In Modern Warfare, the Rules Are Gone

The Hamas fighters who kidnapped and murdered Israeli civilians did not attempt to hide their war crimes, writes Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic. In fact, they made a point to capture their atrocities on film and then circulate the videos, the better to create "misery and anger." These "terrorists paid no attention to any modern laws of war, or any norms of any kind," she writes. Applebaum's intent, however, is not to single out Hamas—not a sovereign state itself but a quasi-state with the backing of Iran and Qatar—but to point out that this is only the latest example of the collapse of our "rules-based world order." By that, she means international pacts such as the Geneva Conventions that lay out the rules of war, as well as UN treaties on human rights and genocide.

These agreements have always been more "aspirational" than a reflection of reality, but they nevertheless influenced behavior. Those days appear to be coming to an end. "The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas' surprise attack on Israeli civilians are both blatant rejections of that rules-based world order," and these examples of a "sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism" will only hasten a decline that's been happening for a while. (The US and China do not escape blame on this front, she notes.) "We are heading into an era when there is no order, rules-based or otherwise, at all," warns Applebaum. "Open brutality has again become celebrated in international conflicts, and a long time may pass before anything else replaces it." Read the full piece. (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)