[Prefatory Note: Ressponse of Richard Falk to Questions posed by the Iranian journalist Asgar Ghahramanpour, 9. February 2026]
1. **In light of the rise and consolidation of far-right and nationalist movements—such as the Trump phenomenon in the United States and similar trends in Europe and elsewhere—how do you assess the current status of international law within the emerging global order?**
Would you say that international law is increasingly retreating in the face of power politics?
International law is definitely being marginalized in contemporary international relations by the rise of ultra-nationalist political leaders and authoritarian governments. This negative trend is making a severe impact on political consciousness as a result of the adoption and revival of an imperial foreign policy by the U.S. under Trump, although the pragmatic use or neglect of international law in the management of global security preceded Trump, and can be traced back to 1945 when the winners of World War II became self-anointed as the architects of ‘a new world order,’ a role most prominently associated with the design and establishment of the United Nations.
It is notable that the UN Charter designated the Security Council as the only political organ of the new Organization that was provided with the legal authority to reach obligatory decisions binding on sovereign states. Most significantly it refused to allow international law or ensure democratic representation of the non-West to control outcomes in the Security Council in the face of opposition of even one of five winners of World War II given permanent representation while other member states were selected on a term basis. The role of international law was curtailed by according these five winners in 1945 not only permanent SC membership but more significantly a right of veto. This meant that if a breach of international law was to be dealt with even by a majority vote of 14-1, it would still fail, and have no legal effect if the lone dissenting vote was one the P5, which not only crippled the role of the SC in relation to geopolitical rivalry, as during the Cold War, but was highly undemocratic if evaluated from demographic perspectives. This absence of democracy also was present in the internal makeup of the P5 giving the US, France, and the UK great power status in the form of SC permanent membership and the veto, and excluding such Global South great powers as India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil, creating an everlasting Western dominance in the SC, including a right of each P5 member to block any effort to reform the SC because all amendments of the Charter were nullified unless the support of all five.
The net result of this extensive role of the SC in UN affairs has been to make the Organization submissive to the P5, and to confer geopolitical primacy with respect to the management of global security, including war prevention and resistance to genocide as well as subordinate to the strategic interests of the powerful rather than responsive to the regulative principles of law that should possess universal applicability, and governs the strong and weak alike.
It is a mistake to think that the whole enterprise of international law is failing. International law works effectively in any substantive setting in which there exists a mutual interest in its applicability. The routines of international life, including most commerce and trade relations, air and maritime safety, communications, tourism, and diplomatic representation are complied with because the logic of reciprocity is operative. This is not true in domains of behavior such as armed conflict in which differentials of hard power determine political outcomes and uphold strategic interests and reflect the ambitions of the powerful. In these latter contexts international law has long been marginalized by design leaving the management of global security to the discretion of the geopolitical actors for any given issue involving the implementation of international law as the disappointing UN response to the recent Gaza genocide illustrated.
2. **Do you believe that the era in which international law functioned as a normative framework capable of restraining state power is coming to an end?**
If so, what kind of alternative global order appears to be taking shape?
It is a fiction embraced by naïve legalists to suppose that international law ever controlled the management of global security or inhibited the strategic priorities of dominant states. There were eras of greater peacefulness when Great Powers acted prudently with respect to militarization and conflict resolution. The idea of a rule-governed international order applied selectively and within the limits set by those domains of international life where reciprocity prevailed, and differentials in power and wealth were minimized as in international trade and investment as compared to the colonial era.
The experience with nuclear weapons is illustrative of this pattern of marginalizing international law despite the risks of leaving the use of this apocalyptic weaponry of mass destruction entirely under the control of the most dangerous geopolitical actors. Rather than favoring denuclearization and disarmament, the same five winners in 1945 continued to leave this weaponry essentially unregulated except to the extent of seeking maximum control over the spread of the weapons to other states. The result has been costly arms races, dangerous crises, abetted by a scheme of deterrence + nonproliferation, with a resulting nuclear hegemony. If ever there was a basis for universal rule governance it was with respect to nuclear weaponry, but it could not overcome the ideology of ‘political realism’ that dominated the thinking of foreign policy elites of the major states, and was systemically opposed to accept any arrangements that restricted their hard power capabilities.
Whether this discouraging character of international relations will change in light of the Gaza Genocide, aggressive uses of forces, extreme violations of human rights, ecological instability is impossible to predict, although it seems unlikely in the present atmosphere. The antics of Trump’s narcissistic geopolitics are generating a tidal wave of anxiety about the human future, as well as bearing witness to the devastating consequences of unchecked lawlessness. We can only hope that civil society activism and more responsible political leadership will emerge to create a more viable international legal order than was framed in 1945.
3. **Based on your experience as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, to what extent does this case illustrate the gap between the principles of international law and the political will of powerful states?**
What are the broader implications of this gap for the credibility of the international system?
There is no doubt that this gap between law and politics exists in relation to the management of global security, including war prevention, conflict resolution, genocide, apartheid, and ecocide. This should not confuse us about the reliance on compliance with international law by all sovereign states, including those most powerful, whether labeled as Great Powers or in the UN context as the five permanent members of the Security Council or P5. As suggested in my prior responses where the logic of reciprocity applies to the behavior of sovereign states, international law provides a stable and convenient basis for the myriad of interactions that make routine international interactions trustworthy. For the agenda of global security and strategic ambition the design of the UN itself recognized the lack of political will to close the gap between international law and its dependence for implementation on political will and capabilities, epitomized by the right of veto conferred upon the winners of World War II, arguably at the time the most dangerous political actors in the world.
At present, despite the widespread disappointment and tension arising from this gap, there is still the absence of political will among the leading geopolitical actors (U.S., Russia, and China) to close the gap. From a legal perspective, this gap is insulated from remedy by each of the P5 possessing an unrestricted right to veto any proposed amendment of the UN Charter. The most that can be realistically envisioned in the near future is more prudent or responsible behavior by these dominant geopolitical actors and by secondary geopolitical actors of limited geographic scope to restrict their lawlessness to the security agendas of. regional geopolitical configurations of power, although U.S. imperial geopolitics and Russian and Chinese spheres of influence geopolitics ensures that the harmful gap between what international law requires and what international politics determines will continue to cause immeasurable harm, especially to vulnerable peoples and nations, or states that have resources coveted by geopolitical actors.
4. **Some argue that international law has always been subordinate to politics rather than an independent constraint upon it.**
From your perspective, is the relationship between politics and international law inherently conflictual, or is there still room for a constructive and mutually reinforcing relationship?
To avoid confusion and repetition, please consider the relevance of my responses to earlier questions. In sum, with respect to all aspects of global security international law, in practice and design, has long been subordinated to politics, but only for regional and global political actors. And then only since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when Europe gave birth to a self-serving format for an international normative order that legitimated coercion in the course of colonizing projects in the Global South.
A deficient version of symbolic international law enforcement occurs at the conclusion of major wars ending in victory for one side. As in the aftermath of World War II the winners prosecuted the war crimes alleged to be committed by surviving German and Japanese individuals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, which critics persuasively derided as ‘victors’ justice.
As also suggested in previous responses, where reciprocal benefits result from compliance, international law has long provided a reliable framework guiding the behavior of individuals, corporations and financial institutions, and governments in many international interactions, although even here there are important subtle
encroachments by the rich and powerful on the rights of the poor that escape from the discipline of a legal order administered on the basis of equality of all
5. **At a time when powerful states increasingly disregard or actively undermine multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the global human rights regime, how do you envision the future of multilateralism? **
There is little doubt that this is a bad time for internationalism, given global trends toward ultra-nationalism and xenophobia, which tend to devalue cooperative multinationalism. These trends are accentuated by the intense US hostility to internationalism given Trump’s diplomacy on behalf of the United States, which continues to be the most influential world state, although in danger of losing this status due to China’s continuing rising star. Early in 2026 the U.S. Government, by executive order, withdrew and stopped funding for no less that 66 international institutional arrangements, 31 of which were within the UN System.
The global scope of ecological challenges as well as the complexities of digital age communications, global migration flow, vulnerabilities to disease epidemics makes it likely that a new cycle of functional pressures will in the years ahead restore and even expand dependence upon multilateralism. This seems probable, although the signature reality of the present global setting is radical uncertainty, or put differently, the unknowability of the future.
6. **Can global civil society, academics, and human rights institutions play a meaningful role in restoring the legitimacy and effectiveness of international law, or are such efforts structurally constrained by the current global power configuration?**
In line with unknowability of the future, an initial response is to underscore unknowability, together with an awareness that there are many historical examples of surprising happenings in international life that were not anticipated by relevant experts or public opinion. Among notable recent examples is the victory of Vietnamese nationalism in opposing the militarily superior US intervention in the Vietnam War. Other important examples are the collapse of the Soviet Union, the peaceful transition of the apartheid regime in South Africa into a multiethnic constitutional democracy, and the Arab Spring attacking dictatorial rule in several Arab majority countries at least briefly. In light of this defining feature of unknowability, it is appropriate to struggle for a desirable future. This suggest that civil society activism is worth supporting as strongly as possible in the hope of both restoring and enhancing the role of legitimacy and withit, the effectiveness of international law in relation to global security and human rights priorities.
Of course, resistance from current geopolitical configurations, statism, and predatory capitalism is to be expected, and current prospects for a successful transformation of irresponsible patterns of geopolitics seem low, this may change over time in unpredictable ways. The struggle for law and justice is imperative, even without any assurance that it will be successful in the short term, but neither is it doomed to failure.
7. **Finally, what advice would you offer to the new generation of international lawyers and policymakers seeking to defend and advance international law in a world moving toward unilateralism, authoritarianism, and weakened global governance?**
My first advice would be directed at teachers and commentators on law and global politics to adopt a paradigm of international law pedagogy that emphasizes the importance of justice-driven law in relation to global security, human rights, and ecological policy agendas. My second advice would be to urge all students of international relations and law to be required to study international law within a framework that is less vocational and more humanistic as integral to engaged citizenship in democratic societies. This educational commitments needs to be supplemented by societal beliefs that such moral literacy is expect to be present in all phases of the professionalism of law, lawyers, and judges, as well as of foreign policy advisors.
This reorientation of pedagogy would also necessitate a prior critique of prevailing versions of ‘political realism’ that continue to dominate foreign policy decision-making, especially in the governments and ‘think tanks’ of geopolitical actors in a manner, which among elements would downgrade the historic agency of militarism. This would include studying the record of defeat of the militarily superior side in most anti-colonial wars since 1945. The link between international law and international legitimacy would also be stressed to make the key point that if international law is not implemented by governments and inter-governmental institutions it still legitimates civil society secondary enforcement capabilities in the form of solidarity initiatives and informal pressures by protests and boycotts, mounted to promote national and international sanctions.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
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