This article includes a statement made by the International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric. The statement opens by discussing the current situation regarding what the Red Cross humanitarian workers have seen in terms of damage to the country such as bridges, water filters, roads, schools and much more. Next she calls for the consideration of the impacts that the destruction of a nuclear facility could have on the people in the region for generations. In the end of the statement she drives a call to action that the sides strive for peace prioritizing the lives of citizens over death of enemies.
This statement comes from a very important figure in the international community with the Red Cross being one of if not the most well regarded humanitarian organizations in the world the Red Cross holds lots of weight when it comes to humanitarian issues. The problem for the region this statement brings more attention to is the idea that Israel and the United States have likely already crossed the line of international humanitarian law and could be subject to charges of war crimes, not that any of these charges will see the light of day of course. But this poses the threat that this could become the new norm for conflict.
In terms of next steps the biggest problem for organizations such as this is that they have little actual hard power internationally and instead rely on other countries to add hard power to their statements. The biggest problem for the ICRC now is that typically the biggest countries to support as the US and their allies which obviously will not happen in this instance and leaves a hole of support for any calls to action that will prevent substantive changes from occurring. In addition this problem exists for most international organizations or infrastructures such as the Hague which has pretty much no power at this point.
This connects to many different class concepts and themes however the big ones will be hard power plus soft power as well as NGOs. First, NGOs such as the ICRC play a huge role in supporting citizens during times of crisis such as these conflicts because it is at this point that they become irrelevant to the government leaving them at the mercy of NGOs to help support them. Additionally, while some of these NGOs hold small amounts of soft power, much of their influence comes from hard power given to them by different states.