Anyone thinking the Israeli government’s strike on senior Hamas personnel in Qatar or the American government’s strike on a boat carrying 11 alleged Venezuelan drug runners in recent days is good news needs to think again. 

We have now officially entered the age of impunity, where the lesson is if you have the power to do something, then do it and just hang the rules. 

This is a power based order where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer the consequences.  Any nation who benefits from international rules and norms is poorer and more vulnerable when those rules and norms are violated or disregarded. That includes Australia.

The post-war international order that was created as a reaction to the horrors of two world wars within 30 years of each other was all about constraining the use of lethal force. It was deeply flawed and powerful nations often acted in ways that contradicted important principles, but even when they did so they at least felt the need to defend their actions and somehow claim they were consistent with those principles. They recognised the larger benefits from promoting rules and norms through restraint.

Now, however, we are seeing use of force by multiple governments – Russia in its egregious attacks on Ukrainian civilians and Ukraine itself in its aggressive war, the Chinese government against Philippines ships and fishermen in Philippines maritime territory, and now Israel in Qatar and the US against Venezuelan drug cartels —that are all simple displays of military force used unilaterally and against international norms and rules.

Each of these governments asserts its right to use force, including lethal force, in these particular circumstances—but each one is simply using power because it can.

This is corrosive to a peaceful international order where disputes are managed politically and by negotiation and mediation.  The result is everyone loses.

Looking at the Netanyahu government’s attack on Hamas personnel in Qatar, many will support the objective of holding Hamas leaders who planned or directed the 7 October attacks to account, including by having them killed.  However, the idea that one nation state can plan and conduct a deadly strike inside another state’s territory with whom that nation is not at war is reprehensible and creates a precedent that other regimes may use. That’s the bigger issue here.

Remember the international condemnation of Vladimir Putin for ordering the assassination of a former Russian spy in Salisbury in the United Kingdom using a lethal nerve agent, Novichok, back in 2018. The former Russian agent survived, but a UK woman was killed.

Now imagine that sometime in the near future the Chinese government orders a deadly strike against former citizens of Hong Kong who it brands as dissidents and terrorists but who are living in Sydney.  Xi Jinping has already put a bounty on the heads of some former Hong Kong citizens living abroad, payable when they are put into the hands of Chinese authorities, so the scenario is not fanciful as international norms are weakened further.

Qatar was the Middle East’s Star Wars bar – full of despicable and dangerous characters from dubious organisations eyeing each other with loathing and wariness, but useful to everyone and protected as a result.  The Israeli attack damages Qatar’s role as a place for negotiations and meetings which are essential but which must be deniable – like meetings with terrorists. 

It also makes it very clear that Mr Netanyahu has no interest in negotiating an end to the Israel-Hamas war. What Hamas leader will now agree to negotiate with anyone at any given venue knowing that they’re likely to meet an Israeli missile there instead of a negotiating partner?  On top of this, the idea that Israel’s weakening of Iran reopened opportunities for normalisation of relations with Arab states looks plain silly now.

And, importantly for Australia and for every other nation that benefits from limits on the use of force by nation states, it violates Article 2.1: of the UN Charter that says:  “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The only restraint on the current Israeli government could come from America.  But America under President Trump’s leadership seems disinterested in restraining Mr Netanyahu.  Mr Trump’s early reaction to the Israeli strike inside Qatar adds up to nothing.  He expresses dislike for an attack on Qatari soil, but then goes on to express support for Israel killing the Hamas personnel there.  This each way bet leaves things to Mr Netanyahu.

That’s not all that surprising, partly because the Trump Administration has backed the Netanyahu government in every decision and use of force during its war so far and shows no signs of shifting, even as it looks like the Israeli government’s only plan is to continue – and widen – a grinding and destructive war without end. 

And Mr Trump is busily using his own military in ways that also corrode norms around restraint – whether by deploying them on America’s streets or by using them to kill – not arrest or capture – 11 Venezuelans in a fast boat intercepted in international waters by the American military. The idea that calling this a ‘war’ where America is under imminent threat to make everything okay looks more like a convenient legal fiction than something that fits with long understood principles around war and conflict.

As the victorious allied powers knew deeply at the end of World War Two, a power based world is a dangerous one even for the strongest nations.  If this is the world we have now re-entered, then it’s a time for many of our long held assumptions about how the world works – from trade to diplomacy to travel, security and the value and functioning of partnerships and alliances – to be revisited and rethought. 

So, as we react and respond to events like the attack inside Qatar and America’s escalating moves against Venezuelan cartels, let’s think beyond either congratulations or statements of deep concern. 

Let’s see the larger pattern here that includes Putin’s war, China’s aggression and the helplessness of international institutions like the UN. It’s time to start to debate and work out how Australia can best operate in this new, fragmented and dangerous world. Whatever the answers, they’re unlikely to be to just keep doing more of what we’ve done in recent decades.

This article was first published by the Financial Review.