Dr. Hasan Ulusoy, Dr. Özgür H. Çɪnar | May 26, 2026
John Minchillo/AP
One of international law’s oldest and most hard-won achievements risks being dismantled in plain sight, and the legal community has not yet reckoned with what that would mean in practice for international relations. Article 2(4) of the United Nations (UN) Charter embodies a foundational prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of states, and the provision was intentionally drafted broadly in order to prevent states from reviving older doctrines of coercive intervention and unilateral warfare under alternative legal or political pretexts.
Although Article 51 preserves an inherent right of self-defense, that exception has traditionally been interpreted narrowly, permitting force only where it is necessary and proportionate in response to an actual or imminent armed attack. The international actors of the post-war order understood, with the clarity born of the catastrophe of World War II, that a world governed solely by power rather than law was a world perpetually self-destructive for all. That understanding is now under increasing pressure.
We are not concerned with a single violation, but rather with the way in which they are being framed and absorbed. Powerful states are gradually reinterpreting international law, stretching concepts such as self-defense and necessity beyond their original meaning. This is different and more dangerous than straightforward non-compliance. If a rule is openly breached, one can at least push back against it. But when a rule is subtly altered over time, there is a tacit institutionalization of complicity.
The Gaza Question and the Limits of Legal Tolerance
Gaza has become the clearest stress test of Article 2(4) in a generation. Large-scale military operations conducted under the pretext of self-defence, resulting in significant civilian casualties, have given rise to serious allegations of violations of proportionality and distinction. International humanitarian law does not prohibit all civilian casualties, even in densely populated areas, but it does require attacks to remain proportionate and civilians not to be treated as military targets. Nor does the use of human shields absolve attacking parties of those obligations. In Gaza, the scale of civilian deaths, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated strikes on protected sites have therefore led to serious allegations that these principles have not been respected.
More concerning is the inability of the international community, including the UN, to respond consistently to these alleged violations. This is generating a settled expectation that sufficiently powerful states may invoke expansive theories of self-defence while avoiding meaningful legal or political consequences. Over time, repeated departures from established legal limits, when tolerated or left unenforced, risk reshaping the practical meaning of Article 2(4) by normalizing conduct the Charter was designed to prohibit. In that sense, the danger is the gradual transformation of the prohibition on the use of force from a binding legal constraint into a flexible standard applied unevenly according to geopolitical power.
Sovereignty as a Compromised Concept
Alongside the erosion of the jus in bello, the principle of state sovereignty itself is increasingly being hollowed out. This is not a separate development, but a direct consequence of the weakening of Article 2(4), whose purpose was to protect states from coercive interference by more powerful actors. Unlawful renditions, military operations on the territory of non-consenting states, and the growing tendency to treat sovereign decisions as obstacles rather than legal constraints reflect a broader shift in which sovereignty operates unevenly across the international system. In practice, sovereignty remains a meaningful restraint for weaker states, while more powerful states often treat it as negotiable.
Double standards are not new, but what is striking now is the brazenness. Powerful states increasingly appear less concerned with demonstrating that their conduct falls within established legal exceptions and more willing to treat legal justification as optional or retrospective. Recent rhetoric surrounding territorial acquisition, cross-border strikes, and unilateral military operations has at times been framed in openly strategic or political terms with little effort to situate such conduct within the traditional limits of Article 2(4) or Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. International lawyers are trained to look for opinio juris – the sense of legal obligation distinguishing binding law from mere habit. When states no longer feel compelled even to articulate why their conduct is lawful, opinio juris erodes in real time.
This is particularly worrisome when dealing with regimes accused of endangering international peace and security. In response to post-Cold War conflicts in the Balkans and Sub-Saharan Africa, the international community developed the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), aligned with the UN’s “Uniting for Peace” principle. Adopted unanimously at the 2005 UN World Summit, R2P provided a framework for collective action against states accused of atrocity crimes or threats to international peace and security. Although enforcement has often been constrained by Security Council deadlock, the doctrine nonetheless contributed to the development of opinio juris by providing a degree of legal justification and legitimacy for military operations affecting territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Yet recent developments in countries such as Venezuela and Iran, as well as aggressive rhetoric concerning Greenland, should be regarded as serious setbacks to the current international legal system. If states normalize interventionist rhetoric untethered from established legal standards, they risk creating precedents that further erode the prohibition on the use of force.
The Need to Address Institutional Impediments in UN Decision-Making
Finally, we reach the UN Security Council’s veto problem. The veto was a deliberate design feature, accepted as the prize of great-power participation. But it also means that the collective security system is structurally incapable of responding effectively to violations committed by, or politically aligned with, any permanent member, because any one of those states can block resolutions authorizing sanctions, investigations, ceasefires, or the use of collective measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. In practice, this creates a system in which enforcement often depends less on the gravity of the alleged violation than on the geopolitical interests of the permanent members themselves. Accordingly, reform efforts should be intensified.
The norms and principles, such as the “Uniting for Peace” procedure and R2P, on the one hand, and the relevant mechanisms, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), on the other, offer partial alternatives and deserve more serious utilization than they currently receive. Although neither institution can fully overcome the political limits of the UN Security Council, both can help preserve the authority of international law by clarifying legal obligations, documenting violations, and increasing the political and reputational costs of unlawful conduct even where direct enforcement remains difficult. So is the development of clearer legal standards around economic coercion – an area where the law remains underdeveloped and where powerful actors currently operate in a grey legal zone.
What is Actually at Stake
The prohibition on the use of force is under sustained pressure from multiple directions: expansive doctrinal reinterpretation, selective enforcement, and an institutional architecture ill-equipped to hold great powers accountable. States currently exploiting legal flexibility may find, as power balances shift, that they have weakened the very rules that could one day protect them. Yet long-term self-interest has rarely been enough to alter short-term political behavior.
A choice now confronts the international system: uphold a rule-based order grounded in legal constraints or accept a power-driven and unstable system. The former may be politically difficult, but it remains the only viable path to sustainable peace and stability. The latter invites long-term instability in exchange for short-term gain. The preservation of international law is therefore not merely a normative aspiration but a practical necessity. If the current trajectory continues, the international system risks becoming increasingly fragmented, unpredictable, and prone to conflict. Once the long-established threshold of international law is eroded, the result would represent a collective loss for the international community, ushering in deeper instability.
The task for scholars and practitioners is to think carefully about what can realistically be done within it. This includes identifying pressure points, determining which institutional levers remain functional, and framing the case for the prohibition on the use of force in ways that connect with political realities. Cataloguing violations is necessary but insufficient. The harder question, which reforms, arguments, and coalitions might slow or reverse the erosion, deserves more sustained attention. The world is in urgent need of collective wisdom in which diplomacy and international law are once again effectively used in the pursuit of international peace and security.