From the illusion of international law to the law of the strongest: autopsy of a decaying world order

Reading time: 7 minutes

Every international crisis, every armed conflict, every massive violation of human rights, the same vocabulary returns as an incantatory ritual:International law, international community, United Nations, peacekeeping operations. Yet, behind these words full of history and norms, the dominant feeling is that of profound impotence. Wars are multiplying, civilians are paying a high price, the great powers are acting without concern, while the institutions supposed to guarantee peace seem paralysed.

This widening gap between the principles proclaimed and the reality of power relations is fuelling a crisis of major legitimacy of the international order, to the point of paving the way for alternative projects based no longer on law, but on assumed domination.

International law: a right without sovereign

International law occupies a unique place in the global legal architecture. Unlike domestic law,it is not based on any central authority having a monopoly of legitimate coercion. It is a right of coordination between sovereign States, legally equal in theory, but deeply unequal in real power. This absence of a supranational sovereign is not an accidental anomaly: it is consubstantial to the international system resulting from the peace of Westphalia, based on the absolute sovereignty of States.

In this context, international law works primarily as avoluntary right, accepted as long as it does not contradict the vital strategic interests of the dominant actors. It structures the diplomatic discoursesets reference standards, but in practice does not have automatic and universal coercive mechanisms. Sanctions exist, but they are indirect, selective, politicized, and closely dependent on power relations.

The international community: an operational fiction

The expression ofinternational communityCentral to contemporary political rhetoric. However, it does not correspond to any homogeneous entity with a unified will. It designates, at best, a fluctuating coalition of states whose interests converge on time. In the majority of cases, it mainly serves as alegitimation languageto justify intervention, punishment or, conversely, inaction.

This fiction becomes particularly visible when manifest violations of international law remain unanswered, not for lack of norms, but for lack of political will on the part of the powers able to act. Law exists, but its application becomes conditional.

UN and Security Council lock

At the heart of this structural impotence liesthe United Nations Security Council. Designed as the body guaranteeing international peace and security, it is in fact the place where the hierarchy of powers is most strongly expressed. Theright of vetothe five permanent members, (United States, Russia, China, France and United Kingdom) establishes an assumed legal inequality inherited from the Second World War order.

This mechanism transforms international law into a right with variable geometry:binding on weak, negotiable States for intermediate powers, largely ineffective in the face of the great powers. When the strategic interests of a permanent member are at stake, any collective action becomes impossible. The right then explicitly gives way to force.

International criminal justice: proclaimed universality, real selectivity

International criminal justice, including through theInternational Criminal Court, had to correct this asymmetry by dedicating the individual criminal responsibility of the leaders. In fact, its scope remains limited by the refusal of ratification by several major Powers and its dependence on the Security Council for certain referrals. This situation feeds into the idea ofasymmetrical international justice, focusing on weak States, while crimes committed by powerful actors are largely beyond prosecution.

This selectivity, whether intentional or structural, profoundly weakens the moral credibility of the system.

Peacekeeping operations: between powerlessness and suspicion

It is in this context that United Nations peacekeeping operations take place. Initially conceived as neutral interposition forces, they are deployed in asymmetrical, fragmented conflicts where the consent of the parties is often fictitious. Their increasingly broad and contradictory mandates place them in an untenable position:protecting civilians without the full use of force, supporting sometimes failing or predatory States while remaining impartial.

On the ground, this contradiction results in perceived, if not real, inefficiency which feeds therejection of local populations. To this is added an even more sensitive criticism: the very high cost of these missions in view of the often weak security performance, and the existence of perverse economic incentives for some contributing States, which find in these operations a source of income and social management of their armed forces. In these circumstances, the UN mission sometimes appears less as a tool for peace than as a tool for peace.instability management mechanism.

The discrediting of multilateralism as a root of a rupture

The accumulation of these failures feeds a deep discredit of multilateralism. It is in this degraded context that an even more radical challenge to the international order is emerging, notably byDonald Trump. His plan toPeace Council is not intended to reform the United Nations, but to circumvent it or even replace it with a parallel organization based explicitly on the balance of power.

This initiative marks a major conceptual break. Where the UN, despite its limitations, pretended to subordinate the use of force to collective and legal legitimization, the Trompian vision assumed the hierarchy of States and domination as principles of order. Peace is more conceived as the fruit of law, but as the result of deterrence, coercion and alignment.

Peace through the right to order through domination

The proposed changeover is clear:to abandon the ideal, even imperfect, of an international normative order in favour of a transactional, bilateral and asymmetrical order.In this scheme, human rights become adjustment variables, justice is a political instrument, and stability takes precedence over any requirement of fairness.

For the South, and particularly for Africa, such a development would have far-reaching consequences. The United Nations, despite all its shortcomings, still provided a space for mediation, visibility and symbolic legal resistance. The model based on the law of the strongest even removes this minimum protection, exposing weak states to direct pressure without institutional checks.

The impasse in the law without force and the force without rights

The current international order is caught in a double stalemate. On the one hand, an international law rich in principles but poor in effective coercive mechanisms; on the other, the growing temptation to substitute for this imperfect right an assumed, brutal and deeply unequal domination. The United Nations disinterposition forces, the impotence of the Security Council, selective international justice and, from now on, alternative projects based on the law of the strongest, are all symptoms of a system that has come to an end.

The central question is no longer whether international law is perfect – it has never been – but whether it should beReformed to be strengthened, orabandoned in favour of an order without right. History teaches that lawless order is never sustainable. It produces apparent stability, but prepares for deeper and more destructive violence.

Between the normative impotence and the brutality assumed, the challenge of the twenty-first century remains: to rebuild a credible multilateralism, capable of limiting force by law, without merely masking its absence.