In a video address delivered on 12 January 2026, former US ambassador Chas Freeman argues the post-war system of international law and institutions is failing under great power coercion and impunity. He warns that US and Israeli conduct is accelerating global lawlessness, undermining democratic freedoms, and pushing the world toward a more dangerous, unstable order.

We are here to avert a tragedy – the apparently inexorable unfolding of foreseeably terrible events. As German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has just warned us, we are in the midst of a “breakdown of values” that is turning the world “into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want” and where entire regions or countries are treated as the property of a few great powers.

My country, the United States of America, is the most powerful in the world. It has now followed its Israeli protectorate into protracted war on the truth, repudiation of the rule of law, and shameless bullying and violations of the sovereignty of all who oppose it. The already wealthy once again feel free to rob the poor with impunity. We are back to the law of the jungle and aggressive imperialism. Ever more governments emulate the Mafia’s protection racket practices and intimidation techniques. If this is not stopped, we are headed for a second Dark Age.

The purpose of international law has always been to ensure that the strong could no longer victimise the weak. Insistence on this principle, even if imperfectly respected, is what has separated civilisation from barbarism. If the law is no protection, nations will be forced to rearm against potential attack by others. If they face the threat of nuclear, chemical, or biological attack, they will build their own weapons of mass destruction to deter this. If alliances are no longer reliable, nations will hedge or simply abandon them to combat or cut their own deals with adversaries. This is not speculation. It is the visible trend of our times.

As we have seen in the case of the Gaza genocide, words alone cannot halt atrocities. Nor can unenforced decisions of the United Nations or international courts. Intensifying citizen protests have failed to wean allegedly democratic governments from tolerance, complicity in, or support for increasingly blatant crimes against humanity and brutal efforts to subjugate or curtail the freedom of independent nations and peoples.

The collective West continues to profess that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. But this now has no credibility. We support Israel’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, its efforts to dismember Syria, its depredations in Lebanon, and its preparations for renewed aggression against Iran and Yemen. To defend this........

© Pearls and Irritations