On The Road To International Anarchy

ON THE ROAD TO INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY— An Analysis (14 August 2026) by Lawrence Davidson

Part I — The Turn Toward International Law

Between 60 and 68 million civilians are estimated to have been killed in World War I and World War II combined. It may come as a shock, but these numbers alone, as atrocious as they certainly are, would not have pushed the victors to consider even moderate restrictions on the traditional right of their states to pursue “national interest.” It is that pursuit that justified those two horrendous wars. However, the Holocaust and the first use of atomic bombs combined with wholesale slaughter of World War II, did act as motivation.

Hence, at the end of Second World War, there was an almost unanimous decision taken to rein in aggressive expressions of national sovereignty (free will?) through a “set of rules encouraging peaceful, predictable, and cooperative behavior among states that is consistent with liberal values and principles.” This approach was designed to discourage nation states from acting like the fascists and Nazis they had just defeated. This effort was to be realized through diplomatic (treaty arrangements) and institutional (the United Nations, international courts, etc.) means.

Genocide was outlawed. Other, “crimes against humanity” were enumerated and also outlawed. For instance, apartheid was eventually (1966) declared such a crime. The modern era of decolonization was launched. The UN was established and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, the Fourth Geneva Convention was signed (1949) to protect civilians caught in war zones. In other words, a real pathway was opened for the replacement of anarchy between states with international law. 

As piecemeal as this effort was, it did help provide a period of relative well-being, particularly in the West. The two world powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, avoided direct confrontation. Wars thereafter, while not lacking in viciousness, were small and often fought by proxies. Most countries now gave at least lip service to the importance of international law.

Part II — About Face

It took only eighty years — one “modern Western” lifetime — for this arrangement to fall apart. And, the apparent causes of this slide backward are (1) the coming to power of leaders who are ambitious in ways dangerous to international peace. (2) Leaders either ignorant of or dismissive of the modern history of international relations—particularly that of the 20th century. (3) Their winning over large segments of the citizenry to traditional jealousies and resentments characteristic of nation state conflict. 

Leaders oblivious to past mistakes now repeat those mistakes. Their supporters do not know this repetition is taking place, and so they do not object. Regardless, the consequences are going to be very bad. The alarm bells are already ringing—set off by a concerted effort to dismantle the rules-based international system that was put into place after World War II. As we will see, as imperfect as that system is, to abandon it as a goal is the equivalent of abandoning any solid foundation for civilization. 

The initial target of this effort is the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the time of its founding, Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, noted that “in the prospect of an international criminal court lies the promise of universal justice.” Significantly, the origins of the ICC are found in the post Second World War determination to punish future acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. On 9 December 1948, the newly established United Nations General Assembly passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It made genocide “a crime under international law.” Article 6 of the convention provides that anyone charged with genocide “shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction . . .” That led to the eventual creation of the ICC (1998), permanently housed in the Netherlands at the Hague. 

It is the Trump administration now in power in the United States that has decided to attack the ideal of universal justice and the ICC. The effort is being led by the State Department and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On 13 July 2026, Rubio announced that his department was “launching a campaign to dismantle the international criminal court” because it was a “threat to American sovereignty.” It should be remembered that it was the assertion of the supremacy of national sovereignty in the form of alleged national interest that led to the first and second world wars.

Part III — The ICC

In practice, the ICC has drawn criticism for concentrating on the crimes of individuals and groups operating in small nations: Sudan, Libya, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Mali, Myanmar, etc. Such criticism was not enough to endanger either the ICC or the rules-based system incorporating the ideal of universal justice. Recently, however this situation has changed. And, it is Israel, the principal ally of the U.S. that has caused the change. When the ICC was confronted with Israel’s behavior in Gaza, behavior judged to be genocide by all human rights organizations and most academic experts, it acted according to its charter and issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders involved in this mass murder. Immediately, what for decades had been a tolerable situation, now became “an intolerable threat to US .…”

The U.S. government, Israel’s major ally and material supporter of its genocide, attacked the ICC with sanctions designed to diplomatically isolate it, economically punish its personnel, and  ultimately destroy the organization. The judgment was made in Washington that the ICC “threatened the sovereignty” of the U.S. and other major powers by seeking to apply a standard of accountability to their leaders and soldiers. “The ICC claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America’s national interest.” If the ICC judges could hold court for Israeli leaders, they could do so for the folks in Washington. Hence, Rubio’s full court press: “The campaign will feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.” There was the implication that the U.S. actions will not be limited to the ICC. Rubio, “accused the global body of waging a legal war against the United States using the force of so-called international law.”

It is international law itself that Rubio and his accomplices are ultimately after. Such an attack, if successful, would take the international community back to the lawless environment that brought on two world wars and killed over 60 million people.

Part IV — Conclusion

The attempt to establish international law following World War II was the logical reaction to the anarchy that comes with the lack of accountability under law. The holocaust and use of atomic bombs were sufficient to call into question sovereignty’s claim of absolute state immunity. Regardless of the role of sovereignty in the history of nation state development, it is a concept that promoted repeated episodes of horror and war. When sovereignty was claimed by ethnic subgroups within multinational entities, it tore such states apart.

Given this history, the U.S. hostility to international law is the equivalent of advocating for anarchy. Thus, unless one favors an environment best fit for criminals, Marco Rubio’s claim that “The ICC poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty”—a position that implies absolute immunity from the law—is a danger to civilization. This is because civilization is made possible by the settled environment provided by the rule of law. 

Secretary of State Rubio and his cohort are almost certainly too poorly educated to understand the consequences of the positions they take on this issue. Certainly their boss, Donald Trump, knows nothing of it. Lacking the necessary historical knowledge, their consciousness is guided by the traditional system and its established assumptions. Citizens are, generally, no better educated and, as is also traditional, focused on their local lives. 

This is the situation we are now in. If the trend toward anarchy continues, the consequences will be broadly predictable. Those consequences are not pretty and when combined with other failures of our international state system, such as global warming, the probability of future catastrophe grows. The old Latin saying:

Memores acti prudentes futuri: “mindful of the past, aware of the future,” has gone the way of the Dodo and, with leaders like Marco Rubio, so may our way of life.