How legal apartheid took hold in international law

Now imagine a powerful state crossing borders, bombing a capital, and seizing a head of government, only to retroactively recast the act as “law enforcement.” Is this merely an aggressive interpretation of international law, or something more consequential? A system in which legality is defined by capability rather than principle? If so, the pattern should feel disturbingly familiar.

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It invites the inference- fair or not-that sovereignty is being treated as negotiable when it sits atop assets. And this is the culminating irony. International law was built- imperfectly, often hypocritically- but still built to prevent precisely the future that selective enforcement creates. If the “rules” bind only those without aircraft carriers, then what remains is international stratification, a hierarchy dressed as order.

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