From Kosovo to Crimea, the hypocrisy of Washington's 'rules-based order' would be funny if it weren't so serious

By Glenn Diesen, professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway

While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the principle of sovereign inequality.

The rules-based international order is commonly presented as international law plus international human rights law, which appears benign and progressive. However, this entails introducing contradictory principles and rules. The consequence is a system devoid of uniform rules, in which “might makes right.” International human rights law introduces a set of rules to elevate the rights of the individual, yet human-centric security often contradicts state-centric security as the foundation of international law.

The US as the hegemonic state can then choose between human-centric security and state-centric security, while adversaries must abide strictly by state-centric security due to their alleged lack of liberal democratic credentials. For example, state-centric security as the foundation of international law insists on the territorial integrity of states, while human-centric security allows for secession under the principle of self-determination. The US will thus insist on territorial integrity in allied countries such as Ukraine, Georgia or Spain, while supporting self-determination within adversarial states such as Serbia, China, Russia and Syria. The US can interfere in the domestic affairs of adversaries to promote liberal democratic values, yet the US adversaries do not have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US. To facilitate a hegemonic international order, there cannot be equal sovereignty for all states.

Constructing the hegemonic rules-based international order

The process of constructing alternative sources of legitimacy to facilitate sovereign inequality began with NATO’s illegal invasion of Yugoslavia in 1999 without a UN mandate. The violation of international law was justified by liberal values. Even the legitimacy of the UN Security Council was contested by arguing it should be circumvented as Russia and China veto of humanitarian interventionism was allegedly caused by their lack of liberal democratic values.

The efforts to establish alternative sources of authority continued in 2003 to gain legitimacy for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Former US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, called for establishing an “Alliance of Democracies” as a key element of US foreign policy. A similar proposal suggested establishing a “Concert of Democracies,” in which liberal democracies could act in the spirit of the UN without being constrained by the veto power of authoritarian states. During the 2008 presidential election, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain argued in favor of establishing a “League of Democracies.” In December 2021, the US organized the first “Summit for Democracy” to divide the world into liberal democracies versus authoritarian states. The White House framed sovereign inequality in the language of democracy: Washington’s interference in the domestic affairs of other states was “support for democracy,” while upholding the West’s sovereignty entailed defending democracy. The aforementioned initiatives became the “rules-based international order.” With an imperialist mindset, there would be one set of rules for the “garden” and another set for the “jungle.”

The rules-based international order created a two-tiered system of legitimate versus illegitimate states. The paradox of liberal internationalism is that liberal democracies often demand that they dominate international institutions to defend democratic values from the control of the majority. Yet, a durable and resilient international system capable of developing common rules is imperative for international governance and to resolve disputes among states.

International law in accordance with the UN Charter is based on the Westphalian principle of sovereign equality as “all states are equal.” In contrast, the rules-based international order is a hegemonic system based on sovereign inequality. Such a system of sovereign inequality follows the principle from George Orwell’s 'Animal Farm' that stipulates “all animals [states] are equal but some animals [states] are more equal than others.” In Kosovo, the West promoted self-determination as a normative right of secession that had to be prioritized above territorial integrity. In South Ossetia and Crimea, the West insisted that the sanctity of territorial integrity, as stipulated in the UN Charter, must be prioritized over self-determination.

Uniform rules replaced with a tribunal of public opinion

Instead of resolving conflicts through diplomacy and uniform rules, there is an incentive to manipulate, moralize and propagandize as international disputes are decided by a tribunal of public opinion when there are competing principles. Deceit and extreme language have thus become commonplace. In 1999, the US and UK especially presented false accusations about war crimes to make interventionism legitimate. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the world that the Yugoslav authorities were “set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War. It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide.”

The rules-based international order fails to establish common unifying rules of how to govern international relations, which is the fundamental function of world order. Both China and Russia have denounced the rules-based international order as a dual system to facilitate double standards. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng asserted that the rules-based international order introduces the “law of the jungle” insofar as universally recognized international law is replaced by unilateralism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov similarly criticized the rules-based international order for creating a parallel legal framework to legitimize unilateralism:

“The West has been coming up with multiple formats such as the French-German Alliance for Multilateralism, the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, the Global Partnership to Protect Media Freedom, the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the Call for Action to Strengthen Respect for International Humanitarian Law – all these initiatives deal with subjects that are already on the agenda of the UN and its specialized agencies. These partnerships exist outside of the universally recognized structures so as to agree on what the West wants in a restricted circle without any opponents. After that they take their decisions to the UN and present them in a way that de facto amounts to an ultimatum. If the UN does not agree, since imposing anything on countries that do not share the same ‘values’ is never easy, they take unilateral action.”

The rules-based international order does not consist of any specific rules, is not accepted internationally, and does not deliver order. The rules-based international order should be considered a failed experiment from the unipolar world order, which must be dismantled to restore international law as a requirement for stability and peace.