Nineteen forty-five was a pivotal moment in international law, marking the founding of the United Nations and the International Military Tribunal to investigate war crimes committed during the second world war. Eighty years on, it is increasingly being said that we are living through a moment of great change, towards a world that is without such law.
In September, the Financial Times published an editorial headlined “A world without rules”. That view was premised on two incidents: Israel’s launch of a missile strike on a building that hosted Hamas officials in Qatar; and the flight of 19 Russian drones into Polish airspace. This flouting of the previous “rules-based order”, the FT said, was now producing “a kind of anarchy and a proliferation of violence”.
