International Law is Irrelevant During WW3

During World War III, the frameworks of international law, built over decades to regulate conflict and protect civilians, are proven toothless, obsolete statutes to be disregarded.

The globe is currently meandering towards a new era of nihilistic destruction, where all moral and ethical values are effectively off the table.

Our current state of affairs globally is one of a more discreet and managed state of war, or perpetual war with moderate to increased levels of flair-ups, intermittent conflicts that sometimes overlap with each battle zone — for example what is happening now in the Middle East with Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria or the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russia.

International humanitarian law (IHL), particularly the Geneva Convention, is designed to impose limits on warfare, safeguard non-combatants, and prohibit actions such as targeting civilians or using banned weapons. But history and the present shows that in moments of total war, especially when state survival is at stake, such norms are frequently suspended or outright ignored. During World War II, for instance, both Axis and Allied powers committed actions that post-WW2 were considered as war crimes—from mass fire bombings (Blitz, Dresden) to mass internments, mass genocide (Holocaust) and atomic bomb strikes (Hiroshima, Nagasaki).

Today, International humanitarian law, is mostly irrelevant. There is zero accountability to the actions of many states and leaders as the entire global system deteriorates into a state of multilateral conflict at an exponential rate.

The third world war featuring nuclear powers, cyberwarfare, AI-directed weapons, asymmetric proxy battles, space-based systems, chemical weapons, weaponised viruses and mass civilian mobilisation renders the existing legal frameworks non-existent as they are overwhelmed by the sheer scale, speed, and complexity of the conflict. States and leaders invoke existential necessity and immunity to IHT under doctrines of national survival, rendering legal principles secondary to strategic imperatives. When the fundamental focus is on survival, nothing else matters.

Moreover, enforcement of international law relies on global institutions, such as the International Criminal Court or the UN Security Council, that have already lost much of their authority or functionality in the fractured, multipolar wartime environment. It seems that all the major powers are both combatants and veto-wielding members of the international legal apparatus, therefore the likelihood of accountability is slim.

While international law was a cornerstone of post-WW2 global order, its power depended on consensus, stability, and enforcement which are, today, already ignored concepts and unenforceable by a weak woke non-authority. There is no way in hell that Vladimir Putin will ever step foot in an international court. The third world war will ensure that all three elements are superfluous dreams of the past, leaving norms unenforced, war unbounded, and legality subordinate to raw unadulterated power. The new age of nihilism and wholesale destruction is one that has no foreseeable benefits, apart from a much-needed reduction in global human populations that may eventually allow the earth to breathe once again.