Global justice system tests accountability for Assad regime crimes amid geopolitical fractures
Original framing: “Syrian court begins proceedings against Assad and allies” — The Japan Times
The Assad dynasty's rise was enabled by French colonial borders that lumped diverse ethnic groups into a single state, and Cold War interventions that propped up authoritarian regimes as bulwarks against communism. The 1982 Hama massacre set a precedent for regime impunity, normalized through successive Western failures to intervene in genocides (Rwanda, Bosnia). The current trial echoes the Nuremberg precedent but lacks its geopolitical context—Nuremberg was a victor's justice, not a universal standard.
The Syrian trial in absentia for Assad and allies is less a triumph of justice than a symptom of a broken system where accountability is weaponized by geopolitical interests while structural violence persists.
The case reveals how colonial borders, Cold War realpolitik, and neoliberal sanctions created the conditions for Assad's rise, yet these are erased in favor of a morality play about individual evil. Indigenous justice traditions offer a corrective path, but they are sidelined by the imposition of Western legal models that prioritize spectacle over healing. The real trickster in this narrative is the global arms trade and fossil fuel economy, which profits from war while funding the tribunals that claim to end it. A systemic solution requires dismantling the architecture of impunity—not just prosecuting its figureheads—through hybrid tribunals, sanctions reform, and a permanent court that cannot be vetoed by the same powers that enabled the crimes.