A new era of ‘might makes right’

International law – does it matter anymore? The more cynical among us might well question the extent to which it ever truly mattered to the most powerful actors on the world stage. They may be mostly right, yet it is also true that in prior decades, the leaders of even very powerful countries often tended to invest significant time, effort and political capital on building international support around major military action, often working through formal UN General Assembly or UN Security Council (UNSC) processes. Fast forward to the present day, with its numerous active conflicts raging across an increasingly unstable world, and the spectre of several possible future conflicts between nuclear powers hanging over the world. It is a strange age, where appeals to international law have never felt quite so hollow and naïve, nor the UNSC so irrelevant. How did we get here?

The whole point of international laws, is that they are supposed to apply universally. Practice however, often deviates from theory, and pragmatic realpolitik considerations or short-term goals have often won out over purist adherence to international norms and standards. Yet when this is done too often, cracks start to form, and eventually, the structure begins to crumble.

It is fair to say that international laws have been selectively applied since the UN’s founding, especially where the interests of the permanent five (P5) members of the UNSC are concerned. To take the US as a case in point: while it has been willing to approve UN resolutions condemning the likes of Iraq, Iran, and various others, it has used its veto power to block numerous similar resolutions concerning Israel, effectively providing the country with a form of immunity from meaningful reproach at the UN level. The other P5 members (China, France, Russia, and the UK) have done likewise to varying degrees.

The employment of veto powers in turn has often led to deadlock in the UNSC, thereby rendering it fairly ineffective at achieving its primary mandate of preserving international peace and security. Moreover, double-standards and selective applicability undermine the very foundations of international law. To put it bluntly: why should any country take international law seriously if it can effectively be ignored when one is part of the P5 club, or has the right friends? Why buy into a system which offers your country no real means to address its grievances?

This perspective has been evident in many of those I speak to, and indeed in numerous political circles today it is quite fashionable to treat the UN as something of a joke, or, somewhat more charitably, a toothless, irrelevant inconvenience. This in turn becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The UNSC is often deadlocked or powerless to act meaningfully, resulting in predictable outcomes, so no one treats it seriously. When no one treats it seriously, the game of international politics naturally starts to shift away from consensus-building and legal agreements, toward more naked forms of projecting hard and soft power to achieve self-interested goals. Put simply, in the absence of other constraints or incentives, everyone gradually starts believing in ‘might makes right’ – making dangerous collisions between states more likely.

None of this is intended to characterise the UNSC as having ever been some kind of supreme moral force in international politics – even in the past, sufficiently powerful or well-connected actors have broadly managed to insulate themselves from constraint, and the UNSC has often been powerless to stop conflicts from occurring. However, the UNSC as it stands seems diminishingly relevant or useful in today’s increasingly multi-polar world, where newly-risen military and economic powers may rightly ask why they should buy in to a system based around the major powers of 1945.

The point of all this is to briefly examine where we are heading, how we got there, and what is to be done. It seems fairly evident that today’s international security architecture is not particularly effective at preventing conflicts, and is in need of serious reform if any kind of lasting international peace is to be achieved. While this will no doubt be a Herculean task, there are steps which could be taken sooner to correct course.

Historically, veto powers have shown themselves to be highly prone to abuse, and would be an obvious candidate for abolition. While this by itself would not be a panacea, it would be a good start. Alongside opening up the possibility for P5 members and their allies to be held accountable, the move should generate buy-in from non-P5 members – since without the threat of obstructive vetoes, they would have a genuine hope of making their voices matter on the world stage. Small steps in this direction have already been taken, for instance through Liechtenstein’s Veto Initiative, but such measures don’t really fix the core problem. While it seems nigh-impossible to imagine the P5 voluntarily giving up their veto powers anytime soon, perhaps this measure will be examined more seriously after the next major crisis. Until then, the old structure will no doubt keep creaking on, increasingly struggling for relevance in a world which requires something quite different. So it goes.

Mark Cazalet