Recent contributions frame a central challenge: international law has overreached, and the backlash is no longer theoretical.
Professor Julian Ku recently made a sharp observation in the Washington Times: after the US strikes on Iran, the chorus of international lawyers declaring those actions “blatantly illegal” under the UN Charter exposed the system’s deeper problem.
The formal rules on self-defense and Security Council approval, he wrote, have lost credibility because they refuse to grapple with the moral and strategic realities everyone else can plainly see. Rigid formalism, in other words, has replaced practical judgment.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer struck a similar chord in his recent address at the University of Virginia. “International law cannot be a suicide pact,” he said. “International law cannot stand in the way of peace and prosperity. International law cannot undermine national sovereignty.”
Greer was speaking from hard experience in trade policy, but his warning applies more broadly. The post-Cold War expansion of international rules and institutions, he argued, risks leaving America’s hands tied when it most needs flexibility.
These critiques come at a time when international law’s overreach feels like an everyday reality. The main issue remains: international law works best when it relies on genuine consent and stays within reasonable limits.
When it extends beyond that—into internal governance, creative judicial interpretation or one-size-fits-all moral mandates—it produces the backlash Ku and Greer describe.
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.
International law was established to promote coexistence – and potentially foster solidarity – among nations. However, it cannot – and should not, if it wants to remain relevant and effective in this chaotic beginning of the 21st century- restrict states’ actions in exceptional situations involving survival or security.
Its effectiveness should rely on what it knows best: restraint and realism. When legal frameworks ignore the political realities of power, they undermine the very order they aim to sustain.
Although these realities demand restraint, historian Margaret MacMillan recently reminded us that international law, even as it retreats and is increasingly ignored by great powers, remains essential.
Even if its supporters now refer to the rules-based order in the past tense, she argues we cannot let it disappear: without these flawed guardrails, the world risks falling into unchecked power struggles and far greater chaos.
In the years ahead, key issues such as climate pressures, technological advances and rivalry among great powers will not be resolved through law alone. If international law is to remain credible, it must acknowledge its limits. Its task is to support peace and prosperity, not to stand in their way.
Eric Alter is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and a former UN civil servant.
