For the researcher Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach, who teaches international law at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, if the organizations and principles born out of World War II are shaken, notably by the foreign policy of the United States, they still maintain a certain level of effectiveness.
Is international law definitively obsolete, as some political leaders suggest, following the American-Israeli military intervention in Iran?
Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach: It is impossible to deny the failure of international law in the face of the increasing violations, when the world’s greatest power commits acts of aggression against several states, such as Venezuela or Iran. The violations of international law happening today are unprecedented since the creation of the UN, and it makes no sense to say that everything is fine. But it is misleading to say that it is dead, in the sense that rules exist, which are still actionable and can serve as a basis for legal and legitimate responses from other states. I greatly appreciated the speech of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Davos summit, proclaiming that the era of an international order based on common rules for organizing coexistence within the international community, is over. He was speaking after the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by American forces. He captures what law is: a “fiction,” from which the most powerful can free themselves, but a “useful fiction.” Legal rules operate in a democratic space, where the rule of law applies, and where a common will to respect them is expressed. Not when the force of an authoritarian power imposes itself on the law.
“In the UN Security Council, five permanent members have a veto right, two of which are currently violating international law – Russia and the United States. The system has been biased since its creation.”
