This February 2025 photograph shows the destruction of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces withdrew. Aerial view of Rafah by UNRWA (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
By Cesar Jaramillo
It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
— Mark Twain
It is easy to defend norms in principle. Far harder to uphold them when they come at a cost — when they constrain not adversaries, but allies or ourselves.
Liberal democracies have long positioned themselves as champions of international law, including international humanitarian law (IHL). As it turns out, they generally leave the field when they and not others are held to account.
If there is any silver lining to the current unraveling of global order, it is in the resulting clarity. We now see that consistent adherence to humanitarian norms by democratic states is an illusion. Instead, they apply norms selectively to satisfy their own interests and those of their allies. But norms that are not consistently followed are not norms at all.
IHL norms are among the most vital— and fragile — pillars of the rules-based international order. They are designed to constrain violence, protect civilians, and limit the destructiveness of war. But recent actions by a number of states cast serious doubt on the integrity of these norms.
Atrocity in Plain Sight
This erosion of principle is neither abstract nor remote. We can see it clearly, in real time and with real consequences. Consider, for example, the response of liberal democracies to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by Israel.
Since the latest Gaza war began about 18 months ago, entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Hospitals and schools have been obliterated. Aid convoys have been blocked or targeted. More than 50,000 civilians, most of whom are reported to be women and children, have been killed. It is estimated that close to three percent of Gaza’s population has perished; a similarly deadly crisis in the United States would result in more than 10 million deaths.
Devastation at such a scale is almost incomprehensible and should be regarded as totally unacceptable. Yet, the response of many democratic states has featured more paralysis and hedging than outrage or demands for accountability. Rules on proportionality, distinction, and the protection of civilians, meant to limit how hostilities are conducted, have been routinely violated, without little official condemnation.
This selective application of principle is not new. The United States under President Obama carried out drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia that resulted in civilian casualties and lasting trauma for entire communities.
Most of the world clearly, and rightly, expressed moral outrage when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and began the bombardment of Ukrainian cities that continues to this day. Many democratic governments have denounced Vladimir Putin. The brutal attacks by Hamas against Israel — including the taking of hostages — have also been rejected and denounced, as they should be. However, the same cannot be said about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The contrast is jarring.
This selective application of principle is not new. The United States under President Obama carried out drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia that resulted in civilian casualties and lasting trauma for entire communities. The operations were shrouded in secrecy, rationalized as counterterrorism, and not subjected to significant accountability — despite clear violations of transparency and proportionality obligations under international law. The response by other Western states was restrained.
Similarly, the military campaign in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition, which began in 2015, has involved many airstrikes on schools, markets, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure. These abuses have been well-documented. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and other Western countries have continued to authorize arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and coalition partner United Arab Emirates, apparently valuing strategic economic partnerships over humanitarian concerns.
The U.S.-operated Guantánamo Bay detention facility remains a stark symbol of selective adherence to the rule of law. At this facility, practices such as indefinite detention without trial and the use of torture have been carried out with impunity; indeed, for a time, they were officially sanctioned. The response of most U.S. allies to this information has been cautious at best, deferential at worst.
In the current war in Ukraine, both sides have used cluster munitions, weapons that pose ongoing dangers to civilians, even after conflict has moved on or ended. However, while liberal democracies have generally condemned Russia’s use of these weapons, they have defended or downplayed the decision by the United States to provide Ukraine with the same weapons.
Such selective outrage undermines not only the credibility of states that claim to uphold humanitarian law, but the legitimacy of the law itself. If rules are to have value, they must apply equally to adversaries and allies. Otherwise, law becomes merely narrative and principle becomes politics. Legal norms lose their meaning and, with it, their ability to protect. And civilians pay the price — in current conflicts around the world, and in every future conflict in which military restraint is seen to be expendable.
A Dangerous Retreat
In the past several weeks, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland have signalled their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of anti-personnel landmines. Such a choice represents not just a policy shift, but a huge step backward.
These states, all feeling increasingly threatened by neighbouring Russia, have effectively re-legitimized a category of weapon long condemned for its indiscriminate and enduring harm to civilians. Not long before, the United States had moved to supply such mines to Ukraine — despite longstanding domestic policies limiting their use and a global norm opposing them.
Landmines are now being more widely viewed as a regrettable tool of defence, necessary in particular extreme cases. Their use is being justified with old and familiar excuses long used to defend weapons condemned on humanitarian grounds: the users are confronted by extraordinary threats, exceptional circumstances, and the urgent need to defend their homelands or the homeland of an ally. And so the rationalizations begin and grow.
That the very foundation of the Ottawa Treaty is being shaken by democratic countries is disconcerting. That Canada, which led in the creation of this treaty and helped forge the global consensus against landmines, remains silent, is perhaps even more so. No word of protest, no reaffirmation of principle. At a time when it is most needed, the distinctly Canadian language of diplomacy is conspicuously absent.
Certainly, Ukraine and some other states that share borders with Russia have genuine, serious security concerns. They are, without doubt, vulnerable to attack. But acknowledging those concerns should not mean forsaking the principles designed to protect civilians in conflicts and their aftermaths. The need to protect is as valid now as it was when the Ottawa Treaty was created.
No one disputes that anti-personnel landmines can have military utility. They were banned not because they didn’t work but because their indiscriminate and enduring impact on civilian life rendered their use unjustifiable under humanitarian law. Protection of civilians was valued over military utility; this stance is precisely what gave — and gives — this norm its moral and legal weight.
The legitimization of anti-personnel landmines risks setting a precedent with far-reaching implications. If these weapons are again framed as acceptable under certain conditions, the taboo that took decades to build will begin to unravel. Other prohibitions might also collapse.
A Lack of Leadership
A lack of principled leadership has reinforced the silence that has allowed states to abandon humanitarian norms. Subjected to growing authoritarianism, escalating conflicts, and widespread violation of international law, the world has no counterforce to use in the struggle for the preservation of the global order. Faced with Donald Trump’s corrosive influence on international diplomacy, the world needs a major leader to stand as a clear and credible defender of international law, democratic institutions, and multilateral cooperation.
Instead, many democratic governments, particularly in Europe, are echoing Trump’s diplomatic style by ramping up military spending, hardening their security rhetoric, and retreating from the very norms democracies once championed. With this reaction, they have, perhaps inadvertently, validated his approach.
What the world needs now is a decisive and unapologetic reaffirmation of the rules-based international order. It needs experienced, skilled, and respected political leaders to consistently denounce violations of humanitarian law, protect the institutions that anchor liberal democracies, and show that leadership can still be exercised to defend peace, not only to prepare for war.
There is no denying the gravity of today’s security threats. But norms are designed precisely for times such as these. They are meant to guide conduct when fear is greatest and the stakes are highest.
This moment calls for a clear, consistent reaffirmation of humanitarian principles by governments, civil society, and international institutions. The future of humanitarian norms depends not only on their lofty articulation but on their consistent application, especially when doing so is most difficult.
Humanitarian norms are not designed to be flexible tools that can be adjusted to fit the pressures of each new crisis. They exist to respond to the exigencies of war. Abandoning them when they are inconvenient undermines their very purpose and introduces a dangerous relativism that cannot protect noncombatants from the effects of conflicts.
