For more than seventy years, the world comforted itself with a powerful narrative. After the devastation of two world wars, it was believed that humanity had learned a collective lesson. The international system would no longer be governed solely by brute force but by law, institutions, and shared norms. Sovereignty would be respected, borders would be protected, and the use of force would be restrained by global rules. Institutions such as the United Nations were meant to stand as guardians of this order, ensuring that even the most powerful states could not act without accountability.
It was an elegant vision. The “rules-based international order” promised that moral progress had tempered power politics. The horrors of the twentieth century had supposedly convinced nations that stability required cooperation and restraint. Human rights would apply across borders, diplomacy would prevail over aggression, and international law would serve as a shield for weaker states. For decades, this narrative offered reassurance that the global system had evolved beyond the harsh logic of raw geopolitical competition.
Yet history has a persistent way of intruding upon comforting illusions. Again and again, moments of crisis expose how fragile those assurances become when confronted with strategic interests and military capability. The assumption that law restrains power has increasingly come under strain, revealing that the global order remains deeply shaped by the calculations of dominant states.
The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in a reported joint strike by the United States and Israel, would represent more than a geopolitical shock. Such an event would symbolize the erosion of the very principles that the post-1945 order claimed to uphold. Regardless of one’s view of Khamenei’s leadership, the method of removal would carry profound implications: a sovereign leader eliminated by external force, outside the framework of declared war, international tribunal, or universally sanctioned mandate. Strip away the language of deterrence and strategic necessity, and the message appears starkly simple: power decides.
This pattern is not unprecedented. The removal of Saddam Hussein followed an invasion justified by claims of weapons that were never found, ending in his execution after a controversial trial. Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed amid a NATO-backed intervention that plunged Libya into prolonged instability. The Mohammad Reza Pahlavi spent his final days in exile after geopolitical tides shifted against him. Bashar al‑Assad has endured years of isolation, sanctions, and proxy conflict. Even Nicolás Maduro has repeatedly been discussed in terms of regime change by external powers.
Entire regions have endured invasion, bombing campaigns, sanctions regimes, and proxy wars. Countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and now potentially Iran have all been drawn into cycles of intervention and instability. Meanwhile, the devastation in the Gaza Strip continues to unfold with enormous humanitarian consequences. Across these conflicts, civilian casualties in places such as Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Afghanistan have reached staggering levels over the past two decades.
Each intervention arrives wrapped in its own justification: combating terrorism, preventing proliferation, protecting civilians, or ensuring regional stability. From the perspective of Western governments, these actions are often framed as defensive or necessary responses to serious threats. Terrorist networks, nuclear proliferation, militant groups, and authoritarian repression are genuine dangers in the contemporary world. Not every intervention is purely cynical, and the security concerns cited by states cannot simply be dismissed.
However, international order depends not only on intentions but on consistency. The perception that rules are applied selectively undermines the legitimacy of the entire system. When some occupations are labeled illegal while others are redefined as security operations, when certain civilian deaths provoke global outrage while others are dismissed as collateral damage, the claim of universal law begins to weaken. In such circumstances, international law risks appearing less like an impartial framework and more like an instrument shaped by the interests of powerful actors.
Realist scholars of international relations have long argued that the global system ultimately runs on balances of power rather than moral ideals. Institutions constrain states only when powerful states accept those constraints or when rival powers impose them through competition. Without counterweights, the language of universal principles becomes increasingly fragile. Morality, in this environment, becomes optional rather than binding.
If that trajectory continues, the very phrase “rules-based order” begins to lose meaning. What replaces it is something closer to managed anarchy: a world where dominance substitutes for consensus and fear performs the role that law once claimed to play. Advocates of hard power argue that deterrence requires visible resolve. Adversaries, they say, must believe that force will be used if necessary, and hesitation can invite aggression.
History does provide examples supporting this argument. Strong deterrence has sometimes prevented conflict. Yet deterrence without restraint easily slides into provocation, and power exercised without accountability generates instability. A world in which legality is defined solely by the strongest actors cannot remain stable, because strength itself is never permanent. The hegemon of one era may become the challenger in another, and precedents established today rarely remain confined to their original context.
This raises a profound question for the future of global politics. If the killing of a sovereign leader becomes an accepted tool of strategy, what prevents other states from invoking the same logic? What argument could dissuade emerging powers from conducting their own “defensive” strikes beyond their borders? Once sovereignty is pierced, the precedent extends to all states, not just the immediate actors involved.
The irony is striking. The post-1945 international system was designed precisely to prevent such spirals. The architects of that order sought to ensure that force would be used only as a last resort and, ideally, under collective international authorization. Instead, the world increasingly witnesses coalitions of the willing replacing universal mandates and strategic necessity eclipsing global consensus.
The implications extend far beyond any single conflict. Rising powers are observing closely. Middle powers are recalculating their alliances and strategic doctrines. Smaller states are drawing conclusions about survival in a system where legal protections appear uncertain. If the lesson they absorb is that only military capability guarantees security, then a new arms race—conventional, cyber, and nuclear—may become not just likely but rational.
That is the hidden cost of selective order: the widespread proliferation of insecurity.
Stability built upon repeated shocks is ultimately fragile. Genuine international order requires reciprocity and restraint—a shared understanding that even the most powerful actors operate within limits. Without that principle, the concept of an “international community” becomes largely rhetorical, and the global system gradually fragments into competing spheres of influence.
Power will always shape world politics. That reality has never disappeared. The deeper question is whether those who possess power are willing to restrain themselves in the interest of long-term legitimacy. Authority that relies solely on force eventually erodes the very legitimacy that sustains it.
If such restraint disappears, what the world is witnessing is not the defense of international order but the unveiling of its disorder—deliberate, calculated, and fundamentally lawless. History suggests that such moments rarely pass quietly. When the balance between law and power collapses, the consequences are rarely contained, and the costs are ultimately borne by the entire world.
Shafaqna Pakistan
pakstan.shafaqna.com
Note: Shafaqna do not endorse the views expressed in the article
