Description
Fifty-five years ago, Thomas M. Franck, an eminent legal scholar, argued having violated and ignored it repeatedly, states killed Article 2(4) of the UN Charter -the cornerstone norm prohibiting the unilateral use of force. Following 2003 US invasion of Iraq, he once again asked "who killed Article 2(4) again"
Indeed, more than two decades later, the question still lingers in the face of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and Israel’s recurrent military campaigns in Gaza and in the wider region with support of the liberal western powers reveal a pattern of selective norm enforcement and systemic impunity. Together with other incidences of aggression elsewhere, these cases of unilateral use of force suggest that Article 2(4) has not merely been violated — it has been rendered functionally obsolete.
This paper traces the trajectory of normative erosion in the international law of the use of force since the end of the Cold War, examining how major powers and regional actors alike have justified military interventions outside the collective security framework. Through a comparative analysis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s expanding use of force across multiple fronts, it interrogates how political selectivity, competing security discourses, and moral exceptionalism have hollowed out the rule-based order.
Rather than seeking to resurrect earlier debates on humanitarian intervention or self-defense, the paper offers a critical reflection on the politics of norm decay, arguing that the repeated unaccountable use of force signals the consolidation of a post-Charter international order—one governed more by geopolitical prerogatives than by law.
