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

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.