The Rules Were Never Meant for Them

Erick Erickson
Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

There is a particular kind of intellectual dishonesty that masquerades as principle and the American left has perfected it. It goes by either "international law" or "norms." These phrases are invoked with religious fervor whenever the United States or one of its allies takes action in the world. They are conveniently forgotten whenever the enemies of civilization act.

Watch the pattern long enough and the conclusion becomes unavoidable. The left's commitment to international law is not a commitment at all. It is a weapon — one designed with the West in mind and aimed squarely at the United States.

Consider what is happening now. Our military engagement against Iran has the usual coalition of academics, think-tankers, progressive politicians, antisemites and op-ed writers reaching for their pearls. "International law," they scream. "The norms-based international order," they wail. Many of them are calling the United States a "rogue nation" or a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the President of the United States decided it was time to end Iran's regime of terror and quest for nuclear weapons.
Updated: Fri Mar 06, 2026

There is a particular kind of intellectual dishonesty that masquerades as principle and the American left has perfected it. It goes by either "international law" or "norms." These phrases are invoked with religious fervor whenever the United States or one of its allies takes action in the world. They are conveniently forgotten whenever the enemies of civilization act.

Watch the pattern long enough and the conclusion becomes unavoidable. The left's commitment to international law is not a commitment at all. It is a weapon — one designed with the West in mind and aimed squarely at the United States.

Consider what is happening now. Our military engagement against Iran has the usual coalition of academics, think-tankers, progressive politicians, antisemites and op-ed writers reaching for their pearls. "International law," they scream. "The norms-based international order," they wail. Many of them are calling the United States a "rogue nation" or a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the President of the United States decided it was time to end Iran's regime of terror and quest for nuclear weapons.

Where were these voices on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023?

Hamas — a terrorist organization whose founding charter is a declaration of genocidal intent — launched the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. They crossed a recognized international border. They slaughtered over 1,200 civilians. They kidnapped babies, elderly women and young men at a music festival. They filmed it. They celebrated it.

The international law crowd did not rush out that morning to denounce Hamas. There were no emergency seminars on the laws of armed conflict. There were no demands for immediate condemnation from the UN Security Council. There was, instead, a noticeable pause — followed, in many quarters, by attempts to contextualize the attack, explain Hamas's grievances and pivot immediately to concern about Israel's forthcoming response. There were also marches in the streets and on college campuses, cheering on Hamas.

The norms held no power that day. The law said nothing binding.

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, it was — by any coherent reading of international law — a textbook act of aggression. One sovereign nation invading another without provocation. Shelling apartment buildings. Targeting hospitals. Deporting Ukrainian children. The UN Charter exists precisely to prohibit this. The post-World War II order was constructed around the idea that this kind of naked territorial conquest was finished.

Strongly worded resolutions and furrowed brows lecturing on international law did not stop Vladimir Putin. He laughed at the shattered norms and the carefully constructed legal architecture that the left treats as sacred scripture when the United States or Israel act.

International law, in practice, restrains only those who choose to be restrained by it. And the nations most likely to choose restraint are Western democracies.

This is not an accident. Much of what passes for international legal consensus today was built in the decades after the Cold War, during a period of American dominance when the global left — including within American institutions — worked diligently to construct frameworks that would hem in American power. Treaties on the laws of war applied asymmetrically, where Hamas firing from hospitals is shrugged at, while Israel responding to it becomes a war crime. A UN Human Rights Council populated by nations with records that would embarrass a medieval warlord mock the very standards of international law the left insist are real.

The architecture of international law was never neutral. It was designed to constrain the West while providing cover for everyone else.

When the left screams about international law in the context of Iran — a regime that has spent almost 50 years funding terrorism, developing a nuclear weapons framework and calling for the destruction of Israel — they are not invoking principle. They are deploying a tool built to restrain the United States and Israel.

Real principle would look like this: Outrage at Hamas for what it did and a willingness to say that international law means nothing if the most dangerous actors on earth face no consequences.

Until the left applies its standards consistently, those of us watching are not obligated to take the standards seriously. They built a cage and labeled it "civilization." But they only ever meant to put two nations inside it. But both, instead, are soaring unrestrained over Iran, liberating a people the left cares nothing about.