The United States is doing it again. Another war. Another bloody episode, which will be added to its violent history. Another blatant violation of international law. Only a few months ago the US illegally toppled the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. And now it is strangling Cuba to death for the purposes of a regime change, while it bullies states around the world for the purposes of better trade agreements. As I am writing this article, the US has threatened to destroy Iran, with complete obliteration of its civilization, as per the latest social media announcement of the Empire’s president, Donald J. Trump. The violent Empire is spiraling out of control – but only in the last moment a ceasefire was agreed which appears to be a victory for the Iranian government.
This article will discuss, first, how the violent Empire dictates what international law is. Second, the article will, using the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) methodology, explain the counter-hegemonic approaches to the Empire’s fatalism. Third, the article will underscore how the Empire’s violence also marks its end. Fourth and finally, this article will provide an outlook in face of the demise of the Empire.
Empire and the stillbirth of international law
Let us be clear: international law never existed. It is a myth. It was never meant to be the international law for the many, but it is the international law for the few. International law is the legal infrastructure of colonialism, which serves to dominate and justify the plunder, the pillage and industrial killings of the Global South. The US has engaged in illegal wars and interventions killing countless lives. The blood spilled is the lifeblood for the very existence of this very Empire. The US may claim that colonialism and imperialism are the antithesis to its founding spirit, but its violent settler-mission, its forceful annexation and destruction of indigenous communities of Puerto Rico, the Philippines or Hawaii speak a different language. The creation of the Bretton Woods system after the end of the Second World War laid the financial groundwork towards the emergence of the US as the financial epicentre of the violent Empire.
The US is nothing more and nothing else: the violent Empire which assumes a role of a globally despised hegemon, only to be matched by its equally violent twin brother, the State of Israel. Israel is the entity and anchor for imperial expansion in the region. Notwithstanding this, there is some positive aspect to the policies of the current administration of the US: they are not acting in any covert operation or masking their intentions like their previous leaders. Their imperialism is frank and brazen. It starts with the hemispheric dominance and reviving the Monroe Doctrine to secure the dominance throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. It is moreover about territorial and resource ambitions, as the Empire asserts potential claims over areas like Greenland and the Panama Canal – and develops an expansionist outlook. It is also about economic nationalism, where tariffs are used as a primary tool of power against both allies and adversaries, framing trade as a zero-sum game. And then, importantly, it is about the increasing threat or use of military force, with a notable shift towards active neo-colonialism. This new Trump doctrine represents a shift toward open Empire building, and can be linked to a new era of US foreign policy characterized by “nonviolent” economic dominance alongside active territorial threats.
Third World Approaches to International Law: response to imperialism
The Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) is a critical intellectual movement within legal scholarship that examines how international law has historically served — and continues to serve — the interests of imperial powers at the expense of the Global South. TWAIL scholars emphasize that international law did not emerge as a neutral system; it was shaped alongside Empire. Colonial doctrines — sovereignty, “civilization,” trusteeship, and the like — justified domination. The discipline of International Law is read as co-constituted with colonial expansion, not separate from it. Antony Anghie, for example, traces how colonial encounters shaped core legal concepts still in use today. He writes:
TWAIL scholars have been united and consistent in arguing that colonialism continued even after official ‘decolonization’. In this respect, they contested the powerful idea that colonialism was a thing of the past. Kwame Nkrumah famously warned, even as decolonization was commencing, that colonialism could be replaced by neocolonialism and that political domination could be succeeded by economic domination in an ostensibly post-colonial world. Formal empire had been replaced by neo-colonialism, which bore certain resemblances to informal imperialism.
Writing within this tradition, we as TWAIL scholars argue that the US wields international law to justify military interventions and ‘wars on terror,’ invoking the rhetoric of democracy and human rights as instruments of dominance rather than liberation. The recent war against Iran, to that end, was never about the liberation of Iranian peoples or women—despite the President’s invocation of freedom on the eve of the war. But it is also about institutional control, as the US influences international legal institutions to structure global trade and investment, which often leads to the economic exploitation of Third World countries. The US, however, has lost its legitimacy and its brazen hegemony is decreasing. We believe that imperialism is structural and ongoing and that it goes beyond the formal Empire. We emphasize that while formal, colonial-style territorial expansion has largely ceased, an informal imperialism is persisting through legal, economic, and institutional mechanisms. And as such, the civilizing mission continues. Modern doctrines—such as human rights interventionism, the War on Terror, and democracy promotion—are seen as contemporary echoes of the historical “civilizing mission” designed to maintain Western (specifically US) domination. With the current developments in Lebanon, Iran or Palestine, the international legal order is being structured to empower the US and its allies, while penalizing or marginalizing the Third World.
Violence as language of assertion
We find ourselves in the process of decolonization, a process which Fanon heralded as: “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.” A commentator ascertains correctly:
US imperialism is in decline, but it is by no means out for the count, and its frenzied efforts to save itself will likely make it even more menacing in the years to come. Like cornered beasts, declining empires are often brazen and vindictive, lashing out in all directions, taking wild risks, acting without a coherent plan, and wreaking havoc everywhere.
Imperialism and its destructive machinery cannot sustain the violent Empire. In fact, the Empire is at its peak of violence on the eve of its very collapse. Aimé Césaire once held:
What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.
In fact, the ultimate end of an empire occurs when those it seeks to dominate no longer obey and resist. When the Empire is no longer perceived as omnipotent, its violent efforts become ineffective, marking a structural defeat. The rhetoric of the Secretary of War — a title truly fitting in the pursuit of Empire — against Iran invoked imagery of the Bible and amplified the divine nature of the war:
And I say the same to every American who wants peace through strength. May almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. And again to the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ. To the troops, keep going and Godspeed.
But one issue is clear: declining empires, such as the Ottoman Empire, often turned to excessive militarization and brutal suppression of uprisings in their periphery when they could no longer manage their territories through diplomacy, culminating in conflicts like the Balkan Wars. The current Empire is facing its end.
Conclusion
The TWAIL movement envisions an alternative world: a world where both scholars and activists are seeking to create counter-hegemonic legal perspectives, defending sovereignty and fostering forms of agency against imperial domination. To that end, TWAIL offers a sustained critique of how US foreign policy uses international law to turn the world into a “new world order” where Third World countries remain subordinate to the Empire. The naked violence marks the end of an Empire not only as the final act of military defeat, but as a systematic, often desperate, attempt to maintain control in a world which slips out of the hands of the Empire. This terminal phase is typically characterized by a paradox: as imperial power wanes, violence increases—often termed “legalized lawlessness”—to suppress rising independence movements, resulting in brutal counterinsurgencies and the lasting destruction of colonial reputations. Palestine, Iran or Cuba are the last battles against the Empire. As Gramsci wrote, the old world is dying and the new struggles to be born — or as Slavoj Žižek memorably rendered it: “now is the time of monsters.”
Dr. Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan is a part-time lecturer at Maynooth University and a Visiting Professor at Sant’Anna in Pisa and University of Milan, with additional appointments at Woxsen University (India), ESCP Turin, and the Law Society of Ireland. His research is rooted in Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and critical investigations of the UN human rights regime. He has previously held academic positions at the University of Nottingham, Griffith College Dublin, and the Irish Centre for Human Rights.
