International

International (pronounced in-ter-nash-uh-nl)

(1) Between or among nations; involving two or more nations.

(2) Of or relating to two or more nations or their citizens.

(3) Pertaining to the relations between nations.

(4) Any of the four international socialist or communist organizations formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with initial capital letter).

(5) A labor union having locals in two or more countries.

(6) An organization, enterprise, or group, especially a major business concern, having branches, dealings, or members in several countries (often styled as multi-national or multinational).

(7) An employee, especially an executive, assigned to work in a foreign country or countries by a business or organization that has branches or dealings in several countries.

(8) A casual term for sporting matches played between national teams in many sports (rugby, cricket, football eta al) and applied also to individuals selected for those contests.

1780: A compound word, inter + national, coined apparently by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham  (1748-1832) in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1870) and appears also in A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace (1786–1789) which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.  Inter was from the Latin inter (between, amid), a form of prepositional inter (between).  Nation existed in Middle English as nacioun and nacion, borrowed from Old French nation, nacion and nasion (nation), from the Latin nātiōnem, accusative of nātiō and gnātiō (nation, race, birth) from natus & gnatus, past participle stem of nasci & gnasci (to be born).  In displaced the native Middle English when it emerged as theode, thede (nation), from the Old English þēod, the Middle English burthe (birth, nation, race, nature) and the Middle English leod, leode, lede (people, race), all ultimately from the Old English root lēod.  Variations of nation exist in most European languages including the Saterland Frisian nation, the West Frisian naasje, the Dutch natie, the Middle Low German nacie and the German, Danish and Swedish nation.

The socialist hymn The Internationale was written in 1871 by French anarchist (and confessed freemason) Eugène Pottier (1816-1887) and the International Date Line (IDL) was first standardized in 1884 (although it's since been tinkered with for reasons reasons both administrative and opportunistic).  Multinational, in the sense of trans-national corporations was first noted in 1921 and is often used in a derogatory manner; when CEO of Ford Motor Company in the mid-1970s, Lee Iacocca (1924-2019) was sensitive to this and said he preferred the term internationalism.  That never caught on, probably because it had traditionally been a word associated with the left and fellow travelers with faith first in the League of Nations (LN; 1920-1946) and subsequently the United Nations (UN; 1945). 

The Internationals

The International Workingmen's Association (later known as the First International) was an international structure intended to unite a myriad of anarchist, socialist and communist political groups with the still embryonic trade union movements.  Essentially, it was meant to be a broad, left-wing, working-class organization devoted to bringing the class struggle to fruition.  Founded in 1864, it quickly gained a membership of millions but, by 1872, communist and anarchist factions had split the movement; it was dissolved in 1876.

The Second International was formed in 1889 as a grouping of the newly-created socialist and labour political parties.  Although emblematic of the utopian spirit in the workers’ parties of the pre-1914 world, the Second International did attempt to construct coherent platforms and was in some way a precursor of the march through the institutions approach three generations later.  They attempted to exclude from their councils the anarcho-syndicalists and unionists who had splintered the First International but in this had limited success.  The Second International was dissolved in 1916 amid much rancor, both about (1) the way leaders of labour parties seemed anxious to collaborate with the capitalists becoming, in effect, a stratum above the working class and (2) the way, on nationalist grounds, they supported their own bourgeois in the bloody slaughter of the First World War.

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International was formed in 1919 as an outgrowth of the creation of the Soviet Union and, in its original formation, advocated world communism.  This was to be achieved by “…all available means, including armed force” and aimed to overthrow the international bourgeoisie to be replaced by an international soviet republic as a transitional phase before the “…complete abolition of the state".  The vicissitudes of history gradually wore this down to the point where Soviet practice, if not orthodoxy, had become “socialism in one state”.  Ostensibly to improve relations with London and Washington (although his motives were influenced more by a desire to weaken parts of the communist movement), Comrade Stalin unexpectedly dissolved the Third International in 1943.

Comrade Stalin & Comrade Trotsky.

The Fourth International was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), directly to oppose what Soviet communism had become under Comrade Stalin (1878-1953) which Comrade Trotsky considered counter-revolutionary and essentially a fascist state under the control of a bureaucratic elite directed by Stalin.  The Fourth International suffered its own splits and, despite attempts at re-unification, no longer exists as a single trans-national grouping.  However, with its inherently anti-authoritarian core, the doctrines of the Fourth International retain a popular, almost romantic following and around the planet there exist Trotskyite groups for those attracted by the defense of workers' internationalism.  Comrade Stalin had Comrade Trotsky assassinated in 1940; the murder weapon an ice-axe.  In the way of these things, calls for a fifth international were heard only months after the formation of the Fourth.  Indeed, in response to the increasingly plaintive cries, over the decades, several were announced but all soon withered away.  Still longed for by a handful, the movements seem never to have progressed beyond the stage of running lamington drives.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), 2008.

Kindleberger

Kindleberger (pronounced khin-dil-berg-ah)

A family name of Germanic origin.

As “Kindleberger Moment” & “Kindleberger Trap”, two related terms describing different aspects from an underlying problem in international political economy and named after economist Professor Charles P. Kindleberger (1910-2003) whose writings inspired their coining.  Professor Kindleberger’s middle name was “Poor” and while that may seem more appropriate for a monk than an economist, it didn’t appear to hamper his career.

The surname Kindleberger is of German origin, functioning as a habitational or topographic name, the construct being Kind(l)- + -berg + -er.  Kind (kid, child, young person) was from the Middle High German kint, from the Old High German kind, from the Proto-West Germanic kind, from Proto-Germanic kindą & kinþą, from the primitive Indo-European ǵenh- (to give birth); there were many local dialect variations.  Berg (mountain, hill) was from the Middle High German bërc, from the Old High German bërg, from the Proto-West Germanic berg, ultimately from the Proto-Germanic bergaz; it may be compared with the Dutch berg, the German Low German Barg, Berg & Biärg, the West Frisian berch, the English berry & barrow, the Danish bjerg and the Swedish berg.  The –er suffix (in this context) was appended to indicate inhabitant or person from a specific locality.  The “-berg” element thus in general was used in the names of those living near a specific hill or a place named with those combined linguistic roots and Kindleberger would likely have began with someone who was the (probably male) offspring of someone named “Berg”, “Berger” or such.  As a compound surname, it may in some instances have referred not to individuals living near mountainous regions but those (likely female) who were known for their roles as caretakers of children; the etymological structure can indicate a connection between familial roles and the natural landscape.  The name dates from at least the Late Medieval period (when surnames became hereditary) and records of use exist in several German-speaking regions, clusters found concentrated in areas like the Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) region that, while not characterized by alpine peaks, does have a topography noted for rolling hills, low mountain ranges, and deeply carved river valleys.  As internal migration increased (notably within the Holy Roman Empire), like many European surnames, variations like Kindleberger and Kindelberger spread and this occurred internationally during the nineteenth & twentieth centuries; outside of Europe, the Kindleberger name is most likely to be found in the states of the north-eastern US (the largest concentrations historically in West Virginia, Ohio & Pennsylvania).  Kindleberger is a proper noun; the noun plural is Kindlebergers.

A red meteor observed by US-born astronomer Stephen James O'Meara (b 1956) in the skies above Maun, Botswana.

Asteroid 42354 Kindleberger was named after the professor.  Originally listed by the International Dark Sky Discovery Center in Fountain Hills, Arizona on 12 February, 2002 (and provisionally allocated ID 2002 CK43), it was discovered by Charles Juels (1944–2009) and Paulo Holvorcem (b 1967), both amateur astronomers.  Paulo Holvorcem (b 1967) is a mathematician based in Brasília (one of a handful of “created” capital cities), Brazil while Charles Juels (1944–2009) was a US psychiatrist practicing in Phoenix, Arizona; after retirement, he became one of the planet’s most prolific discoverers of asteroids, minor planets and such.  The naming conventions administered by the IAU (International Astronomical Union) permit those who discover minor planets to submit potential names, once the orbit officially is confirmed.  Professor Kindleberger was honoured in recognition both of his academic contributions to the discipline of economics and the role his books (especially Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (1978) played in explaining such phenomena to a non-specialist audience.  The choice (within certain limitations) is in the hands of the discoverer(s) and other economists have had asteroids named after them.  Red-tailed asteroids are rare but do exist, 3200 Phaethon's (provisionally 1983 TB) vivid tail made of sodium vaporized from the rock by the heat of the Sun, inducing  fluoresce an orange glow.  Definitely the next red-tailed asteroid should be named after Lindsay Lohan.

The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (1973) by Charles P. Kindleberger.

A “Kindleberger Moment” is a critical point in global history when the world’s dominant power (of late typically a hegemon) ceases providing economic leadership and no other country is able or willing to assume the role.  MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Professor of Economics Charles P. Kindleberger illustrated the concept during his study of the Great Depression of the 1930s, arguing the global economy “crashed” (ie suffered a significant decline in economic activity, employment, trade etc) because (1) the economy of the previously dominant power (the UK) had been too weakened by the First World War (1914-1918) to be able to provide the necessary leadership and corrective mechanisms and (2) the rising power (the US) was both also greatly affected by the downturn and anyway uninterested in becoming entangled in international affairs.  A Kindleberger moment can be considered a “global power vacuum”, the previous leader withdrawing from maintaining and contributing to global rules, trade agreements, and international organizations with no successor available.  At such moments, competing rising new powers tend to focus only on their own interests instead of supporting global stability, meaning the international system faces heightened risks of financial collapse, trade wars, political instability and related chaos (mass irregular migration, border conflicts etc).  Of late, there has been renewed interest in the Kindleberger moment as doubts have been raised about the ability of the US to continue in the rule it has fulfilled since 1945 at a time when the PRC (People’s Republic of China, 1949-) is becoming increasing powerful and assertive but has neither the capacity nor (apparently) the inclination to be the world’s “indispensable nation” (ie “global policeman and banker”).

Professor Kindleberger in his office at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As an economist discussing the smooth operation of the international economy, Kindleberger didn’t attach to the concept of “hegemon” the negative connotations vested famously by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who had used to idea in a predictably Marxist way (of a “ruling class & ruling culture” able within a society to exert control and maintain power for its own economic benefit).  For Kindleberger, a hegemonic power was a highly desirable element in an inter-connected world economy that in the absence of such an authority would inevitably descent into conflicts that likely would spread.  A Kindleberger moment occurs when there’s hegemonic absence (or even significant deficit) in which the international system lacks a power willing and able to supply essential stabilising functions including:

(1) Maintaining an international trading system in which markets were free, open and transparent.

(2) Providing a system in which international capital flows were regulated to the extent of ensuring stability.

(3) Maintaining a stable monetary system by providing a stable, convertible reserve currency, able to be used by trading nations.

(4) Acting as a lender of last resort.

(5) Coordinating international responses to economic and other crises.

The related “Kindleberger Trap” (a term dating only from 2017) describes the structural dilemma that can arise from the world entering a “Kindleberger Moment”.  Were there always a nice symmetry in that as one power withdrew from the role, another took over on a “business as usual” basis, it would be a smoothly run world but in international relations things tend to be more messy and depending on the dynamics, things can take decades or even centuries to be resolved (for better or worse).  As a rising power acquires sufficient economic, military and geopolitical weight, it might be expected to contribute to maintaining the international order (from which, by definition, it has gained that strength) at a time when the established hegemon simultaneously is reducing its capacity or willingness to carry the burden but history suggests conflict is more likely than cooperation.  The twist in the “Kindleberger Moment” theory is that in a situation where the existing hegemon is in decline but the rising power is unwilling or unable to assume the role, a “trap” begins to open.  That trap is created by the rising power “probing” often regional weaknesses in the hegemon’s strategic architecture and the response to that often is localized tactical violence (often called “containment”), something that can exacerbate the decline of the authority of the established power while doing little to curb (and likely even encourage) the assertiveness of the rival.  Once the hegemon is so engaged, the trap has closed and the point is the “trap” is likely a process rather than a singer decisive event.  Deliberately the phrase echoed the better-known “Thucydides Trap” (the name from the Ancient Greek general & historian Thucydides (circa 460-circa 400 BC)). Describing the idea that when a rising power threatens to supplant the established one, the result is often war (pre-emptive or preventive depending on the spin chosen), either through a fear of being attacked or in an attempt to “contain the upstart”.  So, conceptually, a Kindleberger moment is the situation; the Kindleberger Trap is the recurring structural predicament that can lead to it.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (1978) by Charles P. Kindleberger, fifty years on, still the standard work and now in its eighth edition (2023) and, there being no indication there'll not be more manias, panics, and crashes, a ninth edition can be expected, updated to document the latest crises.

The consensus among specialists seems to be the world is not at this point in a Kindleberger Moment because structurally the PRC is not yet able to assume the global role the US has evolved to fulfil since 1945.  These was nothing unique about the shift in 1945, just as the US replaced the UK, the UK had replaced the Netherlands, the Netherlands had replaced Spain and Spain had replaced various Italian city-states.  What however now makes the situation potentially unstable is that the PRC does not accept the existing US-led order, but is not only unable to replicate the global role but uninterested in doing so.  The PRC’s preferred model is “spheres of influence” on a grand scale administered on a “Westphalian basis” (ie non-interference in each other’s spheres).  In that, Beijing’s vision differs from spheres of influence approach during the Cold War in that the earlier model was one of conflict disguised as peaceful co-existence; the PRC’s regarding their mode; as beneficial for all.  Unlike those running the early Soviet Union (1922-1991), the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has no interest in exporting its system of governance to other states; the lessons have been well-learned from the US attempting to “impose democracy” in places where historically it has never taken root.  The modern CCP does not wish to attempt to transform other places to clones of the PRC; what is wants is for them become good, reliable suppliers and consumers and whether they are run as democracies, theocracies or dictatorships is an “internal affair”.  What matters is peace, good order and a common system of “non-interference”.  The CCP’s collective view is not unknown in the annals of the US State Department, the diplomat and historian George Kennan (1904-2005) in one of his long (and mostly ignored) reports from Moscow in 1945 noting the US should “…remain true to its ideals but should not try to foist them on peoples with entirely different national traditions.”

Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).  The etching used for the frontipiece of the original edition was by the French printmaker Abraham Bosse (circa 1604–1676) “with input from the author”.

The One comparison that can be made is between the notion a world hegemon is necessary for a generally stable world economy and the idea the very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes explored in Leviathan (1651): A strong sovereign (to whom individuals must cede certain “natural rights”) is essential for a peaceful, stable society.  Although striking, there are limitations to the extent the hegemon in Professor Kindleberger's model can be thought an international analogue of the grim vision in Leviathan; it is not a direct application of Hobbesian political theory.  Hobbes argued the fundamental problem in the “state of nature” (ie in which the earliest “societies” came to be formed) was the lack of a sufficiently powerful common authority to prevent individuals from pursuing their interests against one another.  In that model, because each person (at least theoretically) possesses roughly equal capacity to threaten others, rational individuals have an incentive to seek security by establishing a sovereign and one not there merely to coordinate but also with coercive power.  What the existence of a powerful sovereign offered was that in exchange for restrictions on individual freedom (at the most basic, not killing one’s opponents), collective security would be guaranteed.  Because all in the society would be subject to the same authority (and thus the same loss of certain freedoms) the arrangement would come to be accepted, if for no other reason than the alternative(s) being worse: “nasty, solitary, brutish and short” Hobbes’ memorable phrase.

Kindleberger's argument was developed in his book The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (1973) and concerned something analogous to what Hobbes described but at the international economic level.  His thesis was that (1) with an economy damaged by involvement in World War I and the consequent “difficulties” of the following decade, the UK was no longer able to provided the international economic leadership it had delivered before the war while (2) the US was unable or unwilling to assume the role.  With no stabilising hegemon, nations resorted to acting in short-term self interest, leading to reductions in trade, wealth and employment; Professor Kindleberger's key insight was that whatever their granular nature, in international economics these things must be thought public goods but, of course, individual countries each had incentives to have others bear the cost of maintaining them, thus the famous “Kindleberger Problem”: Who pays for the system?  That the UK was not prepared to go deeper into debt and the US preferred to focus on its own problems he held to be the major factors that made what might have been a sharp but relatively short recession into the Great Depression of the 1930s.  It was the leadership vacuum that created the conditions leading to the collapse of the international economic order.

The limitation in pursuing the analogy is of course that neither the UK in the nineteenth century nor the US since 1945 were the sovereign of the international system in the Hobbesian sense; Hobbes’ sovereign had juridical and coercive supremacy over subjects while the international hegemon does not because, although in the modern age state sovereignty is no longer the fabulous beast it was once claimed to be, individual nations remain still independent with some (though much varied) capacity to resist a hegemon.  In other words, Kindleberger's hegemon can help to provide order through preponderance in economic, political and political capabilities whereas the Hobbesian sovereign, within their territory, enjoyed absolute authority.  So the problems can be seen as similar but the solutions differ, Hobbes describing a rigid hierarchy and Kindleberger a leadership that administers anarchy by making it “managed chaos”.

US National Debt: US$40 trillion by August 2026.

All the history and economic theory is of course of interest but of immediate concern is (1) whether a Kindleberger moment is to hand (protagonist and antagonist being the US and PRC) and (2) whether the consequences of soch a moment will be economic disruption (of unknown extent or duration) or armed conflict (of unknown extent or duration).  The world is in a most unusual situation in that although the US continues of operate as hegemon, debatably it shouldn’t be able to because of its US$40 trillion debt (about 123% of GDP (gross domestic product)) and other problems.  While it’s true US debt was nudging 120% immediately after World War II (1939-1945), the US position at that time (vis-à-vis the rest of the planet) was unique and the debt trend was downwards whereas now it’s upwards.  There are those who argue things have changed and the US$40 trillion number is no longer an expression of “debt” in the conventional sense of the word but merely a way of describing the “new” mechanism of managing the US money supply.  The notion the US Treasury could at any time mint a single US$40 trillion coin, add it to the balance sheet and declare a net-debt free status has been offered as one example of why “deficits don’t matter” and while not all accept that, just about the whole world is now dependent on the US sustaining the existing system with this ever-growing debt so, in the absence of another country (or “demi-country” such as the EU (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957)) able and willing to fulfil the role of hegemon, the world economy and the US remain engaged in what some fear is a kind of economic danse macabre and there seems no way to use the numbers to predict if it's a debt level of US$50, 75, or 100 trillion that risks triggering a crisis.

Presidents Xi (left) and Trump (right).  With sufficient (1) goodwill or (2) amorality, the art of the deal can be done.  With enough of the latter, the former may one day emerge.

Of course the ultimate wild card (others might prefer “joker”) is that Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) is in the White House and while his idiosyncratic methods of governance intrigue political junkies, so marvellously unpredictable are his actions that it’s hard to map onto the dynamics a well understood concept like the Kindleberger Moment.  At heart a CEO (chief executive officer) rather than a democrat operating within constitutional norms, it’s suspected that left to his own devices, Mr Trump would sit down at the map table with comrade Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP and paramount leader of the PRC (People's Republic of China) since 2012) and divide up their respective spheres of influence.  Like Mr Trump who wants as little as possible to do with the internal affairs of America’s suppliers and customers (ie other countries), Mr Xi has no wish to waste effort or resources on “pointless squabbles” and not since a couple of horse-traders like Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) & comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), needing nothing more, than pencil, paper and limitless cynicism divided up the Balkans into bite-sized spheres have two great powers been headed by a pair as suited to “doing the art of the deal”.  Of course, for those in places like the “renegade province of Taiwan”, there would be a cost but as at was demonstrated at the Yalta Conference (February 1945), somebody “always has to pay the price” and that may be a better trap to spring than risking the jaws of a Kindleberger Trap.

Aggression

Aggression (pronounced uh-gresh-uhn)

(1) The action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like.

(2) Any offensive action, attack, or procedure; an inroad or encroachment.

(3) The practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general.

(4) In clinical psychiatry, overt or suppressed hostility, either innate or resulting from continued frustration and directed outward or against oneself.

(5) In the study of animal behavior and zoology, behavior intended to intimidate or injure an animal of the same species or of a competing species but is not predatory.  Aggression may be displayed during mating rituals or to defend territory, as by the erection of fins by fish and feathers by birds.

1605–1615: English borrowed the word directly from the French aggression, derived from the Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio (a going to, an attack)), a noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi (to approach; attack) a construct of ad (to) + gradi (past participle gressus (to step)) from gradus (a step).  The Classical Latin aggressiōn (stem of aggressiō), was equivalent to aggress(us) + iōn derived from aggrēdi (to attack).  Psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" had its origin in early psychiatry, first noted in English in 1912 in a translation of Freud.  Related forms are antiaggression (adjective), counteraggression and preaggression (nouns); most frequently used derived form is aggressor (noun).

Aggression and International Jurisprudence, Locarno, Kellogg–Briand and the Nuremberg Trial

For centuries, philosophers, moral theologians and other peripheral players had written of the ways and means of outlawing wars of aggression but in the twentieth century, in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I (1914-1918), serious attempts were made to achieve exactly that, the first of which was the Locarno Pact.

Gustav Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain & Aristide Briand, Locarno, 1926.

Although usually referred to as the Locarno Pact, technically the pact consisted of seven treaties, the name derived from the Swiss city of Locarno at which the agreements negotiated between 5-16 October, 1925 although the documents were formally signed in London on 1 December.  Cynically, it can be said the Locarno Pact was a device by the western European powers to ensure they’d not again be the victims of German aggression which, if and when if were to happen, would be directed against those countries on its eastern border.  Of the seven treaties, it was the first which mattered most, a guarantee of the existing frontiers of Belgium, France, and Germany, underwritten by the UK and Italy.  Of the other agreements, two were intended to reassure the recently created Czechoslovakia and the recreated Poland, both of which, presciently as it turned out, felt some threat from Germany.

Whatever the implications, the intent was clear and about as pure as anything in politics can be: an attempt to ensure European states would never again need to resort to war.  Although the structural imbalances appear, in retrospect, obvious, at the time there were expectations of continued peaceful settlements and there arose, for a while, what was called the "spirit of Locarno": Germany was admitted to the League of Nations in September 1926, with a permanent seat on its council and Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded to the lead negotiators of the treaty, Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937; UK foreign secretary 1924-1929), Aristide Briand (1862-1932; French foreign minister 1926-1932) and Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929; German foreign minister 1923-1929).

Members of the Cabinet, Senate, and House are seen gathered in the East Room of the White House, after President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

The spirit of Locarno proved infectious and inspired the noble notion it might be possible for men to gather around tables and sign papers which for all time would outlaw war and the Kellogg–Briand Pact (known also as the Pact of Paris and technically the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) was a product of this optimism.  Signed in 1928 and named after the two main authors, Briand and Frank Kellogg (1856-1937; US Secretary of State 1925-1929), it was soon ratified by dozens of countries, all the signatory states promising not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them".  It gained Kellogg his Nobel Peace Prize but peace proved elusive and in little more than a decade, the world was at war.  Another point cynics note is that the real consequence of the pact was not the prevention of war but the unfashionability of declaring war; wars continuing with a thin veneer of legal high-gloss.  Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) during the Suez Crisis (1956), noting no declaration had been made, distinguished between being “at war” and being in “a state of armed conflict” although those on the battlefield doubtless noticed no difference.  Because the pact was concluded outside the League of Nations, it remains afoot and the influence lingers; although hardly militarily inactive since 1945, the last declaration of war by the United States was in 1942.

Defendants at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), popularly known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Kellogg–Briand thus failed but was a vitally important twentieth century instrument.  It was from Kellogg-Briand the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945-1946 were able to find the concept of a crime against peace as pre-existing law that was of such importance in establishing the legal validity of the incitements, both there and at the subsequent Tokyo Tribunal.  Without that legal framework from the 1920s, the construction of the legal basis for the concept of crimes against peace (the first two of the four articles of indictment at Nuremberg), may not have been possible.

At Nuremburg, the indictments served by the International Military Tribunals were:

(1) Conspiracy to plan the waging of wars of aggression.

(2) Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression.

(3) War crimes.

(4) Crimes against humanity.

It’s always been the fourth which has attracted most attention because the crimes committed were of such enormity and on such as scale, the word genocide had to be invented.  However, the greater effect on international law was the creation of the notion that those who plan wars of aggression can be punished for that very act, punishments wholly unrelated to the mechanics or consequences of how the wars may be fought.  Form this point can be traced the end of the centuries-old legal doctrine of sovereign immunity for those waging wars of aggression.

So, after Nuremberg, the long tradition of the preemptive and preventative war as an instrument of political policy was no longer the convenient option it had for thousands of years been.  With section 4 of the United Nations (UN) Charter prohibiting all members from exercising "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state", there was obvious interest in the charter's phrase phrase of exculpation: "armed attack" which effectively limited the parameters of the circumstances in which the use of military force might be legitimate under international law.  Stretching things as far as even the most accommodating of impartial lawyers were prepared to reach, if no armed attack has been suffered, for an act of preemptive self-defense to be lawful, (1) a threat must be demonstratively real and not merely a perception of the possible and (2), the force applied in self-defense must be proportional to the harm threatened.  All this is why General Colin Powell's (1937–2021; US Secretary of State 2001-2005) statement of justification to the Security Council seeking authority to invade Iraq in 2003 took the tortured form it did.

Mr Putin.

The state of international law is why President Vladimir Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999) has resorted to some unusual terminology and some impressive, if not entirely convincing, intellectual gymnastics in his explanations of geography and history.  While hardly the direct and unambiguous speech used by some of his predecessors in the Kremlin, it's certainly kept the Kremlinologists and their readers interested.  As early as December 2020, Mr Putin was already using the phrase "military-technical measures" should NATO (again) approach Russia's borders and the charm of that presumably was that having no precise meaning, it could at any time mean what Mr Putin wanted it to mean at that moment.  Mr Putin also claimed the government in the Ukraine is committing genocide against ethnic Russians within the territory and, in an echo of similar claims from the troubled 1930s "seemed to believe his own atrocity stories", later doubling-down, calling the Ukranian government a "Nazi regime" and said he was seeking a process of "de-Nazification" (an actual structured and large-scale programme run in post-war Germany by the occupying forces aimed at removing the worst elements of the Third Reich from public life).  

Most interestingly, Mr Putin said Ukraine wasn’t a real country, a significant point if true because it's only foreign countries which can be invaded.  If a government moves troops into parts of their own territory, it's not an invasion; it might be a police action, a counter-insurgency or a military exercise or any number of things but it can't be an invasion.  Technically of course, that applies also to renegade provinces.  It seemed an adventurous argument to run given Ukraine has for decades been a member of the UN and recognized by just about every country (including Russia) as a sovereign state.  To clarify, Mr Putin added the odd nuance, claiming Ukraine was "...not a real country..." and had "...never had its own authentic statehood."  "There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine.”  The basis of that was his assertion that Ukraine was created by the Soviet Union's first leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; Leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1924 & the USSR 1922-1924) as either a sort of administrative zone or just as a mistake depending on interpretation.  Ignoring the wealth of historical material documenting the pre-Soviet history of the Ukraine, Mr Putin insisted it was part of Russia, an "...integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”

Having established his case the Ukraine was no foreign country but just another piece of Russia, Mr Putin turned his thoughts to the nature of the threat the obviously renegade province posed.  Although after the collapse of the USSR, the Ukraine voluntarily (and gratefully) gave up the nuclear weapons in its territory in exchange for a security guarantees issued by the US, UK, and Russia, Mr Putin expressed concern the neo-Nazi regime there had both the knowledge and the desire to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery systems, adding: “If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia... we cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”

The internal logic of this was perfect to satisfy international law: (1) The territory which on maps is called Ukraine is not a country and just a part of Russia and (2), the illegal administration running the renegade province of Ukraine is plotting to acquire weapons of mass-destruction.  Under those conditions, military action by Moscow would be valid under international law but just to make sure, Mr Putin recognized Donetsk and Luhansk (two separatist regions in the Donbas), and deployed Russian troops as "peacekeepers".  Around the world, just about everybody except the usual suspects called it an invasion.

Many also discussed the legal position, perhaps not a great consolation to the citizens of Ukraine and the limitations of international law had anyway long been understood by those who were most hopeful of their civilizing power.  In his report to President Truman (1884–1972; US president 1945-1953) at the conclusion of the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), Justice Robert Jackson (1892–1954; sometime justice of the US Supreme Court, US solicitor general & attorney general and chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials), noted the judgment had "...for the first time made explicit and unambiguous what was theretofore, as the Tribunal has declared, implicit in International Law, namely, that to prepare, incite, or wage a war of aggression, or to conspire with others to do so, is a crime against international society, and that to persecute, oppress, or do violence to individuals or minorities on political, racial, or religious grounds in connection with such a war, or to exterminate, enslave, or deport civilian populations, is an international crime, and that for the commission of such crimes individuals are responsible. This agreement also won the adherence of nineteen additional nations and represents the combined judgments of the overwhelming majority of civilized people. It is a basic charter in the International Law of the future."  However, his idealism tempered by what he knew to be the nature of men, he conceded it would be "... extravagant to claim that agreements or trials of this character can make aggressive war or persecution of minorities impossible." although he did add that there was no doubt "they strengthen the bulwarks of peace and tolerance."  One of the US judges at Nuremburg had, whatever the theoretical legal position, reached an even more gloomy conclusion, Francis Biddle (1886–1968; US solicitor general 1940-1941 & attorney general 1941-1945 and primary US judge at the Nuremberg Trials) writing to the president that the judgements he'd helped deliver couldn't prevent war but might help men to "... learn a little better to detest it."  "Aggressive war was once romantic, now it is criminal."

Biddle was a realist who understood the forces which operated within legal systems and nation states.  Even the long-serving liberal judge William O Douglas (1898–1980; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1939-1975) couldn’t bring himself to accept that the aggression which led to World War II (1939-1945) in which as many a sixty millions died was not reason enough to overcome his aversion to ex post facto law (the construct being the Latin ex (from) + post (after) + facto, ablative of factum (deed), (that which retrospectively changes the legal consequences of actions from what would have applied prior to the application of the law).  Douglas deplored the way the IMT had not only convicted but imposed capital sentences of those indicted for conduct which has at time been legal under metropolitan and international law:

“No matter how many books are written or briefs filed, no matter how finely the lawyers analyzed it, the crime for which the Nazis were tried had never been formalized as a crime with the definiteness required by our legal standards, nor outlawed with a death penalty by the international community. By our standards that crime arose under ex post facto law. Goering et al. deserved severe punishment. But their guilt did not justify us in substituting power for principle.”

Developments since in international law have seen progress.  The United Nations Charter, adopted in 1945, prohibits the use of force by one state against another, except in cases of self-defense or when authorized by the UN Security Council for the purpose of maintaining or restoring international peace and security, Article 2(4) of the UN Charter stating “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."  That works in conjunction with the Nuremberg Principles which declared the planning, preparation, initiation, or execution of a war of aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law, a more concrete underpinning of customary international law than the Kellogg-Briand Pact which was in the same vein but always was of limited practical application because there existed no mechanism of enforcement or codification of penalties.  Despite that, the core concept of just what does constitute the crime of “aggressive war” has never been generally agreed and although the UN’s 1974 statement: “Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” seems compelling, the debate continues.

Genocide

Genocide (pronounced jen-uh-sahyd)

(1) A special class of mass-murder, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group, usually by a state; the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

(2) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on other grounds.

(3) In casual (and imprecise) use, by extension, the systematic suppression of a cultural identity, language etc on the basis of cultural, racial or ethnic origin (often expressed as culturicide or cultural genocide).

1944: The construct is géno + cide.  Géno is from the Ancient Greek γένος (genos) (race; kind) from the primitive Indo-European gene- (give birth, beget (with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups)); it was cognate with the Latin gēns (tribe, clan).  The suffix cide (cīda) is from the Latin caedere (to kill; a killing).  The creation of the word genocide is attributed to Polish-born US lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) who used it in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1943-1944) in reference to the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Europe.  In the English-speaking world, there were the pedants who didn’t approve of the mixing of Latin and Greek, noting the proper formation would be genticide, the construct being the Latin gēns (a race, nation, people; a clan, family (oblique stem: gent-)) +‎ -cide and is a hypothetical Latin etymon of the form genticīdium (from gēns +‎ -cīdium (the suffix denoting “killer”; “cutter”) +‎ -ium (from the Latin -um (neuter singular morphological suffix)).  Genocidal is the adjective.

There was earlier, in a similar sense, the French populicide (variously cited as dating from 1792 or 1799) from French populicide, a construct made necessary by the excesses in the aftermath of the 1789 French Revolution.  This was later adopted in German as Völkermeuchelnden (genocidal) and was known in English by 1893 as the anglicized folk-murdering.  The less rigorous ethnocide is attested from 1970 in French and 1974 in English.

Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959).

The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had immersed himself in study after, as a student, being shocked to discover there existed nothing in international law to prosecute the Ottoman leaders who were complicit in what is now (though not by all) often called the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917) in which over a million are thought to have been killed.  Essentially, Lemkin identified the doctrine of sovereign immunity (the idea that what happens within nation boundaries must be regarded as purely internal matters) as the reason state-sanctioned mass-murder had such a long history and it could be stopped only if this doctrine was subject to some limitations.

In November 1944, Lemkin’s book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe was published.  It was a review of the legal implications of the consequences of the Nazi Germany New Order administrations in the occupied nations and contained the first definitional framework of genocide.  His point was that genocide did not of necessity mean “the immediate destruction of a nation” which was a concept of course familiar from thousands of years of warfare but instead signified “a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”  That formulation was something specific to the circumstances of the holocaust, a process which, for almost a decade, progressed from the Nazi state introducing laws which sought to marginalize and exclude the Jews from Germany’s cultural and economic life to the building of an industrial system intended to murder every Jew in Europe, a process which was organic, a reaction to the circumstances at the time.  The Nazis, upon their assumption of power in 1933 had not even the vaguest plan of extermination, not because Hitler would have thought mass-murder on any scale unacceptable but because it was unimaginable that such a thing was possible.  What was planned was eradication, the forced migration of the Jews from what Germany was and what it was to become, what would now be described (in the literal sense rather than as the euphemism with which the phrase is now associated) as ethnic cleansing.  It was the circumstances of inter-war politics and later war-time realities which meant (1) that mass-emigration firstly within and later beyond Europe was not possible and (2) that under the Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) of war, the mass-murder of millions became possible.  As the word tends now to be used, between 1933 and 1942, a displacement of population became genocide.

Perhaps surprisingly given the perceptions of many, the word genocide did not figure large in the incitements served at the Nuremburg Trial (1946-1946), being mentioned not as one of the four counts but included in Count Three (War Crimes:  "...deliberate and systematic genocide, viz, the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles and Gypsies and others."

Judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

Although the holocaust was the most monstrous matter to be tried at Nuremberg, any reluctance to include genocide as a separate count was understandable. Nothing quite like the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which convened at Nuremberg had ever been assembled and it was acknowledged at the time some of the matters with which the defendants were charged were based in retrospective law; they were being held to account for conduct which, at the time, was not unlawful.  Sensitive to this and the need to frame the incitements as close as possible to acknowledged legal norms, the prosecutors, mostly working lawyers for whom the primary concern was winning the case, tried as much as possible to avoid novelty in the incitement.  As it was, the document grew from a three-odd page draft in June to a final copy of sixty-five pages when served on the defendants.  The word genocide appeared just the once.

Genocide was in 1946 recognized as a crime under international law by the United Nations General Assembly and was codified as a crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention.  It expanded Lemkin’s definition, holding that genocide was “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(1) Killing members of the group.

(2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

(3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

(5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide is defined in the same terms in the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions.  Over one-hundred and fifty states have ratified the convention but the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has anyway ruled the convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law so whether or not ratified, in legal theory, all states are bound by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law.  Many states have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law.  Technically, intent is the most contentious element in any genocide prosecution.  To succeed, intent must be a proven on the part of perpetrators physically to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; cultural suppression or destruction is not genocide and nor is expulsion from territory. 

After Nuremberg, genocide was long applied only to the destruction of an ethnic group (as conventionally defined) although there has more recently been a debate about whether it applies only if killing of all members of the group is involved or if other means, such as dispersing the group to the point where shared cultural practices or identity are no longer possible also constitutes (an unqualified) genocide; the concepts of cultural genocide, linguistic genocide etc.  The crime has never needed to be absolute.  It has always been understood to include “systematic mass killing”, even if there’s not an intention absolutely to eradicate a group, thereby covering geographically localized events, the actions which in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came to be known as “ethnic cleansing”.  Where there is some purpose other than the actual destruction of a group, such as terrorizing the group or killing the population of a particular place irrespective of group membership, the more precise term is democide, the construct being the Ancient Greek δῆμος (demos) (people) +‎ -cide.  

As many passages in sacred texts (including the Koran and the Bible) indicate, genocide, as a political imperative and military strategy, has a long and cross-cultural history in human civilization.  Although most attention is devoted to the most modern events with the highest death-toll (such as the holocaust, the still disputed matter of the Armenians in 1915 and the events in Rwanda in 1994), in a global sense, the most recent genocide which went closest to succeeding was the genocide of the Moriori, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (which lie to the east of New Zealand).  Invaded by the Maori in 1835, the Moriori were subject to mass murder, enslavement and a policy of deliberate cultural repression; the population which had once numbered close to two thousand by the 1870s shrinking to under a hundred.  In a sense that act of genocide did succeed, the last pure-blooded Moriori dying early in the twentieth century.