Geoffrey Robertson’s full statement:

The world has changed - in between the issuing of invitations to this important conference and your attendance at it today. Before and ever since 1945, the President of the United States was acknowledged as the leader of the free world, but now he votes with Russia and China, with Iran and North Korea, at the UN to oppose any criticism of Russia, which started this intolerable war on the democratic Ukraine. The consequences of Mr. Trump's political policy choices have yet to be worked out; it is not clear, for example, whether he will withdraw from NATO or simply suspend the aid that the U.S. has hitherto supplied to Ukraine. But there is no doubt that all U.S. military aid to Ukraine will be suspended, if not cancelled, and that the U.S. will do its best to impose on Ukraine a defeat that it does not want to experience. Unless Europe and other supportive democratic nations step up to the plate, Ukraine and the cause of democracy will be the losers.

That is not all. The fundamental change in U.S. policy means its disengagement from world affairs—an isolationism, last championed by Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, involving appeasement of tyrants and a welcome to authoritarian regimes. To some extent, this is America's choice, however selfish and sad may be its withdrawal from engagement with the rest of the world to protect us all from climate change, from plague, and pestilence. More serious is its closing down of USAID, which has already resulted in the deaths of many it formerly cared about but now does not. 

From the perspective of international law, the fatal consequence of Trump’s amoral abandonment of democracy is his attack on the ICC - America will not, as previously, simply ignore the Court; it will do its best to destroy it. America will use its power, its money, and its influence to destroy the institution that the world managed to put together to end impunity, to take place as the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials. The International Criminal Court has now been sanctioned by America, and the petty malice of its exclusivist policy will even prevent the prosecutor and the judges from entering New York to report on their work to the Security Council. This is actually a contempt of court by Trump, which, under the ICC statute, is punishable by imprisonment, although that prospect holds no terrors for a convicted felon. The problem will come from the U.S. capacity to impede the Court in its collection of evidence and implementing arrest warrants. The U.S. will put pressure on less well-off countries that are among its 125 supporters, to withdraw that support. Trump’s attack on  global justice demeans the work over the last eighty years of great American presidents, scholars, judges and diplomates who have laboured to contribute to international resolution of legal disputes. They include Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, and Justices Robert Jackson, George Marshall, and Francis Biddle. More recently, there has been David Scheffer, Diane Orentlicher, Madeleine Albright, Thomas Buergenthal, and Jimmy Carter.  

But we are where we are, and the U.S. policy could have been predicted. It was brought in at the end of Trump's first term, in 2019, and quickly axed by his successor, Joe Biden, but it is within the discretion of a sovereign power and a sovereign president. In one respect, it is likely to prove a good riddance—a malevolent member of the world community can do more damage inside the tent than outside it - as would certainly have been the case with the World Security Council as originally conceived. The leadership role would inevitably fall to America in such a venture, and it would be sabotaged by the mean-minded malevolence that America's leaders now display.

The departure of the U.S. from the assembled ranks of civilized society and the hostility of their president to the democracies it has hitherto supported, enables us to look with fresh eyes at the international rule-based order established after the Second World War. Think back to when the crunch first came—with the collapse of the League of Nations in 1938. What should replace it? Many supported H.G. Wells’ vision of an association of what he called “parliamentary peoples,” i.e., of democracies bound by an enforceable human rights act. This was possible when Stalin was hand-in-glove with Hitler but became impossible when these two great nations became arch-enemies. Russia fought with the Allies and naturally became an important member of the Big Five, with a permanent seat on the Security Council. 

The UN had to be envisaged from the start as a body that would provide no special protection for democracy, and today, it reserves two of its five most important memberships to authoritarian nations, namely, Russia and China. Democracy is not even mentioned as an objective in the UN Charter. International law itself offers no protection at all for democracy, other perhaps than the requirement imposed by an international court after a coup in Fiji in 2000, that those who overthrow democracy must show substantial public assent to their rule before it can become lawful. 

The plain fact is that Ukraine’s battle in its war with Russia is a battle for its right to democracy, for fair elections, free speech, and an independent judiciary. Its 44 million people were threatened by Russian military occupation and an unelected puppet government. Other democratic governments came to its aid to vindicate international law and the international rules-based order, which was badly damaged by Russia’s military venture. The problem was that it had no protection for democratic governments, either in the Charter of the UN or in international law. 

The UN Charter proclaims its purpose as being to save the world from “the scourge of war.” A fat lot of good it has been for that purpose! Its first objective, set out in Article One of the UN Charter, is “the suppression of acts of aggression.” It cannot begin to do that because of the way it was constructed back in 1945. The General Assembly is just a powerless debating chamber, and the Security Council, in which all UN power is vested, is poleaxed by the veto given to each of its five permanent members. So, Russia vetoed all resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine, just as America vetoed three resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

And here’s the thing about being a permanent member—it’s permanent. A permanent member cannot be expelled from the UN, no matter how outrageous its conduct, except on a unanimous recommendation from the Security Council, which that permanent member will, of course, veto. So, if Russia were to drop a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, Russia could not be expelled from the UN without its own conseNow, this organizational structure for world governance was decided at the end of the war in which Russia was a key ally and could not be denied a seat at the Security Council table. At the UN it even insisted on bringing in as members, its own puppets, Belarus and Ukraine, and years later came the Chinese communists. So, the idea of governance by, “parliamentary peoples” was long abandoned, but now as the rule-based order of 1945 is torn up by Russia invading without just cause, a fellow UN member, and by America abandoning and indeed attacking its international justice provisions. It is possible that Trump will end up by pulling out of the UN entirely. That would be the logical conclusion of Trumpian foreign policy. That very possibility - of a UN without America, or even of a UN with an America as malevolent as it has been in the last two weeks, calls for rethinking of the idea for a World Security Council that was the mission statement for this conference. It’s a notion that could be traced back to HG Wells of  democratic states protecting its members from the scourge of war and from illegal invasion – a notion that is still valuable and valid, even without the United States as a party. There are 125 democracies that accept the jurisdiction of the ICC and should be willing to defend the order and the idealism on which it is based. 

There are states with the size and the population to support democracy against the authoritarian responses of China and Russia and their relatively few allies. I'm thinking of states like Brazil and India and Indonesia and Japan, not to mention kingdoms with hereditary rulers that usually side with the West and support its values. The core contribution would come from the forty states of Europe which could be called upon for provisions, both of guns and butter, as well as a political philosophy that harks back to the enlightenment, honed by some of the world's most inspiring thinkers, and if America wishes to join in four years’ time, when its electorate is likely to have disavowed Mr. Trump's projected successor, then well and good. America would have returned to doing the right thing. This took long enough in World War II until the bombing of Pearl Harbour, put paid to Lindbergh and his appeasers. It took long enough in the Falklands, as US diplomats admired the black booted fascists of Argentina and initially help them to fight against Britain. It does take America some time to do the right thing, but there is still ground for hope that they will come back to lead the case for democracy.  

But for present purposes, America's betrayal of democracy is not of immediate concern. What is more vital than ever is a determination by democratic states to protect their preferred system of government by pledging their military and moral support to nations of the same mind. While they do not plan hostilities with Russia and China, or any other state, they would aim to defend any democracy threatened with invasion by nations wishing to conquer them. Such nations currently oppress almost half of the world's population. So, it may not be accurate to speak of a “World Security Council”, but rather of a Union of Democracies or just Democratic Union. 

Its members would be committed to promoting the ideals of representative government. It would appoint a special constitutional court with jurisdiction over a Charter of Rights and a Constitution which provides for the expulsion of any member state which adopts laws which breach its constitution. The essence of this new international organisation, the Democratic Union, is that it would comprise those nations of the world committed to promoting and fighting for liberal democracy against all forms of totalitarianism.