International Law Overreached And Now World Is Paying The Price

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The International Criminal Court is the clearest example. Created as a safety net for the most extreme cases, it was always meant to defer to national courts. In practice, it has issued arrest warrants against leaders of countries that never ratified its statute. The warrants sought over Gaza operations, like those pursued earlier over Ukraine, turned a court of last resort into a permanent political actor.

In trade, the picture is even clearer. The WTO's Appellate Body imposed additional obligations through a narrow interpretation of its national security exceptions. The loss of confidence in the system, caused by this evident overreach, at least in the eyes of some major powers, now hampers its ability to address real economic threats, such as China's non-market practices. When institutions start acting more like supreme courts than referees, sovereign governments reasonably push back.

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine offers another cautionary tale. Endorsed with the best intentions in 2005, it blurred the line between stopping genocide and enabling regime change.

Libya in 2011 began with a narrow mandate to protect civilians in Benghazi but ended with Gaddafi's death and at least a decade of chaos. Subsequent crises -from Syria to elsewhere - saw far less appetite for intervention. Good intentions collided with the hard truth that international law cannot reliably override politics or power.

This assessment, painful as it may seem, does not suggest abandoning international law. Technical regimes such as aviation safety protocols or maritime navigation rules continue to operate satisfactorily for a simple reason: they are based on consensus rather than on imposed rules.

The Paris Agreement is more successful than the Kyoto Protocol ever was because it imposes no strict obligations and allows countries to determine their own contributions.

Bilateral agreements on semiconductors, data transfers and artificial intelligence are also quietly expanding as products of negotiations rather than the application of broad universal principles.

The challenge extends from the institutional to the ethical. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many began to view international law as a growing moral framework. They forgot a simple truth: values and interests still vary greatly. When the law goes beyond what states are willing to accept, it triggers the unilateral actions it was meant to prevent.

This may dampen the enthusiasm of young international lawyers, but the appropriate approach should be restraint - for it is a matter of survival for the discipline itself.

The ICC should adhere to its core mandate and only act with explicit state consent or a clear Security Council referral. Trade regulations would need robust new safeguards to prevent security concerns from causing systemic disruptions. Humanitarian goals should guide diplomatic efforts rather than serve as open-ended justifications for intervention.

Most importantly, major powers need to stop insisting that others follow rules they themselves change for their own convenience. Double standards erode trust faster than anything else.