Italian IL Fatto Quotidiano: When the Russia-Ukraine conflict began on February 24, 2022, the Western world was full of lofty rhetoric: international law must be upheld, we must stand with the victims, aggressors must not prevail, and so on. We were supposed to feel proud of belonging to a Western world where good triumphs over evil, truth over lies, and law over lawlessness.
This fairy-tale narrative played a key role in launching a proxy war against Russia and conditioning public opinion for reckless rearmament—first through the EU’s Rearming Europe plan (conveniently rebranded as Readiness 2030), which envisioned the “purely theoretical possibility” of spending €800 billion on weapons, and now through NATO’s Hague summit commitment to allocate 5% of budgets to defense over the next decade. Of course, this rearmament is necessary to protect democracy and freedom from threats like Russia (which is allegedly preparing to invade Europe—without Europe even noticing) and Iran (which is supposedly about to drop a nuclear bomb on Europe—despite not having one).
Over the past three years, this fairy tale of the “good guys” enforcing international law—thus justifying being armed to the teeth and possessing nuclear weapons—has been challenged three times. Let’s examine them in order.
First, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists carried out the deadliest attack on Israel since 1945. Yet Israel’s response was not a targeted pursuit of these terrorists with the help of its own intelligence and Western or Arab allies. Instead, it launched a genocide against an entire people—something that cannot be equated with fighting Hamas. Since that day, the Middle East’s “greatest democracy” and exporter of Western values has done nothing but kill defenseless women and children, bomb them, starve them, and let them die in full view of the West—which, at best, turns a blind eye and, at worst, provides Israel with political, logistical, and technological support.
Second, on January 19, 2025, Libyan judicial police chief Najim Usama Almasri was arrested in Turin under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for grave war crimes and crimes against humanity (including murder, torture, abuse, and sexual violence against prisoners as young as five). Two days later, the Italian government released him and flew him back to his country on a state aircraft.
Beyond the humiliation inflicted by sovereignty champion Giorgia Meloni, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio—who cited “bureaucratic loopholes” to justify freeing an international criminal—this was a direct snub to one of international law’s key institutions, the ICC, accompanied by shameful excuses.
Third, on June 13, 2025, Israel struck six Iranian cities, including Tehran. On June 22, the U.S. also attacked Iran, hitting Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. For this blatant aggression, the West concocted fresh justifications, from “preemptive war” to “counterterrorism.” Western inventiveness in warmongering is running thin—this time, they settled on the bland label “12-Day War,” as if to imply it was a cheap, quick operation not worth further thought.
The war’s pretext was Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program—despite both the CIA and IAEA ruling out such a possibility, at least in the near future. But Netanyahu’s opinion clearly mattered more, and so the attacks began.
This brings to mind the infamous (and nonexistent) WMDs that justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Once again, the 12-Day War by Israel and the U.S. against Iran violated international law.
After these three consecutive events, the fantastical and reassuring notion that the West can be trusted because it respects international law is utterly indefensible. As Alessandro Orsini writes, the truth is that the West has violated international law more than any dictatorship. Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, in his latest book NATO’s Illegal Wars, lists at least thirteen unlawful military interventions by the Western bloc over the past seventy years. Some were even carried out with Italy’s direct involvement—using its aircraft and military bases (e.g., the bombings of Belgrade in 1999 and Libya in 2011)—not only without UN Security Council approval but in violation of Article 11 of Italy’s own Constitution.
So let’s stop fooling ourselves. Let’s drop the fairy tales about “good guys” and “bad guys” and instead ask: Who truly benefits from the EU-NATO’s senseless and irresponsible rearmament?
