The Russian war in Ukraine, the proliferation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, and, most recently, the US aggression in Venezuela all point to the same conclusion: the principles of international law that were supposed to maintain some semblance of peace and multilateral dialogue since the end of World War II seem more obsolete than ever.

The Charter of the United Nations (of which the US was one of the initiators) – and particularly Article 2 – prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state. For external intervention to be legal, it must be authorised by the United Nations Security Council and carried out in self-defence, or with the consent of the local government. On 3 January, following the US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president and his wife by the US military, UN Secretary General António Guterres said he was “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected”. Guterres added that the action by the US sets a “dangerous precedent”. But Donald Trump couldn’t care less about the UN Charter, Mr. Guterres, or international law, just as he couldn’t care less about his own Congress.

Does this mean we are condemned to stand by helplessly and watch the international legal system and the foundation of our common values, painstakingly built after the horrors of World War II, collapse under the onslaught of the world’s autocrats – or “predators”, as political writer Giuliano da Empoli aptly calls them?

Absolutely not. But we must start calling things by their proper names. We also need to broaden our focus and adopt a different paradigm from the one all these heads of state who advocate violence – Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and the like – are trying to impose on us. In reality, while these leaders’ posturing and outward displays of machismo cause death and destruction, they also mask their limitations and personal troubles.

A symptom of powerlessness

Some believe diverting attention from Trump’s domestic issues (his falling popularity and the release of the Epstein files) and seizing Venezuelan oil (the country holds the largest reserves in the world) are the real reasons behind the US’s theatrical military “operation” in Caracas.

This term, which has been repeated ad nauseam by the media since 3 January, is reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s use of “special operation” to describe his invasion of Ukraine. The choice of this medical lexicon is neither new nor insignificant. During the first Gulf War in 1991, US President George W. Bush coined the term “surgical strikes”, now used by Israeli officials to describe illegal, deadly bombings of civilians in Gaza. This vocabulary aims to conceal the violence of an action in order to legitimise it. War is waged to heal, for the good of the populations concerned, in Ukraine, Gaza or Venezuela, as it was in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As George Orwell wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Just like Trump attacks Venezuela to mask his own failures, Netanyahu continues his perpetual war against Palestinians to divert attention from his serious legal troubles, and Putin attacks Ukraine in the face of his own political weakness. Rather than displaying strength, violence betrays the short-termism and powerlessness of those who resort to it. Reaffirming the power of international law against all autocrats requires shifting the focus from subjugation to cooperation – and addressing the real challenges we are facing, chief among which is the issue of exceeding planetary boundaries.

Faced with the total denial of political leaders, we should cling to existing frameworks of international collaboration, such as the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. These two international frameworks were ratified 10 years ago and should serve as the primary compass for our leaders. The Paris Climate Agreement aims to “keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”. As for the UN’s 2030 Agenda, its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute a survival plan for humanity against which each of our public decisions should be assessed. But do our leaders still talk about them today?

So, let us stop being stunned by the current onslaught of Trump-style autocrats and get back to work, starting by breaking out of this outdated paradigm of violence and power struggles.  

Rather than displaying strength, violence betrays the short-termism and powerlessness of those who resort to it.

Peace as a compass, non-violence as a guide

In his latest book, L’art de la paix (“The Art of Peace”), a response to Sun Tzu’s famous Art of War, French political scientist and international relations expert Bertrand Badie offers us some avenues to explore in this regard. He proposes a radical rethinking of peace, no longer as “non-war” – a simple absence of conflict, or temporary truce – but as a positive state, a global common good that needs to be redefined in an era of globalisation, climate threats, and the collapse of the Earth system. In Badie’s view, peace is not simply a technical domain reserved for the military and diplomats, but a much broader social struggle that must be tackled head-on. The proof is that since 1945, the 500 or so major armed conflicts that have taken place across the globe have been mainly due to social and environmental issues rather than competition between powers. For example, increased desertification in the east of Syria contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. In addition, tensions between India and Pakistan are commonly framed as religious antagonism between Hinduism and Islam, but in fact they largely stem from the division of border lands and the waters of the Indus River, on which Pakistani agriculture depends.

Our compass should be the pursuit of peace as the ultimate goal of international relations, taking into account the multitude of factors that contribute to it, including social and environmental justice for the peoples concerned.

Kant reflected on the conditions for peace in 1795, in his famous work Perpetual Peace. For the Prussian philosopher, peace was not a natural condition but a political and legal construct in which each government had to equip itself with a republican constitution guaranteeing freedom, legal equality, and the separation of powers, united in a federation of free states where nations would renounce their absolute sovereignty in favour of international law. This work remains a major reference in the study of international relations and inspired the creation of organisations such as the League of Nations, the UN, and of course, the European Union.

To best achieve the goal of “perpetual peace” described by Kant nearly two and a half centuries ago, we need a “new” paradigm in international relations, one based on non-violence as a universal principle of international law, diplomacy, and social and environmental justice.   

The major principles of non-violence, as defined and promoted in particular by Mahatma Gandhi in the first half of the 20th century, should not be regarded as ethical principles for individuals. Instead, they should be seen as profoundly political tools with practical implications for modes of governance, particularly at the international level. Swaraj (self-governance), satyagraha (holding firmly to the truth) and ahimsa (non-violence and compassion towards all living beings), the Gandhian concepts that served throughout the struggle for Indian independence, are at least as relevant today as they were a century ago.  We must take non-violence out of its niche as a militant tool reserved for peaceful and environmental associations, to develop and adapt non-violent diplomacy for the current context of conflict and climate emergency.

For example, the links between non-violence and the SDGs of Agenda 2030 – a UN-led global plan for sustainable development – are deep and multidimensional: SDG 16 explicitly aims to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development”, establishing a direct link between peace, justice, effective institutions, and development. This goal recognises that sustainable development and peace cannot exist without one another (regardless of any well-founded criticisms that may be levelled at the concept of sustainable development). Beyond SDG 16, non-violence permeates the entire 2030 Agenda. Inequality (SDG 10), poverty (SDG 1), and gender discrimination (SDG 5) are all forms of structural violence that the SDGs seek to eliminate. Thus, non-violence is not only the absence of armed conflict, but also the absence of economic, social, and environmental violence.

The influence of Gandhi and his thinking on the United Nations is notable in many other ways. For instance, the UN declared 2 October, his birthday, as the International Day of Non-Violence. Gandhi’s vision emphasises social justice, community empowerment, and respect for the environment – principles that resonate with the holistic approach of Agenda 2030. Non-violence promotes the conditions necessary for climate justice and peace: stability, cooperation, mutual trust and citizen participation. Conversely, achieving the SDGs reduces the root causes of conflict by addressing injustice and deprivation.

Armchair Machiavellians will see this as an unrealistic “woke” utopia, advocating instead for a hysterical arms race, which they believe to be the only solution to the madness of today’s world. However, American political scientist Gene Sharp, among others, has convincingly demonstrated the possibility of non-violent action, as opposed to multiple forms of political violence, including institutionalised state violence, bringing about profound political change in the face of seemingly insurmountable forces of oppression and injustice. His work has inspired more than 50 of the 67 overthrows of authoritarian regimes in the last 40 years.

Non-violence is effective, and allows us to move beyond Machiavelli’s famous saying that “the end justifies the means,” and instead apply Gandhi’s maxim: “The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.”

The voice of peace, non-violence, law, and reason is what Europe should urgently offer the world today.

This means doing the exact opposite of what Trump and his ilk are currently doing on the international stage. We must start by shaking off our stupor through relentlessly demonstrating the ineffectiveness of violence and power struggles in resolving the major issues of our time.

The voice of peace, non-violence, law, and reason is what Europe should urgently offer the world today. This path begins with a clear and unequivocal condemnation of all violations of international law, including those currently being perpetrated by the United States, Russia, and Israel. We must support the United Nations and the entire international legal architecture in order to guarantee peace.

If the European Union, caught between China and the United States, cannot be a champion of technology, let it be a champion of non-violence, law, and peace. Its usefulness will then be much more real and concrete for the world.  For while the autocrats have weapons, we have numbers: the vast majority of the world’s population, including those in the Global South, who aspire only to live in peace and security. As Simone Weil said, “Peace is the virtue of the strong.”