Trump has declared war on the world order, so nations like Australia must step up

Palm Sunday in sunny Sumy, when a ballistic missile fired from Russia targets a trolley bus taking citizens and their children to church. Then a second missile hits, a minute or so later, to kill the rescuers who have come to help the 34 dead and more than 100 injured. US President Donald Trump says that he’s heard (from whom?) that it was a mistake. It was not a mistake, it was a crime to add to the 150,000 war crimes committed by Russia in the past three years.

Human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson and US President Donald Trump. Credit:

Putin denies his army made any mistake. His spokesman, Dimitry Peskov, claims that citizens were a legitimate target, because of “the participation of soldiers at the centre of a densely populated city”. This is not a defence – the presence of a few soldiers going to church would not alter the fact that this was the intentional murder of innocent civilians, but it is advanced as a defence by Russia (and by Israel) for most of its unlawful attacks.

So what, if anything, can be done about this war into which Trump has now blundered, blaming it on Volodymyr Zelensky and “Crooked Joe” and appointing an utterly unqualified billionaire property developer to negotiate a settlement, to the exclusion of Ukraine. Putin’s reported terms – 20 per cent of the country, resignation of Zelensky and disavowal of NATO forever – are unacceptable, so Russia will continue mass murdering its citizens with the indifference of the US.

European countries are trying to come to terms with “the world turned upside down” in which the American president, hitherto leader of the free world, now votes at the UN with Russia and North Korea and tries to destroy the International Criminal Court. His declaration, to explain why he is defying his own court orders against deportation of Venezuelan immigrants without a hearing – “he who saves his country does not violate any law” – is the defence of tyrants and torturers down the ages.

At least the law in Australia is clear. It was established by the trial of Charles I that “however high ye be, the law is above you”. In Australia in 1962, our great chief justice Sir Owen Dixon threatened Victorian Premier Henry Bolte with contempt if he dared to hang a man named Tait while his appeal was still before the court. Tait was obviously insane, and the order saved his life by vindicating the rule of law. The contempt power is available should Coalition politicians in this country get the idea that they can dispense with court orders.

Ukrainian servicemen carry a dead body from a trolleybus after a Russian missile strike on Sumy on Palm Sunday.Credit: AP

Some of them have been supportive of Trump’s attack on the International Criminal Court. He sanctioned its prosecutor, Karim Khan, and its judges so they cannot enter New York to report to the United Nations. Thereupon 79 countries expressed their “unwavering” support for the ICC which has shown its continuing importance by the arrest of former Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte for killing thousands of drug suspects. Duterte was actually very stupid, as were his lawyers. All he needed to do was to fly to America, which takes no notice of ICC warrants. The US will become a haven of impunity for war criminals on the run.

A further problem for the rules-based world order is the uselessness of the United Nations. Its Charter promises to end “the scourge of war” but the General Assembly is merely a talking shop and all power resides in the Security Council, which is permanently pole-axed by the veto wielded by the “Big 5″ permanent members. Any resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is vetoed by the US, and a ceasefire in Ukraine is vetoed by Russia. The UN cannot even expel a member state without a Security Council resolution, so if Russia were to drop a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, it could not be expelled – Russia would veto the resolution!

It is on the cards that the US will pull out of NATO. France and Britain say they will put up a “nuclear shield” and there is even talk of forming a European Union army. There is renewed interest in the idea promoted by the visionary English writer H.G. Wells after the collapse of the League of Nations in 1938, of a new international organisation of “parliamentary peoples” – i.e. democracies – with enough clout to keep authoritarian aggression at bay. Europe and the Commonwealth countries, plus Japan and Brazil and Indonesia, might together have more impact than the Security Council – if for example China moved to invade Taiwan.

This was the development favoured by the World Forum which I attended in Berlin last month. Its participants ranged from Bill and Hillary Clinton to the Russian dissident rock band Pussy Riot, as well as a few European presidents and past leaders of Israel and Hamas. It would amount to a union of democracies, not necessarily a military alliance (except as a last resort) but with sufficient “soft power” to deter potential war criminals.

Australia should be part of this conversation which includes the search for a world order in which war crimes are redefined to include nuclear threats and strikes (incredibly, these are not explicitly out ruled) and to exclude the defences on which Russia and Israel rely to justify mass murder of citizens in residential areas and in churches and trolley buses.

Geoffrey Robertson is author of Crimes Against Humanity 5th edition recently published by Penguin 2025.