‘International Law’: A zombie?

LONDON—”An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted,” the great playwright Arthur Miller wrote in his essay “The Year It Came Apart.” It’s not yet World War III, but the nightmare has begun. Within barely 48 hours, a trilateral conflict—pitting two nuclear-armed powers against an alleged aspiring one—quickly morphed into a global crisis.

American servicemen have been killed and United States bases are on fire. Dozens of Iranian schoolgirls perished and central Tehran, including a major hospital, which came under bombardment. Iconic towers and posh hotels across the Gulf Sheikhdoms were hit by intercepted weapons. The world’s busiest airports shut down. The Strait of Hormuz was functionally shut down. Oil prices experienced their fastest daily spike in half a decade. Critical infrastructure and civilian areas were hit across Israel. And, tragically for us Filipinos, one of our countrymen was among the victims. Millions of other Filipinos are caught in the midst of a conflict that is spiraling out of control, with disturbing implications for international order in the 21st century.

Shortly after the US and Iran concluded yet another inconclusive (though ostensibly encouraging) round of talks in Geneva, Washington and its closest ally in the Middle East launched a joint aerial attack on Iran. Instead of collapsing, however, the Iranian regime swiftly reconstituted itself and seamlessly shifted to what it has been drilling since the 2003 American invasion of Iraq: a “Mosaic Defense” strategy, whereby regional commanders, spread across the vast Iranian plateau, enjoy discretion over combat operations based on pregiven strategic latitude. After absorbing the initial blow, Tehran retaliated by targeting not only the US forces and Israel, but also Western bases across the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, millions of devotees from across the region and beyond poured into the streets to mourn the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, a spiritual leader in the Shia world. Enraged, some of the devotees are now targeting American embassies and consulates from Pakistan to Iraq.

In short, there won’t be a “Maduro-style” regime change model here. Nor a Saddam-style collapse. Incredibly, the conflict commenced without even a pretense of invoking international law. The Omanis, who have been mediating Iran-US talks, have repeatedly made it clear that diplomacy was producing a potentially robust deal, including a proposed freeze on Iran’s enrichment of uranium as a prelude to a larger and lasting peace deal. Multiple American senators—from both parties who have been briefed with high-grade intelligence—have also admitted in public the absence of any evidence of an imminent threat to Washington or nuclear weaponization by Tehran. The Trump administration, however, has claimed that the attack on Iran was preventative but has now both spoken of regime change as well as a potential ceasefire in favor of diplomacy.

The very leaders who were rightfully preaching international law in defense of Ukraine and Greenland’s sovereignty in Davos and Munich earlier this year began singing to a very different tune. With the notable exceptions of Spain, Switzerland, and Norway, top European leaders didn’t even bother to mention potential breach of the United Nations Charter (see Article 2 (1, 4, and 7)). The massive civilian casualties in the opening hours of the assault, including children, were barely mentioned.

No less than Germany’s chancellor made his sentiments about international law clear: “Legal assessments under international law will achieve relatively little in this regard, and this applies all the more if they largely remain without consequences…” He advised his colleagues that it was “not the moment to lecture our partners and allies” following the second large-scale attack on a sovereign state in less than a year.

The decade began with several Global South leaders shamelessly refusing to condemn Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Not long after, major Western countries refused to condemn mass atrocities in Gaza, even when the International Criminal Court filed charges against alleged perpetrators of war crimes. And now this! What started as double standard and rank hypocrisy has transmogrified into an Orwellian dystopia.

The postwar dream of a more substantive version of international law—a rules-based order—has been relegated to the dustbin of history. What we are left with is an instrumentalist approach to international law—selective application and weaponization based on political and narrow interests—coupled with a return to 19th-century-style “spheres of influence” geopolitics. It may not happen this year or next, but we are clearly sleepwalking toward World War III in an increasingly volatile and combustible century.

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richard.heydarian@inquirer.net