The End of International Law and the Return of World War

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The End of International Law and the Return of World War

I am certain that now—witnessing what is unfolding in global politics—everyone has finally understood that international law no longer exists. It is no more.

International law is a treaty between major powers capable of defending their sovereignty in practice. It is they who determine the rules for themselves and for everyone else: what is permitted and what is forbidden. And they follow them. Such law operates in phases (beats)—as long as the balance between the major powers is maintained.

The Westphalian system, which recognizes the sovereignty of nation-states, took shape due to a stalemate in the balance of power between Catholics and Protestants (joined by anti-imperial France). Had the Catholics won, the Roman See and the Austrian Empire would have established a completely different European architecture. More precisely, they would have preserved the previous, medieval one.

In a sense, it was the Protestants of the European North who benefited from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as they had originally steered towards national monarchies against the Pope and the Emperor. Without achieving a total victory, they nonetheless secured their goal.

Formally, the Westphalian system has survived to this day, as we construct international law on the principle of nation-states—the very thing the Protestants insisted upon in the Thirty Years’ War. But in essence, in the 17th century, this concerned only the states of Europe and their colonies, and later, not every nation-state possessed true sovereignty. All nations are equal, but the European nations (the Great Powers) are “more equal” than others.

There was a certain element of hypocrisy in recognizing national sovereignty for weak countries, but it was fully compensated for by the theory of Realism. It only fully crystallized in the 20th century, yet it reflected a picture of international relations that had formed long ago. Here, the inequality of countries is balanced by the possibility of creating coalitions and the “chess-like” order of alliances—weak states conclude agreements with stronger ones to resist the possible aggression of other strong powers. This is what occurred, and continues to occur, in practice.

The League of Nations attempted to give international law based on the Westphalian system a firmer character, seeking to partially limit sovereignty and establish universal principles—based on Western liberalism, pacifism, and the first version of globalism—which all countries, large and small, were supposed to follow. In essence, the League of Nations was conceived as a first approximation of a World Government. It was then that the school of Liberalism in International Relations finally took shape, beginning its long dispute with the Realists. Liberals believed that international law would sooner or later displace the principle of full sovereignty of nation-states and lead to the creation of a single international system. Realists in International Relations continued to insist on their position, defending the principle of absolute sovereignty—the direct legacy of the Peace of Westphalia.

However, by the 1930s, it became clear that neither the liberalism of the League of Nations nor even the Westphalian system itself corresponded to the balance of power in Europe and the world. The Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933, fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1937, and the USSR’s war with Finland in 1939 effectively destroyed it, even formally. Although it was officially dissolved only in 1946, the first attempt to establish international law as an overarching, mandatory system had already foundered in the 1930s.

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