In the 69 years since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations, a trend has emerged in which individual state sovereignty is steadily eroded. Countries were asked to hand over some authority to international organizations, leaving it to foreign hands. Surely, many global events have occurred that could have been improved with the establishment and backing of such international bodies. But it must be understood that such organizations are also a source of concern because, perhaps, certain countries are leaving their fates to be determined by others. The trend itself received a tailwind with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a wave of political psychosis swept the West. Intelligent researchers such as Francis Fukuyama lost their minds, celebrating the "end of history" with the fall of the communist empire. Examples abound. The positions taken by the leadership in Serbia and in Croatia over each country's role in the Yugoslavian war underscore that trend. The leaning toward internationalization has had, and still has, many implications for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab failure due to U.S. veto power at the U.N. Security Council -- which was supposed to a be a sort of international government without infringing on the individual sovereignty of states -- led them to start seeking assistance from other international bodies. One such body was the International Court of Justice in The Hague, whose support is almost a prerequisite for launching a boycott against any sovereign state. Former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak's admonishing ruling over the security barrier facilitated and invited Palestinian machinations against Israel over the lifesaving security barrier it constructed along the boundaries of Judea and Samaria. The Goldstone committee, headed by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which probed the actions of Israeli and Palestinian forces in the 2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, was the result of this trend. Embedding lawyers among IDF units in real-time battle is an attempt to thwart bringing soldiers to stand this sort of international trial. The trend exists. These days, it is used in full force by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has threatened to derail peace talks and head to the International Court in The Hague if Israel rebuffs his proposals. But on Tuesday, it appeared that this internationalizing approach suffered a light blow. Russian President Vladimir Putin made a mockery of international rhetoric, of Obama's worldview -- wherein mankind knows how best to behave itself without the violent, military might of nation states -- and of the EU's stammering by unilaterally annexing Crimea to the Russian homeland. How will the world respond? Moscow scoffed at the West's announcement of economic sanctions. It knows that Western Europe -- especially Germany -- needs Russian natural gas flowing through the continent in two pipelines. The Crimea issue is rather petty. It will have strategic significance if a struggle breaks out over absorbing Ukraine back into the bosom of the Russian federation. What transpired on the Crimean peninsula -- where leaders from Allied powers met at the end of World War II -- could be the first step toward restoring the old world and marginalizing the international political reality. Yet again, a prophet lies in wait, preparing to intone Winston Churchill's words: "An iron curtain has descended across the continent."
