The Nirvik Bureau, Bhubaneswar, 9 March 2026
Global South shocked to discover that the liberal international order, which never listened to them, has stopped pretending to.
For nearly eight decades, the world was told a touching bedtime story: once upon a time, after a very bad war, wise men in nice suits created a rules‑based international order. Sovereignty would be respected, wars would be legal, and the United Nations would do something other than host cocktails. Everyone clapped, especially the people writing the rules.
There was only one minor plot twist. The rules came with a footnote: “Binding on all countries, except when inconvenient to the United States and friends (see Annex 1: Creative Exceptions, Classified – haha pun intended).”
So when Gaza was turned into a live‑streamed wasteland, the rulebook made a brief cameo. International humanitarian law cleared its throat, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant, human rights groups produced PDFs – and Washington responded with its most powerful diplomatic tool: the veto. Sovereignty, we learned, is sacred, unless it gets in the way of a good ally with good weapons and an even better lobby.
By 2026, over 70,000 Palestinians lay dead, entire neighbourhoods vanished, and famine loomed. Fortunately, the “liberal international order” was on the job – issuing strongly worded statements, thoughtfully updated every time another hospital disappeared.
Then came Venezuela, where the US thoughtfully modernised the concept of diplomacy by kidnapping a sitting president. Why waste time with boring things like extradition or UN processes when you can run a live demo of the Monroe Doctrine 2.0? Maduro was whisked away to Washington, and the world was sternly reminded that sovereignty is inviolable – unless you are in the wrong hemisphere, on the wrong side of Washington, or sitting on the wrong resources.
Legal scholars called it shocking. History teachers called it “Tuesday.”
But even Tuesday needs a sequel. So we got the joint US‑Israel operation in Iran, casually assassinating the Supreme Leader and calling it “self‑defence” against “imminent threats” — that magical phrase which transforms any act, however reckless, into responsible security policy. Kosovo had it. Iraq had it. Now Iran gets the deluxe package.
Targeted killing of a head of state used to be a line you didn’t cross because it might encourage others to do the same. Now it’s a “policy option,” discussed on prime‑time panels, sponsored by defence contractors and accompanied by tasteful graphics.
Meanwhile, Russia and China are standing in the corner, slow‑clapping. For years, they’ve complained that the West uses international law like a buffet: take what you like, ignore what you don’t. Washington has now responded decisively by proving them right.
Global challenges like climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation all supposedly require cooperation, trust and stable rules. Instead, we have a system where the message is simple: laws are for lectures, not for launch codes.
The liberal international order was never neutral, never innocent and never truly global. But it did at least force great powers to lie in legalese. Now, they don’t even bother with that. The fig leaf has been drone‑struck.
From Gaza to Tehran, Caracas to Washington, the new doctrine is clear: power is law, impunity is policy, and “international order” is just the stage on which this permanent circus performs.
The only rule left is the oldest one: those with the biggest guns get to call it peace.
