Teresa Ribera and international Derecho a la carte

The affirmation sounds solemn, even virtuous, but it has a small problem in this part a highly questionable interpretation of what Von der Leyen actually said.

The President of the Commission did not launch any attack against the international derech. In fact, what I found was quite different. He recorded four unpleasant but profoundly realistic ideas.

That the Iranian regime is responsible for systemic internal repression and decades of regional destabilization.

Europe must be realized with strategic realism, not just declarative legalism.

That the rules-based international order to which Europe sensibly appeals must adapt to a more conflicted world.

And the European Union must prepare for the geopolitical and humanitarian consequences of war.

None of this presupposes a denial of international law. On the contrary, he should take it seriously.

Because International Derecho is not a diplomatic relic meant to be quoted in the streets of the press. It is an imperfect system that tries to balance two principles in tension: the sovereignty of states and the protection of human rights.

It is essentially a set of norms (details, declarations, principles of the UN Charter) that states voluntarily adopt to regulate their relations.

This success depends on the political will of the two states, given that the ability to act by the main body responsible for the protection of peace and security, the UN Security Council, is subject to the veto of its permanent members.

The international market thus covers the basic function of stability Regulatory limits that legitimize or challenge the use of power. And precisely for this reason, its interpretation is never purely legal. It’s always politics.

Over the decades, the balance has tipped in cases of poverty alone. The result, unfortunately, we know well: genocides, ethnic cleansing and dictatorships that claim national independence, and atrocities with complete impunity.

It is for this reason that in 2005, between the international disputes in Rwanda and the Balkans (that is, after the world had been exposed to the point where formal respect for international law could live with monumental moral tragedies), the United Nations adopted a doctrine that changed the rules of the game.

If you call it that Responsibility to protect.

The idea is simple and profoundly transformative. If the state cannot (or does not want to) protect its citizens from serious crimes, the international community is responsible for implementation.

It is not about abolishing national sovereignty. It is about recognizing that superiority cannot be a shield against barbarism.

That is why it is now so curious to examine that Von der Leyen’s words “weaken” the international derecho.

Because the President of the Commission made it clear that the international system cannot limit itself to discussing military action in an extreme legal interpretation and ignore the political and humanitarian context that surrounds it.

The Iranian regime is not a regular actor in the international system. It is a theocracy responsible for brutal repression against its own population and a systematic strategy of regional destabilization through militias and proxies.

Because they do not know that their stated desire to destroy Israel is that they do not recognize the desire to exist and their people, including the Palestinians, are so willing to exterminate that they are able to do it. A nuclear bomb wouldn’t be big enough.

However, the legitimacy of international law is undermined in coherence in that it is demonstrated by the state of law enforcement at home. Just as we demand that Trump consult and answer to his citizens represented in the legislative chambers of the EEUU, we demand that Pedro Sánchez who had it before the Spanish.

If we look at Riber’s coordination equilibrium in this regard, we find it questionable, to say the least.

During her years as minister and vice-president of the Spanish government, its implementation was marked by deeply controversial regulatory decisions, from the privileged status of certain energy projects to administrative episodes that still provoked controversy and suspicion.

The case of Forestry, a symbol of energy policy plagued by arbitrary regulation, or the political management of the money disaster are record inconveniences.

Now, this interpretation coincides to a millimeter with the discussion that it took months for Pedro Sánchez’s government to try to project a foreign policy: rhetorical legalism that allows us to gain a comfortable moral superiority without entering the strategic complexes of the real world.

But to defend the rules-based international order is to accept that it exists to protect values. And when those values ​​are undermined by dictates that suppress its population or carry violence further beyond its borders, it bears the responsibility of the international community to respond.

This is the logic advocated by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carneyat the World Economic Forum in Davos the same year: the world needs institutions and norms capable of adapting to a more unstable and dangerous reality.

Europe has applauded the diagnosis, but some people seem to only use it when it’s appropriate.

International law does not require rhetorical guardians without credibility and decisiveness. And while it weakens, it is not strategic realism, until its selective use as enforced policy.