SE intervention Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, retired), former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, at the Schiller Institute international conference in Berlin, May 30-31, 2026.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are witnessing the end of several eras. The world of our parents and our childhood is no more. Never the alarmist description of current events, attributed to Antonio Gramscididn’t seem so right. “The old world is dying, and the new is struggling to be born: the time of the monsters has come.” [1]
Alas, my country – the United States of America – has become such a monster, dismembering with senseless madness the world order that it itself had helped to establish.
Five centuries ago, the birth of the Spanish and Portuguese empires ushered in an era of European global supremacy. In 1609, the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius published Sea of Freedom (The Free Sea), forcefully defending the idea that no sovereignty could be exercised over the maritime domain, nor any restriction on freedom of navigation.
In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia enshrined the principle of the sovereign equality of states and their right to practice their own moral ideologies without external interference. Euro-American imperialism then imposed Westphalian principles on the world. Paradoxically, these principles proved incompatible with the colonialism of the great powers and contributed to its decline. They persist in the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” [2]but they are now threatened.
In 1763, Britain inflicted a decisive defeat on the French naval power. From then on, Britannia dominated the seas.
This maritime hegemony passed to the United States during the battle of the Bismarck Sea in 1943. Anglo-American domination of the world’s oceans, which lasted 263 years, permitted colonialism, but also imposed rules prohibiting piracy, the slave trade, the closure of straits and other international waterways, and any other impediment to freedom of navigation. These rules, finally enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, are today regularly flouted.
Once the champion of freedom of navigation, free trade and the sovereign equality of nations plying the seas, the US Navy now attacks merchant ships, seizes their cargoes and resells them. It illegally murders civilians aboard small boats on simple orders. The bordering states block the straits and are in turn blocked, without regard for the consequences on the global economy or the well-being of other nations.
America systematically seeks to overthrow foreign governments by ruining their populations. Yesterday, Syria and Venezuela. Today, Palestine, Iran and Lebanon. Tomorrow, Cuba, we are told credibly.
The 21st century has seen the progressive annihilation of international law. Prohibitions on aggressive wars, genocide, collective punishment, assassinations, torture, mistreatment of prisoners and the acquisition of territory by force are no longer respected or enforced. The world responds by rearming and preparing for war. Leaders who fear being assassinated or facing the wrath of their people build bunkers and take refuge there. Some equate leadership with partisan division and pandering to xenophobia.
Israel and the United States have set an example by abandoning « respect dû à l’opinion humaine » [3] for the benefit of an abject glorification of barbarism.
THE “Israeli-style ceasefire” – hypocritical truces which perpetuate the war at a lower intensity – have everywhere replaced diplomatic efforts aimed at establishing constructive dialogue, the foundation of lasting peace. Israel tirelessly pursues territory, not peace. The United States, for its part, is banking on luxury real estate development in the genocidal cemetery of Gaza.
The United States is not alone in making ruthless opportunism the foundation of its foreign policy. The rest of the West has reproduced American errors, by action and by omission. International law no longer prevents aggression or promotes human dignity. Might trumps right.
In 416 BCE, Athens, as everyone knows, put aside its respect for democracy to assert that “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”. His quest for lawless hegemony then caused his downfall.
As the West frees itself from limits on executive power, minority rights, pluralism and institutional mechanisms to control the arbitrary and capricious actions of strongmen, it is worth remembering that “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” [4]
Indifference in the face of injustice and inequity is no better than complicity. In 1919, William Butler Yeats predicted it when he wrote that “The best are devoid of all conviction, while the worst are full of intense passion.” [5]
In 1925, another poet, T.S. Eliotpredicted that the world would end “Not with a crash, but with a whisper.” [6]
As the world order we know collapses, the whispers grow louder. So far, no explosion. But we are getting closer. The United States has denounced all its arms control agreements, significantly increasing the risk of escalation of the conflict into a nuclear exchange. The Russian Federation is under pressure to respond with nuclear weapons to the proxy war waged by NATO and the EU in Ukraine. China is building up a massive nuclear arsenal to counter possible American intervention in its civil war with the Taiwanese authorities.
I appeal to poetry because it makes the irrational intelligible without altering its strangeness. The world is in the grip of a nervous breakdown, led by notorious sociopaths and overwhelmed by deep despair. What is the cure and where will it come from?
We are beginning to see possible answers to this question in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic prophetic tradition. Ideas can be translated into actions that improve the world. Those who dare to speak the truth to the powerful are vindicated when their informed judgments resonate and move societies toward justice.
Courageous women like Francesca Albanese defy the contemporary code of “See nothing, hear nothing” which advocates public indifference to the dehumanization of others. Courageous politicians like Peter Sanchezin Spain, break with their pusillanimous European colleagues to lead their nation in refusing any cooperation with evil. In the new polycentric world order, small and medium powers acquire considerable moral weight.
The people of the world aspire to governments of integrity whose policies respect the golden rule, not regimes that contradict it through exploitation, cruelty or moral indifference. In many countries, privileged elites, cut off from the people, are facing growing criticism and increased pressure to reform. Courageous rallies like this call for a return to sanity, a renewed interest in peace and economic development, limiting the excesses of financial capitalism, and the reestablishment of the belief that human society can be improved by rational reflection and institutional reform.
All this brings back hope where it had disappeared. Positive changes are coming.
We need better leaders, but history teaches us that good ideas always find the people who can implement them.
This forum is a place for discussion and reflection on ways to develop ideas for a safer and better world. It’s an honor to participate.
