Andersen tells in a fairy tale that an emperor exclaims to wear wonderful clothes woven by some tricksters who say they made them in such a way that fools cannot see them. When the king comes out in his new clothes in the procession everyone applauds, but a child exclaims “the king is naked” and so the deception is revealed. The same thing is happening for international law in world politics, especially since the advent of Trump as president of the United States, although the decline of traditional international law began at the end of the Cold War, when the so-called US monopolar order was established. It was an order similar to the king’s dress because it allowed micro-nationalistic conflicts to break out on every continent. The situation worsened in 2022, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (not a “war”, which would have provoked a position taken by the Security Council, but “a special military operation”). Shortly thereafter, the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Palestine involved all the countries of the Middle East. Many innocent Palestinians were slaughtered, without the perpetrators being punished. As soon as he was re-elected, Trump violated international free trade agreements by imposing high tariffs on all countries exporting to the United States. The military intrusion in Venezuela would demonstrate, according to Trump, that only the US, not the ICC, is capable of ensuring international justice. The United Nations, founded to ensure a peaceful and secure world, is now considered by Trump to be an obstacle to his imperial policies. The “Board of Peace” should not only deal with the pacification of the Middle East, but also to “supervise” the UN.
The international order is not based on law, but on power. The post-war order was decided in 1945, in Yalta, by the United States and the Soviet Union, with the intermediation of Great Britain. In 1944, the Bretton Woods conference had already established the rules for the creation of a free world market. The United Nations has succeeded in guaranteeing world peace thanks to the determination of the two superpowers to require all governments to respect the Yalta Pact. Within the two imperial areas, each superpower could intervene in cases where a country questioned the hegemony of the superpower: in the East it happened with the suppression of the rebel governments of Budapest (1956) and Prague (1968). The United States favored the fall of the Allende government in Chile in 1973. It should be noted, however, that the bipolar US-USSR government favoured the process of decolonisation, as demonstrated by the joint intervention of the two superpowers in the Suez crisis of 1956, to prevent France and Great Britain from regaining political and commercial control of the canal. After Suez, the process of decolonization accelerated, especially in Africa and Asia. Thanks to the hegemony of the two superpowers, the whole world, with the exception of a few countries of the so-called Third World, has been able to enjoy relative economic progress, a gradual reduction in income gaps between industrialized and emerging countries and an international peace not interrupted by continuous threats of wars, conventional or nuclear (despite the episode of the US-USSR conflict over Soviet missiles in Cuba). The breakup of the Soviet Union allowed for an illusory phase of U.S. unipolarity soon followed by conflicts, civil wars, and wars between states on every continent.
Today, there are no longer superpowers, only big and medium powers. The Russian war in Ukraine and the election of Trump have made it clear that the world is on its way to a multipolar system of imperial areas. The Russian Tsar wants to rebuild the nineteenth-century Euro-Asian empire. The U.S. government has acknowledged, as Barack Obama had already done, that the U.S. no longer has the necessary strength to intervene in the many conflicts that erupt on every continent: it must focus on its vital interests. Trump is implementing a regional imperialist policy, drastically reducing European commitments, but preserving the fundamental alliance with Israel to maintain his grip on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. In Asia, the growing power of China, rightly considered the third world power, is asserting itself, waiting for India and Brazil to join the leading group. China’s economic and political rise is being opposed by Trump, who fears China for its growing economic, technological, and military potential.
In this context, we must ask ourselves whether the ambition of the great powers to conquer states and regions to be governed by imperial procedures can lead humanity towards lasting peace. The answer to this question is negative, for two reasons. The first is that, despite the division of the world into imperial areas, international economic interdependence has now reached lasting dimensions, difficult to attack by modern protectionism. In the years between the two world wars, national protectionism fostered the arms race. Today, the arms race is taking place in an increasingly interconnected economic and technological context, because the basis of technological progress is science organized on a planetary basis (think of CERN in Geneva, the discovery of the Higgs boson, quantum mechanics, space exploration). In these regions, despite the contrasts between powers, scientific collaboration continues without borders and international economic sanctions are easily circumvented. The struggle between empires could cause the collapse of economic-scientific cooperation, with dramatic consequences.
The second reason for the inherent madness contained in the imperial multipolar order is nuclear proliferation. According to a statement by a US Secretary of Defense: “Mr Trump has the absolute authority to start a nuclear war. Without minutes, the president could unleash the equivalent of more than 10.000 Hiroshima bombs. He does not need a second option … Yet it would mean the end of civilization as we know it” (M. Baradei, Project Syndacate, Dec. 25, 2025). It is useful to remember that Russia has about 5,500 nuclear warheads, the USA more than 5,000, France 300 and other countries, such as Israel, India, Pakistan, etc., a smaller amount, but still enough to destroy entire regions. Nuclear proliferation is ongoing. All governments, even those that call themselves peace-loving, such as the Europeans, are investing more and more national resources in armaments. If we add to nuclear proliferation the use of AI as an automatic response system – because only a few seconds are allowed for a response to a danger signal – we must conclude that contemporary international politics is leading humanity towards nuclear catastrophe. Until a few years ago, the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) thesis was supported as a rule of prudence for the use of nuclear war. Today, the MAD strategy is outdated. A preemptive strike is convenient to destroy an entire continent with a massive nuclear broadside in order to avoid a possible enemy response. Is this the civilization that humanity is building in the twenty-first century?
Today, young people are fascinated by the rapid advancement of information technologies and the achievements of extra-terrestrial space. The moon is considered as a necessary stage for the colonization of Mars. But who will prevent the possible nuclear catastrophe on Earth? Will humanity have a future? What political force considers humanity as a political subject, a community of destiny, life on Earth as a common good? These are questions that should be tried to be answered.
European and world federalists can engage in a constructive dialogue to find an answer to these dilemmas, provided that we abandon the myth that international law, as it is currently conceived, can lead us to nuclear disarmament and universal peace. It is power that creates law, not law that creates power: this is why national and supranational constitutions are needed to avoid absolute power in states and between states. War between sovereign states must become impossible and will become so when states decide to put their sovereign powers on national armaments to a supranational government, entrusting the power to settle disputes between states to the International Court of Justice (currently without powers) which will thus be able to impose compliance with its sentences thanks to a supranational military force (the reinforced blue helmets) under a world federal government. This is the path suggested by Einstein back in 1947, because nuclear war does not admit intermediate solutions. The king is naked. It must be dressed in federalist clothes visible to the foolish national governments that are still ignorant of the dangers of a nuclear and ecological catastrophe.
