It is true that under Russia’s national jurisdiction, the three broke the law and entered the territory of the Federation without passing through an official border crossing point or without having a visa obtained in advance. But at the same time, they were under the protection of international law: article 79 of the Geneva Convention and UN Security Council resolution 2222 make it clear that journalists are allowed to report from conflict zones as civilians as long as they are accredited by one of the armed forces – in this case, Ukraine. One may ask, how can the Russians disregard international law in such a straightforward, reckless manner?

The answer is very simple: the West does the same thing, much more often and with much more far-reaching implications. And the West, and the US in particular, has positioned itself as the defender of these laws and principles, ready to sanction any country that does not respect them. This is extremely serious given that the main ‘outlaws’ of the international system are the US and its allies. We need not recall how many times the US has used its veto in recent years to block UN resolutions (voted en masse by the rest of the international community) that are meant to protect the Palestinian population from the Netanyahu administration’s misadministration, or how many times the US has directly involved itself in internal elections or coups everywhere from Venezuela to Bangladesh. Yes, the use of the veto is not a violation of international law, it’s just a way to profit from a system that no longer reflects the current world order. But it is a way for the US to avoid sanctioning actual violations of world law by itself and its allies.

The US also violates international rules on trade through the exaggerated sanctions it imposes, it has deactivated the World Trade Organization (WTO) investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, it even sanctioned the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and her family members when she accused Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes. In fact, the US is not defending Netanyahu, it is defending all the proven crimes of his administration: the Israeli pager attack on Lebanon is a war crime and terrorism in the international legal definition, as is the attack in Rafah (the Gaza town where civilians were told they could take refuge) in May, but there are no repercussions because of Israel’s friendship with the US. The US doesn’t even respect its own domestic laws when it comes to Israel anymore: this year it violated the Leahy Law, which prohibits assistance to foreign military units committing abuses, by arming Israeli battalions that have been declared to be carrying out humanitarian abuses. Best Friends Forever!

When it is not defending its allies and friends, the US allows itself to kidnap, arrest or imprison those it dislikes anywhere in the world, not just on US soil (famous examples are Julian Assange or Huawei CEO Meng Wanzhou). The US is thus the special country that can impose its will wherever it wants. Or what can we say about Guantanamo Bay, the prison opened by the US in Cuba after 9/11, where it has been shown that the Americans torture and even kill prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.? This is not in line with the Geneva Convention or the United Nations Convention either, which have clear clauses against torture.

So strong is this special status of Americans that the diplomatic immunity of American representatives extends to cases of murder or rape on foreign soil without any repercussions (e.g. diplomat Anne Sacoolas, who killed a British teenager, or Raymond Allen Davis, who shot two people in the street in Pakistan). And this diplomatic immunity and impunity also applies to all US soldiers on foreign soil – whatever the crime, they cannot be arrested by national governments unless the US chooses to waive immunity.

We can even go as far as the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, when the Americans used their veto and blocked the second term of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali who wanted to stop this military intervention (Boutros-Ghali is only the second UN Secretary General in history not to get a second term despite being supported by a majority of member countries). Or the invasion of Iraq, which had no UN authorization and resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties and displaced over 1 million people. Or the US, UK and French airstrikes on Syria in 2018, resulting in hundreds of casualties, which were declared a war crime by the UN since the targets of the strikes were not aimed at a military objective. Or the killing of Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qassem Soleimani in 2020, when US forces violated the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention’s provisions on the use of military force.

The US refuses to sign or ratify fundamental international laws and treaties that the vast majority of the world’s countries have signed (at the urging of the Americans), such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child), CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), ICRMW (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrants), UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), PAROS (Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), most ILO (International Labor Organization) labor conventions, etc. , thus demonstrably violating most of them but holding other countries accountable to laws it itself refuses to ratify. The US has even opposed negotiations on a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention even though it is the only country with proven stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the world, which became highly relevant with the international suspicions during the pandemic.

So, yes, what the Russians have done is not legal, it is not right, and it should not be accepted, the Americans will probably make a big fuss about sanctioning Russia. But when the US flaunts its “outlaw” behavior and not only ignores international rules, but ignores its national rules as well, what can we say about authoritarian countries that follow in its footsteps? Through “Do as the pope says, not as the pope does” behavior, the US guarantees that there is no international order, or law, or rules – there is only the status of the big shot, a status that is held primarily by the Americans but can be given out to the other boys in the gang when convenient, the boys who help the Americans punish the “suckers” when they don’t play by their rules either. It’s nice to be a big shot. But what will happen when the suckers start imposing their own rules? We will probably soon find out.

By Daria Gusa