of the legal issues involved. we will hear two oral arguments about restricting how social media companies moderate content

on their platforms. watch these at nine: 30 eastern on c-span. you can find our supreme court coverage on our website, c-span.org/supremecourt. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more, including sparklight. >> the greatest town on earth is the place that you call home. right now we are all facing our greatest challenge. that is why sparklight is working around the clock to keep you connected. we are doing our part so it's a little easier to do yours. >> sparklight supports c-span as a public service along with these television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> more than 3200 students from

across the country participated in a 20-year anniversary of c-span's studentcam documentary competition. we asked, in the next 20 years what is the most important change you would like to see in america. or, over the last 20 years what has been the most important change in america? we are featuring our top 21 winning entries. this year middle school winners are eighth-graders graders from eastern middle school in silver spring, maryland, where c-span is available through comcast. the winning documentary talking about the militarization in space is called war in orbit. >> sports remain -- space remains one of the most fascinating explorations in human history. driving has been the motivation to push to the stars for centering now. >> it has led to frightening development and military activity and sustainability of space utilization. ♪ >> although the first rocket to reach space was launched in

1944, technology first began with competitive for technology of all time. the cold war. the soviet union and united states were locked in a war of technological advancement. the pressure between the two superpowers to gain superiority led to the space race leading to greater achievements such as landing on the moon, but space weapons were also proposed. >> space militarization didn't end in the cold war. space is getting crowded with the utilization of military technology. with the uptick in militarization the sustainability of space has never been more real. >> antisatellite, a weapon used to destroy satellites in orbit. >> in addition to being a direct threat to targets, a kinetic

energy attack or test can generate large amounts of space debris in lower orbit that will continue to circle the earth for many years. >> on january 11, 2007, china launched one targeted that their own dummy satellite. >> 2300 pieces of debris, 2700 86 are still in orbit. a similar incident in november of 2001 when russia launched an ancillary satellite missile causing the crew of the international space station to take emergency action. in addition to china and russia the recent culprits are the u.s. and india. >> we have seen over the decades countries test ground-based missiles capable of targeting satellites and targets and a resumption of testing and

countries demonstrating capability. >> other types use nonphysical attacks such as cyber attacks or frequency jamming. >> the ability to bring down satellites has major impacts on the ground. >> gps, obviously. there are a lot of things that are being relayed back and forth through satellites in terms of communications that we rely on every day. it will cause a huge effect because we rely on satellites in our everyday life. >> senior officials from the u.s. and china could suffer the loss of gps systems, power grids, and impact military operations. the potential harm doesn't stop here. when the debris in the earth's orbit reaches a critical point a chain reaction may occur increasing the chance of even more pollution. this is called the kessler syndrome. what are the chances of such a

catastrophic event? the answer might be dangerously high. the european space agency showed the total number of space objects went up exponentially since 1960. according to a united nations report space debris may have reached a tipping point where a chain reaction collision and the kessler syndrome could be high. >> satellites creating more and more debris, so cascading debris creation. and at some point lower earth or will become unusable. we won't be able to go through because of so much debris existing in that orbit. it is just one global impact that impacts everyone on the ground. >> it is crucial there are international regulations in

place. although several space treaties have been adopted since 1967, they are vaguely written and limited in scope and therefore unable to prevent the increased militarization of space. >> everyone agrees it is not adequate. >> catastrophic before things start taking things seriously. hopefully your generation can move the needle and start to tackle this problem before it becomes a situation where we end up with kessler syndrome. >> the united states announced a voluntary domestic ban on disruptive antisatellite tests in 2022. >> the united states commits not too commit destructive anti-defense satellite missile testing. >> this doesn't spell the end of space militarization but this milestone of the united states setting an example for the rest of the world be the first step

towards an international effort to build effective legislation for the lack of international agreements on the issue. our earth is a small pool in space. the united states setting an international example to protect humanity's greatest asset has been the most important change in our country in the last 20 years. with this we can finally push to the stars. >> to watch this and all winning entries, visit our website at studentcam.org. >> the labor department released a stronger than expected jobs report. employers added 303,000 workers to their payrolls in march led by job gains in health care, government, and leisure and hospitality. the unemployment rate dipped to three .8% come the 26th straight month below 4% come the longest since the 1960's. the associated