Rupanya si penulis melihat kebangkitan otoritarianisme semakin meluas di dunia Barat - setelah pingsan hampir 100 tahun.
- Donald Trump,the Golan, and the Return of the Old World Disorder Gershom Gorenberg March 29, 2019 Thepresident is dismantling the post-World War II measures meant to preventanother such catastrophe. Historical ignorance is his enabler. DonaldTrump just recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, territoryoccupied in a war 52 years ago. Trump also supports Brexit, doesn't give a figfor NATO, thinks neo-Nazis may be “very fine people,” and is trying to sabotageAmerica's very belated halfway attempt to emulate the national health-caresystems of other developed countries. Yes,these things are connected. They show Trump's role as a prime mover of a globaltrend: dismantling the measures taken after World War II to prevent anothersuch human-made mega-catastrophe. The trend, and America's role in it, suggestssomething frightening—that the ability to remember historical events and learnfrom them may be limited by the length of a human life. Beforethe global picture, let's zoom in on the Golan, that narrow piece of Syriataken by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981, Israel unilaterally annexedthat the Heights. No other country in the world accepted that move—until thisweek, when Trump signed his proclamation saying, “the United Statesrecognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.” Thefirst sentence of Trump's declaration notes that Israel “took control of theGolan Heights in 1967 to safeguard its security from external threats.”Unusually for a Trump statement, this is more or less true, even if vague andsimplistic. Syrian artillery had been bombarding the communities of northernIsrael—sporadically before the war, intensively after the war began. If Israelhad done no more than seize the land, stop the barrage, hold the ground pendinga peace agreement, and administer the Golan under the international laws onmilitary occupation, it would have been on solid legal and diplomaticground. Instead,it began building settlements in the Golan almost immediately,in knowing violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. Annexationfollowed. A country has the right and responsibility to defend its citizens.This does not produce a right to take territorial spoils. Even so, the Golanissue dropped off the Mideast agenda when Syria collapsed as astate. ThenTrump put the Golan back on the agenda. Mr. Art-of-the-Deal exacted notrade-off; he gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a freebie. As Iwrote beforehand, this is an election-campaign favor, meant to helpNetanyahu with voters wavering between his Likud and smaller right-wingparties. Netanyahuimmediately spelled out the implication, telling reporters on hisflight back from Washington, “Everyone says you can’t hold an occupiedterritory, but this proves you can. If occupied in a defensive war, then it’sours.” Thatis, at least as far as the Trump administration is concerned, Israel can alsogo right ahead and annex much of the West Bank. Netanyahu's hard-right rivalsregularly propose this, in part to embarrass him. They know that he knows—orrather, knew—that annexation would cause a crisis with Washington. Now he'sfree to match their promises. Alarger implication: The United States has renounced Security Council Resolution242 of November 1967. The resolution called for Israeli withdrawal from“territories occupied in the recent conflict.” It also called for recognitionof “the territorial inviolability and political independence” of all states inthe area. Now Trump says that if you took it in a defensive war you can keepit, and that pre-1967 boundaries are not inviolable. TheIsraeli right is foolish to celebrate this. Resolution 242 didn't just requirean Israeli withdrawal. It also recognized Israel's pre-1967 boundaries as dejure, not de facto. When Egypt accepted 242, it was accepting Israel'sexistence and giving up claims on any land within the pre-war borders. Byaccepting 242, the PLO said it was not demanding Beersheba, Jaffa, or anyplaceelse in pre-1967 Israel. If Trump succeeds intearing up 242, he will have destroyed a consensus that also protected Israel. Nowlet's take a much wider view, because Resolution 242 isn't just a local MiddleEastern concern. The resolution's preamble contains one of the cleareststatements of a principle of international law developed in the aftermath ofWorld War II: “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory bywar.” Afterfloods and earthquakes, local governments change building codes. After WorldWar II, the world changed the political building code. The push to ban wars ofconquest began before 1939. But the deaths of tens of millions of people, thecities turned to rubble, the brush with civilization committing suicide madethe issue much more pressing: Humanity couldn't survive if countries kepttrying to conquer each other. Yes,the rule has regularly been violated. Morocco grabbed Western Sahara. Russiahas grabbed pieces of other post-Soviet republics. But the ban creates a strongdisincentive: Your land grab won't be accepted. You might face sanctions. Inthe extreme case, as when Iraq grabbed Kuwait, you could face the combinedarmies of other countries. In our age, international law is a bit like the lawonce was in Dodge City: It exists, but enforcement may depend ongunslingers. Trump's answer is that we don't need enforcement; if you took it,it's yours. Theban on conquest was just part of the attempt to learn from World War II. TheUnited Nations was an obvious response. Trump stood at the UN General Assemblylectern anddismissed the institution with the words, “America First.” TheEuropean Union is an astounding, a miraculous, response to the war: It tooknations that fought each other and bound them together. Trump is a Brexit fan(though of course he thinks he could have negotiated a better Brexitdeal). NATO—besides being born as a deterrent and a defense against the Eastbloc—also tied Western Europe together. Trump has no idea what it's for. Ashistorian Tony Judt showed in Postwar,his great work on recent European history, the Western European welfare statescreated after 1945 were not products of wild idealism. They were the “insecurechild of anxiety..” People understood that the political extremism of the 1930swas “born directly of economic depression and its social costs. Both Fascismand Communism thrived on social despair, on the huge gulf separating rich andpoor.” The welfare state was a means to keep the black-shirts and brown-shirtsin the past. Onereason, perhaps, that America built so much less of a welfare state was that itwas not left so shattered by the war. Obamacare was a very late, partial effortto fill in the most glaring gap, the lack of a national health-care system.Trump hasn't given up on destroying that. Butthen, Trumpism is a new movement born of social despair and the renewed gulfbetween rich and poor. Despair sells the tickets to Trump's mass rallies, andanger handles the amplifiers for his hateful rants. Howis it that a large minority of Americans could vote for this man, or that amajority of Britons could have voted to leave the European Union, or that thenew authoritarianism is rising in European countries wounded so deeply sevenand eight decades ago by the old authoritarianism? Iwon't argue that there's just one reason. But I suggest that a majorcontributing reason is that eight decades or nine is the span of a human life.Someone who was 13 in September 1939 is 92 or 93 years old today. We arerunning out of people who can give firsthand testimony of the war itself, muchless of the political madness that gave birth to the war. The last earthquakewas so long ago that too many people have forgotten the purpose of the strictbuilding code that followed it. Takenby itself, the Golan is a small issue in world terms, and Trump's proclamationis another squawk in his cacophony. The big issue is Trump's attack on humanity'sbest efforts to preserve itself.
