Part I

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President Trump Said the Silent Thing Out Loud: The Strange World of International Law

Just a few days ago, there were a lot of headlines about an interview that President Donald Trump gave with the New York Times. The New York Times itself ran a headline that stated, “Trump Asserts his Global Power has One Limit, Himself.” Now, the president actually said out loud something that comes down basically to that. So as the Times tells us, “Asked in a wide ranging interview with the New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said, yeah, there’s one thing, my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” So let me repeat it. The President said, “Yeah, there’s one thing, my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law.” He added, “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

The Times then said, when pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints apply to the United States. He went on to say, “It depends what your definition of international law is.” 

Okay. So that was enough to throw all kinds of people all over the globe into an absolute frenzy of response and apoplexy. They were having fits of response to this. And honestly, this is strange language coming from any sitting President of the United States. It’s very, very unusual for a head of state of any modern nation, certainly a NATO nation member state, certainly the President of the United States. Very unusual to have a president talk with this kind of bold language. And I think as in so many cases, well, I waited a few days simply because I wanted to see what the response to this was because that would be a big part of our worldview consideration. So let’s just say that the response to this has been, on the one hand, a bit predictable, on the other hand, almost non-existent. 

Okay. So what are we talking about here? Number one, the president was asked about what kind of external constraints would apply to his executive power, and in particular, his power as commander-in-chief. And the president’s blunt statement was basically nothing. As he says, “My own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Now, just as a matter of fact, the power that is invested by Article II in the President of the United States in terms of the conduct of foreign policy, and in particular the conduct of America’s military, whether or not the military was sent into action, that is a presidential action. President can’t declare war, but the fact is that going back even throughout much of American history, certainly in the modern age, it’s something of an illusion to believe that war will wait for either an affirmative or negative vote from the United States Congress, in a major sense, and I want to underline that. In a major sense, the last time the United States Congress actually voted to declare war in a major context was in 1941, and that was for World War II.

Now, clearly, since that time, the United States military has been involved in many, probably safe to say many hundreds of military operations. Some of them had pretty clear explicit congressional support, but that comes more through what’s considered subsequent authorization, and the authorization of military expenditures. The Article I powers invested in Congress include the power of the purse, and thus Congress is involved when it comes to paying for any kind of extended military action. But let’s understand the context here. The context here involves such things as the American bombing of nuclear sites in Iran, Congress never declared war on Iran. We’re not in a declared war in Iran, but that was clearly a military act undertaken by the United States. You could go after several others, including what amounts to something of a naval blockade of Venezuela, and then of course, military action undertaken to go into Caracas to get Nicolas Maduro, the former President of Venezuela and his wife, and bring them to the United States to face the court of justice. 

Okay. So now you have a newspaper, in this case, the most influential paper in the United States, the New York Times, having this wide ranging interview with the president, and they ask him point blank, what are the external constraints upon your power, particularly as commander-in-chief? And he says, “There basically isn’t much. There’s only one thing, my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

But then he went on further and he said, “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.” Now, that’s a very interesting statement, and it probably says a whole lot about how the President sees these things, but the President seems to think that in this case, international law is binding upon people who would want to hurt people, not upon people who would want to do good. And the President clearly sees himself and the American military and the role of the United States in these issues not as hurting people, but as doing good. And I think for the most part, the vast majority of Americans have been at least in general agreement with him.

But there’s something else in here that really should have our attention, and it’s that category of international law because it’s constantly invoked. It’s referenced by so many people, “That’s a violation of international law.” I think the president pretty much came out and said, “There isn’t much of a thing called international law.” At one point, he said that he’s not constrained by it because he’s not looking to hurt people, but as the Times says when he was pressed about the existence of international law, he recognized that it exists. He also said that the United States, including his administration, needs to abide by international law, but the Times said, “He made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.” “It depends upon what your definition of international law is.”

Okay, now we have a huge worldview issue before us, and if you don’t see it, let’s identify it, let’s underline it, let’s understand why it’s so important. Is there such a thing as international law? The answer to that almost assuredly has to be yes, but it also has to be an extremely qualified yes. You want to know what the law is for your city, what the law is for your state, the law is for your country. Well, that is codified in a criminal code. It’s codified in official law, and you can go look it up. And the problem with American law in that respect is that we’ve adopted too many laws and haven’t gotten rid of enough old laws. It’s too complex, but nonetheless, it’s a thing.

And thus when you go into a courtroom and there is a charge, it has to be a specific criminal charge. Even an indictment has to come with a specific criminal charge. Usually it’s even numbered in terms of where it falls either in the state or in the federal code. But when it comes to international law, we’re not talking about the same thing. We’re talking about what basically is an agreement among nations, at least an agreement among some nation, about how they are going to jointly understand certain issues as to whether they should face a legal sanction or not. But in the larger sense, international law, particularly say in the 20th century, has been applied by some nations to other nations when those other nations don’t even recognize something called international law.

For most people, probably the most famous exercise of international law was what took place in terms of the Nuremberg trials, especially when it comes to the leaders of Nazi Germany at the conclusion of World War II. Similar trials held for the Japanese leadership as well of Imperial Japan. And these were trials. The Nuremberg language is extremely lofty, and I think most Americans would say, “It was right. It was right and it was necessary.” And furthermore, the arguments made in terms of the Nuremberg process was that these genocidal leaders of Germany, they had intentionally brought about mass murder, specifically the murder by the millions of the Jewish people.

And the charge that was made, the basic argument that was presented, is that there is a law of nations that makes very clear that this behavior cannot be tolerated and mass murder on this scale has to be named for what it is. And thus you had multiple people who were convicted there at the Nuremberg trials, and several were executed for their horrifying crimes. Even at the time, there were those who said, “This court wasn’t in existence before the war. This court wasn’t recognized by Germany, although most of the defendants in this case were certainly German.” And this looks like the victors putting together a process in which they can try the losers in this war and thus there was a constitutional question. There was a very substantial legal question. There were even moral questions.

But by and large, certainly people in Europe, the Allies, both in terms of the Soviet Union at that point and the United States who had been allies during World War II, all saw the necessity of this trial process. And as a matter of fact, we now know that this trial process upon which the Americans insisted was not a way of dealing with this as opposed to not dealing with it. No, it was a way of dealing with this with some rule of law rather than simply with mob justice. There were those, and Stalin was among those who simply wanted to line the people up and shoot them. And we know that’s what he was thinking because he said it.

Furthermore, Christians heavily invested in thinking about these issues at the time recognized that of course there is a moral law. It’s a moral law that is revealed even in nature. It’s a moral law accessible to the human conscience. The genocide of the Jews and the other war crimes in Nazi Germany cried out for justice, and thus this process was legitimate, but it was nonetheless a process that was undertaken by nations as a temporary court set up for the special purpose of these post-war trials. But you also have not only in the 20th century, even in centuries before, even in the ancient world, there were references basically to a law, a natural law, of course, we can understand, but also a moral law.

But by and large, throughout most of human history, there’s been nothing like an international tribunal. There were efforts to try to bring some of this about in the 19th century. It was only the 20th century that really brought this about. And you also had the creation of the United Nations after World War II, and you had various international criminal courts, international tribunals and things, but right now it’s a mess, to be honest. And so when you talk about international law, the question is, what in the world are you talking about? What is this international law? What status does it have? And what status can it, might it have?

And thus you have the President of the United States saying, “I’m not even sure what international law is.” I’m paraphrasing him, but he said, “It depends on what your definition of international law is.” Okay, here’s the bottom line. So let me just get to the bottom line fast. The bottom line is that international law is both real and a fiction. And so at any given time, when you say this is what international law is, there are treaties, there are agreements, but as was made very clear at the most dramatic parts of the 20th century, international law is what some group of nations said it was, period.

Now, Christians looking at this, we understand there is a moral law because God created the world. He made human beings in his own image. A part of that image is this moral knowledge that Paul tells us in Romans 1 is universally present, and thus we are universally accountable and yet there is no absolute agreement upon what it is among sinners. And the Apostle Paul helps to remind us that that is one of the evidences of sin and the corruption of sin. One of the things I want to point out is that there were many people at the time when the President said this just days ago who said, “This is absolute nonsense. This is absolutely dangerous. No President of the United States should talk this way. This can set loose mayhem all over the world. How dare you question the existence of international law?”

But you’ll also notice in the aftermath, because I’ve been watching for this, you did not have many of the people who criticized the President say, “I’m going to give you an exact definition of what international law is.” You have not had, for example, international law speak in response to the American President. And that’s because there is no such thing as international law that can speak to the President of the United States. Christians are in the strange position of understanding there has to be something like international law, but there is no agreed upon international body that adopts such legislation, even the United Nations. I mean, quite frankly, it can’t pay its own bills. It can’t do its own work.

It is more often than not certainly the general assembly and absolute collection and concoction of confusion, but nonetheless, at certain moments of remarkable moral clarity in history, the Nuremberg trial as an example, morally-minded people understood something has to be done. There has to be some accountability and it needs to follow some kind of rule, some kind of application of law, not just revenge at the end of a war. So I think Christians are in the awkward position of knowing there is something like international law. And frankly, there are times in which it’s really important that we recognize that there are moral principles and moral truths by which any nation operates and to which all nations are accountable.

But the reality is there is no international government and there is nothing which is truly operating with the authority of an international court, period. And that’s one of the reasons why the United States government, by the way, the U.S. under both Democrats and Republicans has refused to allow the United States to be brought under the jurisdiction of some of these courts established supposedly with international status. It’s one of the reasons why you would have a lot of Democrats and people on the left who said the president is speaking recklessly here, but their own response is remarkably like what the president said out loud.

I believe as a Christian, by the way, this is one of the reasons why the nation and the nation state are so incredibly important because we know what the United States of America is. The people in Britain know what Britain is. The people of Poland know what Poland is, and they have a common culture, they have a common understanding. They have jurisdiction and they have laws. They have their own government and they have their own courts. The law of Poland is established in that nation’s criminal code. The law in the United States, as I say, is both in the states and it is at the level of the federal government, and you can find out what it is. And we have an entire structure which is summarized with the expression, the rule of law.

The subhead in the Times interview was “Interview Reveals Blunt Views of World’s Laws.” Okay. I have to say, the more I look at that, the more I think that was really interesting. It was kind of clever. “Blunt views of world’s laws.” I think the most interesting thing is is that if you had many let’s just say sophisticated diplomats who would speak with slicker language. And by that, I don’t just mean to be dismissive. That language is very important in terms of the affairs between nations. Sometimes that language is very, very important. Treaty language, very formal, very important. Diplomatic language, very important. The president though is pointedly not a diplomat, and he does not see himself as the nation’s top diplomat.

There’s a lot more that could be said here. And by the way, one interesting angle on this is that the President has reinstated the Monroe Doctrine, and that goes back to President James Monroe, the United States not allowing a European power to interfere, or to have a threatening control over any area of Central or South America, the entire Western hemisphere. It goes back to 1823. Okay, so it’s now more than 200 years old. The president made clear it is back in force. And then he picked up on some language of some others and said it’s not only the Monroe Doctrine, it’s now the Donroe Doctrine, and that was what was operational in Venezuela.

Okay. Here’s something really, really interesting. I think most Americans do not understand exactly what the president was doing there. And I want to draw your attention to the fact that the president, that is President Trump, was actually reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine back to 1823, codified again in 1904 by Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, even in an invigorated form. And so it was established in 1823, reaffirmed in 1904. Why did the president make this statement and why is the attention to it insufficient?