Undermining the International Legal Order: The Impact of Institutional Weakness and Exclusionary Foreign Policy

Abstract

The creation of the new international world order was ushered in after the World War II which saw the allied powers defeat Germany in its attempt to achieve the Final Solution. The effect of World War II was that the pre-existing international legal system, the League of Nations, was abandoned, in large part due to its inability to prevent the global conflict. In other words, the evaluation of the success of the international legal system was predicated on the ability of the institutions and systems of that framework to create international peace and prevent war. It was envisioned that the new international legal system was to achieve the objective of global peace in a way that the League of Nations was not able to do. As such, the successor institution, the United Nations, had the goal of realising the unattained goal of the League. Consequently, if the United Nations were to be unable to secure global peace and if conflict was allowed to arise and escalate to war, then the swift action taken on the League should be meted out to the United Nations. This article will explore the impact of the foreign policy on the institutional strength of the United Nations and the impact on global peace and security, utilising a comparative doctrinal approach as the foundation of the research methodology. In so doing, the War on Terror, the facilitation of the Russia/Ukraine War, the inaction in the Israel/Palestine conflict and the use of international diplomacy to achieve individual state goals, will be explored. The impact will be examined with a view of determining whether the United Nations system is currently in its failed state. This is not solely due to the UN’s failure to prevent conflict, but the fact that its systems are actually facilitating it. In such a situation, the utility of the United Nations in contemporary times must be evaluated in much the same way as the League of Nation’s relevance and success were assessed by its failure to stop the World War II.

Keywords

war United Nations Security Council institutions international law League of Nations World War II veto

Introduction and Methodology

Current international law has moved significantly away from the colonial splitting of the New World by powerful states or the use of religious ideology to regulate war (O’Brien & Arend, 2003) or even the use of multi-state agreements to bring an end to a century of war (Zreik, 2021). The entire international legal order is marked by attempts by states to use principles of law to regulate war and in turn promote peace and security. The use of treaties, bilateral agreements, systems of state cooperation and even international organisations have been used to develop and advance, what is currently a global goal of maintaining peace. This is why the League of Nations was first established in 1920, as a global step in the wake of World War I. It was a mechanism to safeguard global peace. Its failure to stop World War II, resulted in the international community abandoning the ineffective system and creating a new one. However, some may argue that the United Nations (UN) is a repurposing of known systems and structures and entrenchment of institutional power by those states that were influential enough to be at the decision-making table.

The new UN system saw the creation of a participative General Assembly and the new Security Council which had five permanent members, one more than the original League’s Council. There was also a change in the international political sphere which saw a change from the permanent 4 in the League to the permanent 5 in the UN. The League’s Council comprised the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan, but the UN Security Council was made up of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China. This change may have reflected a change in the new world order and hegemony. The change in composition of the Security Council coupled with the veto power which was given to these permanent members may represent a major systemic failure of the new international legal system.

This article engages in a comparative doctrinal methodological process. There will be two forms of comparative analysis. Firstly, there will be a comparison between the League of Nations and the UN, with careful review of the institutional structures and procedures of each. This will facilitate a robust synthesis of each system. There will then be a comparative analysis among the Security Council states and how they have each used their veto power. Together with the comparisons, there will be an underpinning in the article of doctrinal research in the field to support the conclusions arrived at in the article.

This article will look specifically at the role foreign policy has played since the turn of the 21st century and how the use of the Security Council veto, as part of that foreign policy, has undermined the main goal of the UN and by extension international peace and law. Firstly, this article will examine the League of Nations and why its failure to stop World War II resulted in its abandonment and not strengthening of that system. Second will be a discussion of the UN with focus on the structure of the most undermining characteristics of the Charter. Third is an exploration of the operation of foreign policy; its non-compliance with processes established in the Charter and the impact of this non-compliance on the international rule of law. Fourth will be a discussion of the operation of the veto power over the past 25 years and the impact of those invocations on the facilitation of conflict. Fifth will be an exploration of contemporary foreign policy and executed international relations’ decisions and the impact on international law and the core UN principles. This is particularly important in the context of Security Council members who are vested with the special power of preventing conflict.

League of Nations

The League of Nations failed to intervene in many conflicts which led up to World War II (Yurtsever & HMaidan, 2019). Ironically, the goal of the League was to “promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security” (Recital of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 1919). However, the League started off as a weak institution due to the lack of enforcement mechanisms; non-membership by powerful states like the United States; and inaction against Germany’s aggression (Eloranta, 2011). Additionally, even the operation of the systems in the League resulted in inefficiencies. For example, the League’s Council, similar to the UN’s Security Council, adopted a unanimity rule with a large membership which made it unable to respond to a crisis if a Council member was a part to the dispute (Iwanami, 2011). These deficiencies help explain why the League would have been unable to stop the escalation of aggressive conduct by Germany. Therefore, it can be argued the League’s failure could have been anticipated.

The resultant failure of the League to prevent war saw the death of approximately 5,888,888 persons (Sokolov, 2009) and required the international community to frontally address the ineffectiveness of the League. As a result, the post-war global order in the late 1940s “was pinned on establishing a [. . .] body that was not [going to] repeat the League of Nations’ mistakes” (Schindlmayr, 2001). The rejection of the League of Nations was not only predicated on its failure to prevent war but also on its failure to distinguish between major powers and ordinary states (Klabbers, 2015).

However, the exact erasure required in moving away from the League is explained differently by different writers. Perhaps it may be best to describe the relationship as a causal one, and this is evidenced by the statement of Lord Robert Cecil at the final League of Nations Assembly in April 1946 in the following words, “The League is Dead; long live the United Nations!” (Cottrell, 2014). As was put by one author, “This proclamation suggests a dynastic relationship between the two landmark institutions whereby part of the DNA of the League of Nations was passed on to its progeny” (Cottrell, 2014). Therefore, a better framing of the transition from the League to the UN would be the passing of the torch from the former to the latter rather than the extinguishing of the former’s light by the latter. There is a relationship which subsists between both organisations with some of the core institutions finding their way from the League’s systems into the UN’s.

United Nations

The UN was created with a goal of preventing another war through the promotion of peace and security. In theory, those responsible for leading the UN were those states who had been instrumental in promoting peace, at the time. In practice, however, the representation in the UN’s leadership is characterised more by a desire to preserve the hegemonic powers. This latter point can be seen in the way the newly formed Security Council operated and was structured, as a direct response to the power dynamics of the League of Nations (Klabbers, 2015). As has already been mentioned, the League of Nations had a Council with four permanent members (Office of the Historian, 1920). As such, dissimilar to the League where every state had an equal vote, the five states with the strongest military and political affairs sought to protect their domestic interests and assumed permanence in the power structure of the new organisation. This was done in the UN by empowering the new permanent five with a veto power exercisable for any decision being proposed by the Security Council. The veto was given to these permanent members of the Security Council because it was felt that:

[F]rom the very beginning, the power of veto was used by all permanent members of the Security Council according to their national interests and expectations. Soon, it became obvious that the use of the veto distanced from its initial purpose – preventing the UN from taking action against any of its founding members, for self-interest and interests of allies. (Temelkovska-Anevska & Tosheva, 2019)

Unfortunately, diplomatic relations and international politics guided the exercise of the veto power. Compounding this partisan exercise of the power is the fact that the states who benefitted from this veto power are based on a world order that existed in 1945. Turning now to the legal foundation for the veto, the applicable legal authority for the veto power can be found in Article 27(3) of the UN Charter (1945) which provides that:

Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.

The operational effect of this Article is that the withdrawal of any permanent member in a vote of a resolution prevents any Resolution from being passed. This is the veto. It is this withholding power that allows any permanent member to determine what course of action can be taken by the UN in relation to the promotion of international peace and security. Interestingly, it would be untrue to say that the danger in the operation of the veto power in the Security Council was only demonstrated in practice. The reality is that observations of this potential of the veto was predicted on the establishment of the UN. As seen in the words of the New Zealand Prime Minister, Peter Fraser,

The veto which can be exercised by one of the Great Powers both in regard to itself and other nations is unfair and indefensible and may, if retained and exercised, be destructive not only of the main purposes of the international organization, but of the institution itself. (Pacific Islands Forum, 2024)

This statement was made in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference which saw the discussion, debating and finalising of the UN Charter. The statements by PM Fraser, reinforces that the structure of the new UN system presented challenges at its inception. The concerns would only be realised when the UN’s powers were tested by those to whom the power was given. To test Mr. Fraser’s prediction, it is necessary to examine the impact of the use of the veto power by permanent members of the Security Council on the UN system and international law by extension. Additionally, the by-passing of the UN Charter and approval processes, before action, also shows the inherent dismantling of the UN by the operation of foreign policy. However, before embarking on an examination of the use of the veto, there will first be a discussion of Charter-non-compliant decisions taken by major actors on the global scale.

Acting Without Authority: Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

In the now well-known “War on Terror,” there was a demonstrated use of force by the United States as a retaliation for the events which occurred on 11 September 2001. In a 2002 statement made by Colin Powell, the then US Secretary of State expressed the view that if the UN did not authorise action in Iraq, the United States would proceed with force (Powell, 2003). It should also be noted that this article does not seek to argue that the United States was not entitled to act in self-defence based on acts of aggression exacted on it, but instead the argument is made that the process set out in the UN Charter was not adhered to. In other situations where states did not obtain the necessary approval to engage in self-defence as contemplated in Article 51, there would be a breach of the procedures and by extension the Charter itself. Therefore, what is gleaned from the exercise of the right by the United States, based on its own assessment of the need, is an exercise of military sovereignty which is not capable of enjoyment by other states with less economic and military power. This is reflective of an Orwellian concept of equality, which is not equality at all (Orwell, 2021).

The challenge of a non-compliant use of force by a Member State in the UN is that it has the potential to elevate individual state interests over the goal of global peace and security. Furthermore, it can serve as the precedent for similar future action by states in their use of force. This may be why the War on Terror was then followed by an unapproved invasion in Iraq by the United States. This invasion by the United States was characterised by the Secretary General of the UN as a violation of the UN Charter, without any UN Resolution approving the action (Seepersaud, 2018). This course of conduct was again adopted by the United States in 2020, when it invoked its veto power in the Security Council in relation to a Resolution that encouraged countries to prosecute, rehabilitate and then reintegrate into society their nationals who had engaged in terrorism-related activities (Associated Press, 2020). The effect of the exercise of the veto power by the United States has highlighted that with a strong enough military, international rule of law operates differently from other states.

The systemic issue with these breaches of international law and UN procedures is that they trigger similar responses, particularly where there are alliances within the five powers. Russia has argued, in relation to Syria, that the Security Council cannot just be “a NATO get-together” and justified its exercise of its veto, on resolutions concerning sanctions and cross-border humanitarian mechanisms, on the sovereignty of the then Syrian government and the need to defend its allies:

Russia has never wavered and will not waver in using its right of veto, not only to protect its own interests and the interests of its allies, but also the interests of all our partners in the United Nations. (United Nations, 2023)

The UN system does not contemplate situations where the Great Powers, as moral and legal superiors, would use force against each other, yet this is a legitimate prospect. Even if the United States has not directly taken up arms against Russia or against China or vice versa, these powers have funded or supported opposing armed forces in conflicts in Syria, Sudan, Venezuela among others (Hawn, 2020). These state self-interests in various global conflicts are naturally reflected in decision-making within the UN and particularly the Security Council. It remains to be seen how the most recent US military intervention in Venezuela for the purported arrest of sitting President Maduro will be addressed by the UN Security Council.

Veto in Practice

At the time of writing this article, the veto has been used more than 280 times since the UN was first established, with Russia using it 129 times, United States 87 times, China 19 times, the United Kingdom 29 times and France 16 times (TRTWorld, 2024). What will be explored in this part of the article is whether the exercise of specific vetoes were in furtherance of the overarching goal of the UN or, as put by Peter Fraser, “unfair, indefensible and destructive of main purpose of the international organisation” (Pacific Islands Forum, 2024).

The use of the veto which is held by the permanent five was used by Russia in respect of a proposed Resolution for all states, international organisation and agencies not to recognise the Russian annexation declaration and called on Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces” from Ukraine (United Nations, 2022). The Russia/Ukraine War has highlighted the challenges of the system of international law and the role of international organisations in peacekeeping or enforcement of international law (Harrington, 2023). Looking at the impact of the veto on human lives, if the Security Council’s Resolution was not stopped, it would have prevented the loss of lives of 12,910 Ukrainians (Statista, 2025) and 95,000 Russians (Ivshina, 2025). Therefore, the exercise of the veto demonstrates the prioritising of state interests over international peace and security, even where that state interest has the potential to perpetuate conflict.

The use of the veto has also allowed for the retention of dangerous practices such as the use and production of chemical weapons and consequently promote impunity. In 2017, Russia used its veto for the ninth time to stop UN-led investigations into Syrian chemical attacks (The Guardian, 2017). Similarly, China exercised its veto power to stop the vote which would have imposed sanctions on a number of individuals and entities linked to the use of chemical weapons in cases where responsibility was established by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemic Weapons (United Nations, 2017).

The United States also used its veto power and stopped a resolution of the Security Council which would have caused a ceasefire in the Gaza strip between Israel and Palestine. Despite having secured 14 of the 15 votes in favour of the ceasefire, the US’ veto stopped the Resolution from being passed. This Resolution 2735 of 2024 rejected “any effort to starve Palestinians” and demanded that the parties, “fully, unconditionally and without delay” release hostages, exchange Palestinian prisoners, return the remains of hostages who were killed and full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza (United Nations, 2024). This has resulted in the death of over 44,000 Palestinians, the wounding of 104,000 persons, the forcible displacement of nearly all Palestinians in Gaza and severe food insecurity and famine (Hassan, 2025). There have also been approximately 1,100 Israelis killed in the conflict since the veto (Al Jazeera, 2025). The United States has used its veto four times in relation to this recent conflict, most recently blocking the move to Palestinian full UN membership (TRTWorld, 2024).

The intimate relationship between foreign policy and the veto cannot be ignored. One clear example is the use of the veto in 1989 by the United Kingdom when it, together with the United States and France, prevented the condemnation of the invasion of Panama by the United States (TRTWorld, 2024).

Some may argue that the use of the veto as a chokehold on the Security Council has prompted the General Assembly into adopting resolutions with increasingly stronger language in respect of both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine (Harrington, 2023). However, the effectiveness of these General Assembly Resolutions is not comparable to the potential power of the Security Council, by design, as the former are not binding on Member States of the UN.

The weight of the veto power in the Security Council on the wider relationships among states in the current world order has even led to studies identifying varying levels of influence of the permanent members on non-permanent members in voting in the General Assembly, or through the power of loans and grants in the international financial institutions (Hwang et al., 2015). Some analysis demonstrates that industrialised countries prefer to bypass the UN whenever significant sums of money might be at stake, to take “action on development increasingly [. . .] where the money lies: in the Washington-based Bretton Woods Institutions, in regional development banks, and in other institutions not governed by the General Assembly” (Malone & Day, 2020). Even with the power wielded by the veto, the core UN organisation seems increasingly less relevant for using international law to shape the world order, with these countries preferring to rely on the power of economic instruments to achieve desired changes in state behaviour (Dreher & Sturm, 2012). In an ordered approach to these international issues, there is sometimes a developed foreign policy of some states that inform socio-political and economic relationships.

International Diplomacy and Foreign Policies

There is a close relationship in how a state engages diplomatically with other states in the context of foreign policy. This, in turn, has the potential to affect international law and even global peace and security. It has been suggested that, “international law can affect the way that policy makers view international problems and conflicts [. . .] and their perception of the constituencies to whom they are accountable in addressing such problems and conflicts” (Howse & Teitel, 2010). Without delving into a legalistic discussion, foreign policy and international diplomacy has had a direct impact on international law (Jules, 1985). Western commentary on Chinese foreign policy in Myanmar is also problematic as Beijing is seen to have no genuine interest in peace or stability in that country (Hein, 2025). It has been argued that China seeks to preserve and expand its dominion in the region and that is only aided by promoting civil conflict. At a national level, there are allegations of human rights violations, including restrictions on press freedom, privacy and territorial autonomy of Hong Kong. Being a permanent member of the UN, there is a conceptual conflict which operates between the perception that China has a greater role to play in achieving international peace and security as compared with its actual conduct.

Another dichotomy is the interesting position of the Russian foreign policy behaviour and its role as a permanent member of the Security Council. Russia sees itself not as the aggressor in the war against Ukraine but as a defender of its sovereign right to protect its territorial integrity against an illegal invasion from Ukraine, or from a perceived threat posed by the expansion of NATO. As has already been discussed, it is not the aim of this article to interrogate whether the grounds for self-defence were factually triggered but whether the rules as set out in the UN Charter were met in the exercise of self-defence by Russia. It can be stated with certainty that the legal requirements for the exercise of self-defence were not met. As one writer put it, “peace on Putin’s terms would lead to a new era of international insecurity” (Merezhko, 2025).

Turning now to the United States, it must be stated that the role that is being played by the United States in international diplomacy has the potential to impact economic conditions and may cause social unrest. In the words of Niemeyer,

present-day international law, which had been shaped by the exigencies of an individualistic world-Society, today serves only tactical position in the power conflicts of governments. The actual working of this law no longer fits the function of law between states. (Niemeyer, 2001)

This disruption can also be seen in President’s Trump rejection of the World Health Organisation (WHO), an organisation which has played an essential role in global public health and pandemics. The Trump administration repeatedly framed the COVID-19 epidemic in geopolitical terms influenced by its specific deteriorating relationship and trade war with China, blaming both China and the WHO for the epidemic and duplicity or cover-ups in its management (Peters et al, 2020). In withdrawing from the WHO in 2020 and again in 2025, the United States stated that there was a need for reform at the WHO, both in terms of the onerous funding demands on the United States and “its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” (Ortagus, 2020).

The United States played a leading role in most of the initiatives that resulted in the current international legal order, from the League of Nations and its successor, the UN, to the global trading system and international financial institutions. However, this aspect of its foreign policy has not always been in alignment with its own domestic positions on international relations. The rhetoric surrounding the United States imposition of global tariffs claims that the United States has been unfairly treated by the European Union and the world trading system, yet both those initiatives had their roots in diplomatic interventions of the United States. The post-World War II “Marshall Plan” in which the United States provided economic aid to Western Europe was predicated both on the economic rebuilding of Europe by economic cooperation and integration, as well as securing a market for American products (Kaczorowska, 2016). Similarly, the United States and the United Kingdom were the two state parties to the Atlantic Charter of 1941 which set out a vision of trade liberalisation and cooperation for enduring peace and security, even before the end of World War II (Nottage, 2018). The current administrations’ narrative is at odds with the role the United States played in the history of the current international economic order.

It would seem that even with respect to the use of “soft power,” the current US administration is moving away from traditional foreign policy tools like development aid and other financial assistance. Contrary to its previous reliance on soft power to gain allies and achieve other diplomatic goals, the United States is now pausing, and in some cases, dismantling its foreign aid and assistance mechanisms, with President Trump issuing an Executive Order on the very day he was sworn into office in his second term, stating:

The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries. (White House Executive Order, 2005)

This, despite the wealth of studies and literature that evidence such foreign aid as being used by the United States to build alliances as well as promote political stability through economic development (Lee, 2022). This decision on freezing foreign aid has implications beyond the specific US relationships, as it has also affected funding for global humanitarian programmes administered by the UN (Lynch, 2025). Through these nationally focused foreign policy shifts, the United States appears to advocating that only “hard power,” military or other coercive power, matters (Nye, 2019). Apart from reducing the ability of the UN to carry out its developmental and humanitarian functions, it may be argued that a hard power approach is not easily reconciled with the goals of the UN for peace and security and “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights . . .” (United Nations Charter, 1945). Another question that can also be asked is why should the success of global aid programmes be contingent on a single state’s contribution to that initiative. This is yet another structural issue facing the international legal order: the disproportionate use of resources of some states.

Conclusion

The goal of establishing an international legal order to safeguard international peace and security is admirable and very much needed. However, as has been seen, the creation of institutions is not sufficient to achieve that objective alone. There is a need for buy-in and meaningful commitments by state actors to promote these collective aims. The failure of the League of Nations demonstrates the institutional consequences for global war and instability. It goes without saying that it is the collapse of the League that created the fertile ground for the creation of the UN. It can be argued that the UN was meant to represent a stronger and more effective mechanism for achieving international peace and security.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding the express Charter commitment to sovereign equality of states, what the UN has concretised the dominance of the “Great Powers.” States, including the United States and Russia “have policed the international order from a position of assumed cultural, material and legal superiority” with “a right to intervene in the affairs of other states in order to promote some proclaimed community goal” (Simpson, 2004). This selective approach to regulating the international legal order has the potential to erode the pillars of the system.

As has been seen, it is the entire Security Council membership that has exercised their powers in a manner inconsistent with the main purpose of the UN and the Charter. Such a consequence is facilitated not only by the institutional weakness of the UN itself but further advanced through established foreign policy of the permanent five. In so doing, there is a dissonance which operates between nationalistic values and the core tenets of the international legal order – promoting peace and security.

This struggle for consistency between national policy and the interplay with the international legal system results in many casualties in both a literal and metaphoric sense. As has been discussed in this article, the permanent five have been simultaneously at the forefront of institutionalising the international legal order while at the same time acting in conflict with the basic tenets of international law. This article has argued that this is a systemic flaw in the design of the UN and other organisations created in the post-World War II environment, with a futile belief that this hierarchy of powerful states would somehow result in long-lasting peace. As such, it is now necessary to reinforce the core values of the UN. If this is not done, the international legal order is at risk and there will be few arguments which can be used to counter a fate that is akin to that of the League.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Safiya Ali

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Timothy Affonso is a lecturer (on Leave) in the Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad. He currently holds the post of the Administrator General (International Law and Treaties) in the Office of the Attorney General in Trinidad and Tobago. He advises the Attorney General on international human rights, anti-terrorism, international criminal law, law reform and civil child abduction. His academic research areas include migration, human rights of vulnerable communities; climate change and the impact on small island developing states; constitutional law and international legal order. He is a national scholarship winner and a Chevening Scholar.

Safiya Ali is the deputy dean for Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad. She is an attorney at law from Trinidad and Tobago, who has worked with governments and regional organisations in the Caribbean. Her career has primarily been in the field of public international law and regional integration, having worked for several years (the last five as General Counsel) at the Secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). She has negotiated and drafted treaties and other international agreements, both within the regional arrangements and externally, representing CARICOM, and has advised Member States and CARICOM institutions on all matters relating to treaties, international organisations and implementation of Community obligations.

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