The first two months of 2026 have added another sobering element to the contemporary international system: American foreign policy, not international law, continues to be the force-making behaviour that determines the course of global events.

The institutions and treaties aimed at regulating the behaviour of states, such as the United Nations Charter, the Genocide Convention, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, still exist.

Yet in cases where their application runs up against dominant strategic interests, including those of the United States and its closest allies, mechanisms for enforcement bog down. What is left is not a rule-based order, but a hierarchy of power cloaked in legal language at will.

Nowhere is this tension more visible than in Gaza. Israel's military effort, which began in October 2023, is entering its third year. Casualty figures are hotly disputed, but even the more conservative estimates suggest an appalling human toll.

United Nations agencies and major humanitarian organisations have documented serious restrictions on water, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian aid, alongside the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.

Legal academics and human rights lawyers have been discussing for years whether these conditions rise to the level of crimes against humanity or genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The International Court of Justice has issued provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent genocidal acts and allow humanitarian assistance. But again, provisional measures rely on voluntary compliance, as the Court has no enforcement arm. Meanwhile, repeated resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the United Nations Security Council have been paralysed, in part due to the United States veto.

Billions of dollars of American military aid continue to flow into Israel each year, along with diplomatic shielding. The legal architecture is in place. What is missing is operational consequence.

The structural problem is not only, or even primarily, non-compliance: it is enforcement asymmetry. The United Nations Charter outlaws the use of force except in self-defence or with the permission of the Security Council. Yet the permanent members of the Council, by virtue of their veto power, can........

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