Opinion | Iran war signals return to world of hierarchy without order

International law still exists, but it no longer reliably restrains actors as states increasingly act first and justify those deeds later

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Published: 5:30am, 13 Mar 2026Updated: 7:59am, 13 Mar 2026

The war in Iran is not just another Middle Eastern crisis. It is a window into what world politics looks like when rules are weakest and power is most concentrated. Washington has spoken in the language of surrender and coercion, European governments have called for restraint and respect for international law, and Asian powers have scrambled to keep energy flows moving through a Strait of Hormuz that has nearly ground to a halt.

What this reveals is not a functioning rules-based order. It is a harsher and more improvised world in which a few major powers increasingly act as if they have exceptional rights while everyone else calculates the cost of being exposed to their decisions.

It is tempting to describe this simply as the collapse of international law. That is too simple. The law has not disappeared. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter still prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of states.

That is precisely the point, though: legal language still structures the debate, but it no longer reliably restrains the strongest actors. Rules survive as vocabulary, not as hard limits. States still justify, deny, reinterpret and litigate, but they increasingly act first and explain later.

That is why the present moment should not be mistaken for a return to the Concert of Europe, even though the second Trump administration has at times shown an ambition to engineer a form of great-power coordination through notions such as a Group of Two with China or a “Core Five” of the US, China, Russia, India and Japan.

The Concert of Europe was a post-war agreement among Europe’s major powers to preserve the territorial and political status quo. The system was conservative, elitist and often coercive, but it rested on a minimal strategic consensus. The great powers did not merely claim exceptional rights; they also accepted some shared responsibility for maintaining order. Today’s world has the exceptionalism without the consensus, the appetite for influence without the institutional discipline.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}International law still exists, but it no longer reliably restrains actors as states increasingly act first and justify those deeds later

International law still exists, but it no longer reliably restrains actors as states increasingly act first and justify those deeds later