Lucia Hubinská, Wing So: When “Illegal” Is Not Enough: War, Power, and the Limits of International Law

When “Illegal” Is Not Enough: War, Power, and the Limits of International Law / Keď „nelegálne“ nestačí: vojna, moc a limity medzinárodného práva

Argumenty na ospravedlnenie preventívneho útoku na Irán sa dnes do veľkej miery rozpadli a politické dôsledky sa odohrávajú na verejnosti. To, čo bolo ešte pred niekoľkými týždňami prezentované ako nevyhnutný akt sebaobrany, sa zmenilo na zdroj hlbokého rozdelenia v rámci Spojených štátov. Dňa 17. marca rezignoval vlastný šéf protiterorizmu prezidenta Trumpa, Joe Kent — Trumpom nominovaný a Senátom potvrdený len minulý rok — v náhlom proteste proti kampani. Vo svojom rezignačnom liste Kent uviedol, že nemôže s čistým svedomím podporovať prebiehajúcu vojnu, pričom argumentoval, že Irán nepredstavuje bezprostrednú hrozbu pre Spojené štáty. (preklad celého textu nižšie)

The case for justifying the pre-emptive attack on Iran has now largely collapsed, and the political consequences are unfolding in public. What only weeks ago was presented as a necessary act of self-defence has turned into a source of deep division inside the United States. On March 17, President Trump’s own counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent — a Trump appointee confirmed by the Senate only last year — resigned abruptly in protest over the campaign. In his resignation letter, Kent said that he could not in good conscience support the ongoing war, arguing that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

The point is not merely political. It is also legal. Under both U.S. constitutional practice and international law, the use of force in self-defence requires the existence of an immediate and unavoidable danger. The U.S. War Powers Resolution, as well as the long-standing Caroline standard in international law, both hinge on the requirement of imminence. Counterterrorism and international law experts have therefore noted that the absence of a clear and present threat raises serious doubts about the legality of the operation. Kent’s letter echoes precisely these legal principles, and his resignation has intensified a debate that now extends far beyond Washington, exposing deep disagreements within the Western political establishment as a whole.

In response, the official, expert, and journalistic language surrounding the conflict has followed a familiar and almost ritualised pattern. A number of Western leaders, foreign ministries, and much of the mainstream commentariat have once again framed the issue in the vocabulary of legality, declaring the war — or at least some of the more egregious attacks — to be a “violation of international law.” United Nations experts, former NATO officials, and numerous legal scholars have expressed similar views. Norway’s foreign minister stated openly that a pre-emptive strike cannot be justified without proof of an immediate threat, warning that bypassing this standard weakens the legal framework that is supposed to prevent wars in the first place.

Across the Global South and much of the Arab world, the strikes were widely condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Even among Western allies there is clear discomfort. Analysts close to NATO and EU institutions have warned that if countries that present themselves as defenders of international law begin to ignore those rules when it suits them, they lose the credibility to demand compliance from others. The disagreement therefore appears, at least on the surface, to be a dispute about law. Regardless of one’s understanding of these legal principles and their application, the deeper question is whether such legal debates and declarations in themselves can bring an end to bombing, killing, the destruction of human lives, livelihoods, and the environment.

The historical record answers that question in the negative. Statements that an action constitutes a violation of international law sound principled, serious, and authoritative. Yet this formula achieves very little, precisely because of its apparent neutrality and objectivity. Its limitations are twofold. First, legal language reduces complex acts of domination, coercion, and destruction to breaches of technical rules, stripping them of their historical and political meaning. Second, international law itself remains structurally weak, unevenly enforced, and dependent on the cooperation of the very states whose conduct it is supposed to regulate. This is a point that has been emphasized by scholars of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) school, which looks at international law from the perspective of those whom it was designed to suppress and control.

Therefore, in practice, the declaration that an act is unlawful rarely carries the expectation of real consequences. For political leaders, this makes the language of legality extremely convenient: it allows them to condemn an action while avoiding the need to confront the deeper realities of power. Under these conditions, the phrase “violation of international law” can also function as a form of political pacification. Once an act has been labelled illegal, the impression is created that the necessary judgment has already been made and that little more remains to be done. Because who is going to hold the world’s greatest power to account? How often has international law handed down judgments against those who have created it? The language of legality substitutes for meaningful political action, allowing governments to appear principled while sustaining policies that produce the very outcomes they formally condemn.

Morality does not necessarily follow from legality

While deeply rooted in contemporary political language, it is a common mistake to assume that legality and morality coincide. On a theoretical level, no contemporary legal theory would take the view that morality automatically follows from legality. The historical record repeatedly demonstrates that the two categories overlap only partially. Entire systems of domination have operated within perfectly legal frameworks. European colonial expansion was justified through treaties and doctrines of sovereignty; apartheid in South Africa rested on legislation passed by a lawful parliament; racial segregation in the United States was upheld for decades by courts applying existing law. The modern international order has not eliminated this gap. It has merely translated it into more technical terms.

Economic sanctions provide one of the clearest examples. The sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 were not unilateral; they were authorized by the United Nations Security Council under Resolution 661 and subsequent resolutions. These sanctions possess the highest validity within the international legal order. Yet throughout the 1990s, UN agencies and humanitarian organizations reported severe shortages of medicine, the collapse of water treatment systems, rising child mortality, and the near destruction of the Iraqi middle class. In 1999, a UNICEF report estimated that hundreds of thousands of children had died as a result of the deterioration of living conditions during the period of sanctions. While none of these consequences rendered the policy illegal, one must be left questioning the moral justification of such measures which are formally “legal”.

Similar dynamics can be observed in the unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran, particularly after the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018 and reintroduced secondary sanctions affecting banking, oil exports, and access to international financial systems. Although these measures were defended as lawful instruments of US foreign policy, their practical effect included shortages of medical supplies, inflation, and the weakening of civilian infrastructure. Venezuela has faced comparable restrictions, including financial sanctions and asset freezes, which the UN Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures has repeatedly warned can have devastating humanitarian consequences even when formally legal. In fact, a landmark study of mortality rates and sanctions published in The Lancet Global Health showed that US EU sanctions have contributed to 38 million deaths between 1971 and 2021 — killed approximately 560,000 people every year in the last decade of the study. The fact that such policies are lawful under their respective legal frameworks does not make them morally justifiable nor neutral, any more than the legality of colonial rule made it just.

This tension between legality and moral judgment is therefore not unique to the present conflict. From the U.S. invasion of Iraq to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, state actions can formally be described as violations of international law. Yet, such statements fail to capture the reality of the events as purely legal language can obscure the extent to which the law itself has historically been shaped by relations of power, and has often functioned not only as a constraint on international politics, but also as one of its instruments.

The Architecture of Impunity

The limited effectiveness of international law is not simply the result of hypocrisy; it follows from the structure of the system itself. Unlike domestic legal orders, which ultimately rely on the coercive authority of the state, international law operates in a world of formally sovereign actors, none of whom recognizes a higher authority capable of enforcing compliance. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) can issue binding judgments, but it has no police force. The International Criminal Court (ICC) can issue arrest warrants, but it depends on states to execute them. Even the United Nations Security Council, the closest thing the international system has to an executive authority, is constrained by the veto power of its permanent members. The consequences of this structure are visible in some of the most important cases of the last decades.

Nicaragua v. United States is a well-known decision in 1986 where the ICJ found that Washington had violated international law by training and funding Contra rebels and mining Nicaraguan harbours. The ICJ ordered the United States, among other things, to cease these illegal activities and pay reparations to Nicaragua. The United States maintained that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over them, and even after that argument was rejected, the United States simply ignored the ICJ and refused to comply with the ruling. No sanctions followed, and the judgment had no practical effect on American policy. In 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq without explicit authorization from the Security Council. Given the central role that Council approval plays in the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force, many international lawyers described the invasion as incompatible with the Charter. That said, to this very day, no international tribunal ever prosecuted the political leaders responsible for the decision of this illegal invasion.

In 2011, NATO’s intervention in Libya began under Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized the “protection of civilians”, but the operation quickly and predictably expanded into a campaign that resulted in regime change and the collapse of the Libyan state. Whether the intervention exceeded its mandate became a subject of legal debate, but no legal mechanism existed to reverse the outcome or to hold those responsible accountable. These examples illustrate a pattern that is difficult to ignore: enforcement of international law is uneven, and accountability is shaped less by universal principles than by geopolitical power. Weak states appear before courts, but powerful states reinterpret the rules.

TWAIL and the Colonial Grammar of Law

For scholars associated with TWAIL, such as Upendra Baxi, Antony Anghie, Makau Mutua, and B.S. Chimni, these problems reflect not only technical limitations but historical origins. Modern international law developed alongside European expansion, and its concepts of sovereignty, intervention, and civilization were shaped in a world defined by colonial hierarchy. Even after formal decolonization, the institutions of global governance continued to reflect unequal distributions of power, particularly through the structure of the Security Council that by design guarantees the power of the victors of World War II, and the dominance of Western states in international financial and legal institutions.

As a result, states in the Global South often find themselves appealing to legal rules that were not written under conditions of equality. During debates over Iraq, over sanctions, and in numerous cases before the International Court of Justice, weaker states rely on the language of law because they lack military or economic leverage, even though the interpretation of that law has long been influenced by the most powerful actors. When Western governments speak of a “rules-based international order,” they speak not only as participants but also as authors of the rules — and powers with the implicit rules to bend and rewrite them. In a sense, this is an international law application of Marx’s metaphor of the camera obscura, which illustrates how ideology, like a dark chamber camera, projects an upside-down, distorted image of reality.

This is what allows governments to condemn selectively — or, indeed, perpetrate crimes at will — while presenting themselves as neutral defenders of principle. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was widely considered illegal but morally justified. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was defended through contested legal arguments but widely regarded as morally indefensible. Sanctions on Iraq were legal but devastating. The ICJ ruling against the United States in the Nicaragua case was ignored without consequence. The dockets of the ICC have always been overwhelming filled with African leaders who lost the wars that were imposed on their people, while major imperialist powers remain scot-free.

To offer another example, the American Service-Members‘ Protection Act (ASPA) of 2002, often (aptly) nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act”, contains various measures aimed at nullifying the jurisdiction of the ICC. In particular, ASPA authorises the US to use military force to release American or allied personnel being held by the ICC, and also prohibits all federal, state, and local governments (including courts and law enforcement), from assisting the ICC in investigating or arresting US citizens or permanent residents.

Due Process, Technicalities, and the Politics of Naming

Another limitation arises from the very features that give legal institutions their legitimacy. International courts operate according to strict evidentiary standards, careful procedures, and narrow definitions of crime. Genocide, for example, requires proof of specific intent to destroy a protected group, a threshold that is deliberately difficult to meet. War crimes must be established through detailed factual records. Crimes against humanity require proof of systematic conduct. These evidential and procedural safeguards are doubtlessly essential in law, but they result in a significant gap between the occurrence of crimes and their legal recognition.

During the wars in the former Yugoslavia, for example, the International Criminal Tribunal took years to establish responsibility for crimes that were already widely understood to have occurred. In more recent proceedings before the International Court of Justice concerning the war in Gaza, the Court has been able to issue provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention, but it cannot instantly determine whether genocide has in fact occurred given its procedural constraints. Governments are therefore able to speak cautiously, limiting themselves to language such as “allegations” or “concerns” of genocide, even when the scale of destruction and death is evident to anyone watching. On average, the ICJ takes more than four years from start to finish until a judgment is delivered, and complicated cases often take more than a decade. In practice, ICC cases often take even longer, as the pre-trial investigation process alone frequently takes up to five years, and the trials themselves often go on for many years given the scale of the mass atrocities involved in these cases.

Legal determinations under due process require time. The art of political doublespeak can easily abuse this time. This does not mean that international law should be abandoned as hopeless, but the point is that legal vocabulary should not and could not replace moral judgment and political analysis. Courts are designed to establish responsibility after the fact, rather than to offer guidance to political conscience in real time as these facts occur before our eyes.

From Spectatorship to Action

If opposition to wars and atrocities are to be more than rhetorical, it cannot end with the declaration that such acts violate international law. Legality matters, but it does not exhaust the question of justice, and it does not determine the moral weight of political action. A serious critique must ask whether an act can be justified at all, whether it respects human life and sovereignty, and whether it reinforces structures of domination that the language of law alone cannot fully describe. International law remains necessary, but without moral consistency it risks becoming a language through which power speaks in the voice of principle. And when that happens, the phrase “violation of international law” no longer marks the starting point for the fight for justice: it becomes no more than a smirch that happens to pinpoint the terminal point at which criticism stops.

Despite the state of the current world, one may be tempted to jump on the bandwagon and decry international law as a dead letter. While there is still value in studying and quoting the views of the ICJ, ICC, or other international legal institutions, we cannot let this become a replacement for moral judgment, humanity, and ultimately political organisation. We call for everyone, to be well-informed by international law, but not let this language of law ironically limit our compassion and understanding of modern geopolitics. We are witnessing grave events unfolding in real time, yet in the West we have grown accustomed to experiencing suffering at a distance. Violence, destruction, and death are increasingly something that happens elsewhere, to others, while we respond through commentary, legal terminology, and carefully worded condemnations. In this context, the language of international law can become a form of moral insulation — a way of acknowledging injustice without allowing it to disturb our sense of order, stability, or innocence.

To declare that something is illegal is often to feel that the necessary judgment has already been made. Once the label has been applied, the conscience is eased, the discussion moves on, and the machinery that produced the injustice continues to operate. The vocabulary of legality risks becoming a substitute for political responsibility, allowing us to believe that by naming a wrong we have already contributed to correcting it.

But history suggests otherwise. Many of the most destructive actions of the modern world were widely recognised as unlawful, unjust, or immoral even as they were being carried out, and yet they continued with little interruption. The great speeches inspiring the fight against apartheid saw no need to be cloaked behind a veil of legal jargon. Early condemnations of slave trade by definition cannot possibly be expressed in fancy legal terminology, as they precede the legal movement that eventually led to the global ban on slavery. There is no reason for us to allow our discontent and dismay on atrocities committed around the world to be deferred to and delayed by the slow-moving gears of justice of the ICJ and the ICC. There is no need for us to frame our disgust against injustice into expressions of legal jargon, and downgrade them to heartless, gutless, and hollow speeches. After all, our reactions to these atrocious acts we witness daily do not have to be constrained to be based on the law as if we are lawyers arguing a case before the ICJ. We can all do better than that.

Politicians making references to international law and not making any value judgment beyond that is, in a sense, the equivalent of us simply sharing articles, posts, or memes as our “contribution” to civic society: gestures, but still gestures after all. If the violations we condemn are as serious as we claim, then our response cannot simply end with legal language or symbolic gestures of protest. It must also be whether we are willing to consider actions that are less comfortable, more disruptive, and more demanding: actions that challenge not only those who commit injustice, but defy the very structures that allow us to remain spectators to it.

Lucia Hubinska and Wing So

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Argumenty na ospravedlnenie preventívneho útoku na Irán sa dnes do veľkej miery rozpadli a politické dôsledky sa odohrávajú na verejnosti. To, čo bolo ešte pred niekoľkými týždňami prezentované ako nevyhnutný akt sebaobrany, sa zmenilo na zdroj hlbokého rozdelenia v rámci Spojených štátov. Dňa 17. marca rezignoval vlastný šéf protiterorizmu prezidenta Trumpa, Joe Kent — Trumpom nominovaný a Senátom potvrdený len minulý rok — v náhlom proteste proti kampani. Vo svojom rezignačnom liste Kent uviedol, že nemôže s čistým svedomím podporovať prebiehajúcu vojnu, pričom argumentoval, že Irán nepredstavuje bezprostrednú hrozbu pre Spojené štáty.

Nejde len o politickú otázku. Ide aj o právnu otázku. Podľa ústavnej praxe USA aj medzinárodného práva si použitie sily v sebaobrane vyžaduje existenciu okamžitého a neodvratného nebezpečenstva. Rezolúcia o vojnových právomociach USA, rovnako ako dlhodobo uznávaný štandard Caroline v medzinárodnom práve, sú založené na požiadavke bezprostrednosti. Odborníci na boj proti terorizmu a medzinárodné právo preto upozornili, že absencia jasnej a prítomnej hrozby vyvoláva vážne pochybnosti o zákonnosti operácie. Kentov list presne odráža tieto právne princípy a jeho rezignácia posilnila diskusiu, ktorá dnes presahuje hranice Washingtonu a odhaľuje hlboké nezhody v rámci západného politického establišmentu ako celku.

V reakcii na to sa oficiálny, expertný a novinársky jazyk obklopujúci konflikt riadil známym a takmer ritualizovaným vzorcom. Viacerí západní lídri, ministerstvá zahraničných vecí a veľká časť mainstreamových komentátorov opäť formulovali problém v terminológii legality a označili vojnu — alebo aspoň niektoré z najzávažnejších útokov — za „porušenie medzinárodného práva“. Podobné stanoviská vyjadrili aj experti OSN, bývalí predstavitelia NATO a mnohí právni vedci. Nórsky minister zahraničných vecí otvorene uviedol, že preventívny úder nemožno ospravedlniť bez dôkazu bezprostrednej hrozby, a varoval, že obchádzanie tohto štandardu oslabuje právny rámec, ktorý má v prvom rade zabraňovať vojnám.

V krajinách globálneho Juhu a vo veľkej časti arabského sveta boli útoky široko odsúdené ako porušenie suverenity. Aj medzi západnými spojencami je zjavné nepohodlie. Analytici blízki NATO a inštitúciám EÚ varovali, že ak štáty, ktoré sa prezentujú ako obhajcovia medzinárodného práva, začnú tieto pravidlá ignorovať, keď sa im to hodí, strácajú dôveryhodnosť požadovať ich dodržiavanie od iných. Spor sa preto na prvý pohľad javí ako spor o právo. Bez ohľadu na to, ako tieto právne princípy chápeme a aplikujeme, hlbšou otázkou zostáva, či takéto právne debaty a vyhlásenia samy osebe dokážu zastaviť bombardovanie, zabíjanie a ničenie ľudských životov, živobytia a životného prostredia.

Historická skúsenosť na túto otázku odpovedá negatívne. Vyhlásenia, že určitý čin predstavuje porušenie medzinárodného práva, znejú zásadne, vážne a autoritatívne. Táto formulácia však dosahuje veľmi málo, práve pre svoju zdanlivú neutralitu a objektivitu. Jej limity sú dvojité. Po prvé, právny jazyk redukuje komplexné akty dominancie, nátlaku a ničenia na porušenia technických pravidiel, čím ich zbavuje historického a politického významu. Po druhé, samotné medzinárodné právo zostáva štrukturálne slabé, nerovnomerne vymáhané a závislé od spolupráce tých istých štátov, ktorých konanie má regulovať. Na tento bod poukazujú vedci združení v škole Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), ktorá skúma medzinárodné právo z perspektívy tých, ktorých malo potláčať a kontrolovať.

V praxi preto vyhlásenie, že určitý čin je nezákonný, len zriedka nesie očakávanie reálnych dôsledkov. Pre politických lídrov je jazyk legality mimoriadne pohodlný: umožňuje im odsúdiť čin bez potreby čeliť hlbším realitám moci. Za týchto podmienok môže fráza „porušenie medzinárodného práva“ fungovať aj ako forma politickej pacifikácie. Po označení činu za nelegálny vzniká dojem, že potrebný súd už bol vynesený a že už netreba veľa robiť. Veď kto bude brať na zodpovednosť najväčšiu svetovú mocnosť? Ako často medzinárodné právo rozhodovalo proti tým, ktorí ho vytvorili? Jazyk legality tak nahrádza zmysluplnú politickú akciu a umožňuje vládam pôsobiť zásadovo, pričom zároveň udržiavajú politiky, ktoré produkujú tie isté výsledky, ktoré formálne odsudzujú.

Morálka nevyplýva nevyhnutne z legality

Hoci je tento jazyk hlboko zakorenený v súčasnom politickom diskurze, je bežnou chybou predpokladať, že legalita a morálka sa prekrývajú. Na teoretickej úrovni žiadna súčasná právna teória netvrdí, že morálka automaticky vyplýva z legality. História opakovane ukazuje, že tieto dve kategórie sa prekrývajú len čiastočne. Celé systémy dominancie fungovali v rámci úplne legálnych rámcov. Európska koloniálna expanzia bola ospravedlňovaná zmluvami a doktrínami suverenity; apartheid v Južnej Afrike spočíval na legislatíve prijatej zákonným parlamentom; rasová segregácia v USA bola desaťročia udržiavaná súdmi aplikujúcimi platné právo. Moderný medzinárodný poriadok túto priepasť neodstránil — len ju preložil do technickejších pojmov.

Ekonomické sankcie poskytujú jeden z najjasnejších príkladov. Sankcie uvalené na Irak po vojne v Perzskom zálive v roku 1991 neboli jednostranné; schválila ich Bezpečnostná rada OSN rezolúciou 661 a ďalšími rezolúciami. Tieto sankcie mali najvyššiu právnu legitimitu v rámci medzinárodného poriadku. Napriek tomu počas 90. rokov agentúry OSN a humanitárne organizácie hlásili vážne nedostatky liekov, kolaps systémov úpravy vody, rastúcu detskú úmrtnosť a takmer zničenie irackej strednej triedy. Správa UNICEF z roku 1999 odhadovala, že stovky tisíc detí zomreli v dôsledku zhoršenia životných podmienok počas sankcií. Hoci tieto dôsledky neznamenali nezákonnosť politiky, vyvolávajú vážne otázky o jej morálnej oprávnenosti.

Podobnú dynamiku možno pozorovať pri jednostranných sankciách voči Iránu, najmä po odstúpení USA od jadrovej dohody v roku 2018, ako aj vo Venezuele. Štúdia publikovaná v The Lancet Global Health dokonca ukázala, že sankcie USA a EÚ prispeli medzi rokmi 1971 a 2021 k 38 miliónom úmrtí — približne 560 000 ročne v poslednom desaťročí sledovaného obdobia. Skutočnosť, že takéto politiky sú legálne, neznamená, že sú morálne oprávnené.

Toto napätie medzi legalitou a morálnym hodnotením nie je jedinečné pre súčasný konflikt. Od invázie USA do Iraku až po ruskú intervenciu na Ukrajine možno štátne konanie označiť ako porušenie medzinárodného práva. Takéto tvrdenia však nedokážu zachytiť realitu udalostí, pretože právny jazyk často zakrýva, do akej miery bolo právo historicky formované mocenskými vzťahmi a fungovalo nielen ako obmedzenie, ale aj ako nástroj medzinárodnej politiky.

Architektúra beztrestnosti

Obmedzená účinnosť medzinárodného práva nevyplýva len z pokrytectva, ale zo samotnej štruktúry systému. Na rozdiel od vnútroštátneho práva, ktoré sa opiera o donucovaciu moc štátu, medzinárodné právo funguje vo svete formálne suverénnych aktérov bez nadradenej autority schopnej vynútiť jeho dodržiavanie. Medzinárodný súdny dvor (ICJ) môže vydávať záväzné rozhodnutia, ale nemá vlastnú políciu. Medzinárodný trestný súd (ICC) môže vydávať zatykače, no ich vykonanie závisí od štátov. Bezpečnostná rada OSN je obmedzená právom veta stálych členov.

Prípad Nikaragua vs. USA z roku 1986 ukázal, že aj keď ICJ konštatoval porušenie práva a nariadil reparácie, USA rozhodnutie jednoducho ignorovali bez následkov. Podobne invázia do Iraku v roku 2003 nebola nikdy právne sankcionovaná. Intervencia NATO v Líbyi v roku 2011 prekročila svoj mandát bez reálnej zodpovednosti. Vymáhanie práva je teda nerovnomerné a formované geopolitickou mocou.

TWAIL a koloniálna gramatika práva

Podľa vedcov TWAIL (napr. Upendra Baxi, Antony Anghie, Makau Mutua, B. S. Chimni) majú tieto problémy historické korene. Medzinárodné právo vznikalo paralelne s európskou expanziou a jeho koncepty odrážali koloniálne hierarchie. Aj po dekolonizácii zostali globálne inštitúcie nerovné, najmä cez štruktúru Bezpečnostnej rady OSN.

Štáty globálneho Juhu sa tak často odvolávajú na pravidlá, ktoré nevznikli v podmienkach rovnosti. „Pravidlami riadený medzinárodný poriadok“ je preto zároveň systém, ktorý silní aktéri môžu ohýbať a prepisovať.

Od diváctva k činu

Ak má byť odpor voči vojnám viac než rétorika, nemôže sa skončiť pri označení „porušenie medzinárodného práva“. Legalita je dôležitá, ale nevystihuje spravodlivosť ani morálnu váhu konania. Bez morálnej konzistentnosti sa právo môže stať jazykom, ktorým moc hovorí hlasom princípu.

Dnes sledujeme utrpenie na diaľku — cez komentáre, právne termíny a opatrné odsúdenia. Jazyk práva sa môže stať formou morálnej izolácie. Označiť niečo za nelegálne často vytvára pocit, že sme už urobili dosť.

Dejiny však ukazujú opak. Najväčšie nespravodlivosti boli často známe ako nespravodlivé už počas ich páchania — a napriek tomu pokračovali. Odsúdenie otroctva či apartheidu nečakalo na právnu terminológiu. Preto by sme nemali svoje reakcie obmedzovať len na jazyk práva.

Ak sú porušenia, ktoré odsudzujeme, skutočne vážne, naša reakcia nemôže zostať pri slovách. Musí zahŕňať aj ochotu konať — aj keď je to menej pohodlné, viac rušivé a náročnejšie.

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