Opinion: Western powers never believed in a rules-based order

Students of world politics have long understood that when it comes to the strategic interests of leading states, international law is marginalised unless it is useful in waging a propaganda war against adversaries. 

Indeed, the United Nations was designed in ways that recognised this feature of international political life. Otherwise, giving the winners of World War II a right of veto would make no sense. 

Such an exemption from international law was also evident at the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, at which only the crimes of the losers were scrutinised for legal accountability, and obvious crimes of the victors - such as the indiscriminate bombing of Dresden and the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - were not prosecuted. 

To this day, for understandable reasons, many in Japan believe the use of weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population of these two cities constituted genocide.

At the same time, the victorious democracies after 1945 seemed genuinely committed to building a world order that was stable, protective of human rights, and respectful of the sovereign rights of weaker states. Of course, the Cold War interfered with such idealistic plans, paralysed the UN in peace and security settings, and downplayed adherence to international law to a significant degree. 

Opinion by Richard Falk.

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