 Yeghia Tashjian During times of crisis, wars, and political uncertainty, many people turn to read books on political philosophy. Research suggests that such books offer us mental resilience, existential meaning, and a sense of control over our surroundings. When the external world feels chaotic, political philosophy may serve as a tool to help us process trauma, navigate ethical and moral dilemmas, and provide a certain level of sanity by offering a framework to distinguish between what we can control and what we cannot. Often, we tend to read philosophers who went through similar phases that may reflect a certain reality with which we can compare. Antonio Gramsci and Hannah Arendt are both considered critical thinkers who lived through the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. Gramsci was the leader of the Italian Communist Party and was arrested by the Fascists and died in prison in 1937, where he wrote his famous Prison Notebooks. Arendt, meanwhile, was a German Jew who had witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany and fled to the U.S., where she published her well-known book The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951. Both witnessed and experienced the collapse of the post-WWI world order.
Today, many analysts see parallels between our present moment and the historical pattern of the inter-war period (1918-1939). The global order appears to be passing through what Antonio Gramsci described as an interregnum. In describing this period, “the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters,” he captures a historical transition marked by uncertainty, conflict, and collapse of the post-WWI world order, describing a world where old certainties were eroding but nothing stable yet was ready to replace them. Today, as well, decades-old institutions and norms shaped by post-World War II liberal internationalism, and later reinforced by the post-Cold War system anchored in U.S. predominance and multilateralism, are steadily eroding. In this vacuum, political violence, interventionism, and human suffering have surged, while diplomacy has been ignored and violations of international law have become increasingly normalized. Gramsci’s metaphor of “monsters” captures the dangers unleashed in such moments: when authority fragments, norms lose their binding force, and coercion replaces consent, producing a lawless and unstable environment. The recurrence of ethnic cleansings and genocides further underscores the collapse of the moral commitments once embodied in slogans like “Never Again!” In this article, I describe this era as the period of “Global Uncertainty,” marked by a multiplex and fragmented order in which competing powers and actors undermine multilateralism and international law. In this context, the ideas of Gramsci and Arendt provide a powerful lens through which to interpret the unfolding global chaos and the future of international law. International Law in the Interregnum The modern international legal order rests on foundational instruments such as the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The first defines a genocide as an act committed with the intent to destroy a nation, ethnic, racial, or religious group as a whole or in part. The latter, and additional protocols, codify protection for civilians during armed conflict. Together, they represent the idea that sovereignty does not grant an unlimited license to undermine international law or to justify mass crimes for political considerations. Analyzing from this angle, the destruction of Gaza is not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but a laboratory testing the failures of international law. The Palestinians in Gaza are still starving; they have no access to clean water and other essentials, such as access to health care, as most hospitals have been destroyed and dozens of health workers killed. As the city lies in ruins, the Israeli army continues to bulldoze the last remaining buildings. Most international law experts, human rights organizations, and genocide researchers, such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars, agree that this is a war crime and a genocide. In September 2025, a UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in its report that Israel had committed a genocide, citing starvation tactics and mass killings. However, despite all these announcements, the violations continue amid the silence of the “international community.” Hence, when the norms of genocide prevention remain unenforced, the legitimacy of the entire system is questioned. What is the value of conventions when not applied or selectively applied? The “monster” here is not just the violation itself, but the normalization of impunity. Similarly, in Nagorno-Karabakh (an Armenian-populated region that was part of Soviet Azerbaijan), the forced displacement of over 100,000 Armenians in September 2023, following Azerbaijani military operations and state-led blockade, has been described by many experts as ethnic cleansing. In a single night, ethnic Armenians, amid fear of facing extermination, fled the region, ending centuries of Armenians presence. While many international organizations were shocked by the swiftness of this crime that was carried out in such a methodical manner, many European leaders only condemned Azerbaijan’s actions and later went back to “business as usual,” signing energy deals with Baku and forcing Armenia to “normalize” relations with Azerbaijan and bury the pain of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Months later, with the region emptied of Armenians, the Russian peacekeepers stationed in the region also abandoned their positions. This case also shows that the erosion of security guarantees and the failure of international mediation reflect the vacuum Gramsci mentioned: old arrangements collapsed, but no stable, rights-protecting order replaced them. Instead, crimes were justified, and the pain was buried in history books. Thus, linking Gramsci’s thoughts to international law reveals a deeper structural crisis: legal norms depend on political will and are weaponized by great powers to pursue their hegemonic interests. Great powers and their allies selectively apply legal norms and accountability mechanisms, and face political obstruction. This is precisely the Gramscian interregnum: that the normative framework formally exists, but its capacity to shape state behavior is diminished. On Totalitarianism and Displacement Adding on to this analysis in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argued that the greatest calamity of the twentieth century was the creation of stateless people. She mentions that these people create conflict not due to their actions, but because their existence exposes the breakdown of the international system. According to Arendt, for human rights laws to be meaningful, they need to be backed by an international community capable of enforcing them and punishing perpetrators. Henceforth, the displacements of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Palestinians in Gaza, and Lebanese from South Lebanon echo Arendt’s warning. That is, when people become effectively stateless or subject to military domination, without any political action by the international community, these legal norms simply become ink on paper. Such practices only encourage the repetition of new atrocities. This leads to the rise of totalitarianism worldwide, where, taking advantage of global institutional collapse, more violence is perpetrated in the name of the nation-state. Hence, small nations and states are stripped of their legal defensive mechanisms against expansionist totalitarian states. It is here that Gramsci’s notion of “monsters” and Arendt’s concept of “total domination” converge, illustrating how the breakdown of political order unleashes extreme forms of violence in which dehumanization becomes a tool for extermination. Such dehumanization was clearly reflected in the statements of Israeli officials towards Gaza, calling the Palestinians “animals” and threatening to turn parts of Lebanon into “another Gaza.” In this context, the crisis of hegemony and the rise of ideological extremism reveal the deeper ideological dimension of modern atrocities, as hegemonic decline creates a vacuum that radicalism and dehumanization fill, rendering human beings increasingly superfluous. Conclusion: The Crisis of Hegemony and the Future of International Law For Gramsci, hegemony is established not based on coercion, but consent; that is, a shared belief in the legitimacy of an order. The post-WWII international legal system achieved a certain level of legitimacy because there was a broad consensus that genocide and crimes against humanity would not be tolerated. This later justified the intervention to put an end to the genocide against the Bosnians in the early 1990s. However, with the collapse of the bipolar system and the rise of the U.S.-led unipolar order, the Americans and their allies started selectively upholding these norms. These practices later encouraged other rising powers to expand and commit crimes in the name of “national security.” Hence, when powerful states appear selective in upholding these norms, the moral authority of the international system erodes. Competing powers then justify their own violations by pointing to precedents set by others. Just like many Russian officials justified their war on Ukraine based on the American “pre-emptive principle” that was used during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Furthermore, the same West that called for international solidarity for Ukraine against Russia, turned a blind eye to the Israeli aggression towards the Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank and other conflicts in Africa. These dynamics, shaped by geopolitical and geo-economic competition, define the current interregnum. The post-Cold War liberal order is weakened by geopolitical rivalry, and meanwhile, alternative global visions in the form of multiple spheres of influence, “Huntingtonian” civilizational blocs, or pure realpolitik compete for global hegemony. In such a transition, international law risks instrumentalization. Yet the very invocation of the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions has not disappeared, despite the efforts of some revisionist powers. As such, civil society mobilization, human rights movements, and multilateral organizations have a critical role to play in shaping the public narratives that would build the upcoming “new order”… an order built on the ashes of the decaying system. Hence, Gramsci and Arendt’s thoughts offer us both a warning and a call to action. The current interregnum is alarming because normative guidelines are being weakened before being replaced by new ones. The forced displacements, genocides, and wars around us are not isolated events; they are symptoms of a systemic transition during “Global Uncertainty.” Whether this monstrous period deepens authoritarianism and fragments regionalism or creates a new hegemonic consensus - renewing commitment to international laws and multilateral institutions - depends on the immunity of liberal institutions and norms against revisionism and great power rivalry. The central question is what form of international order will emerge to replace the current state of “Global Uncertainty?” About the Author Yeghia Tashjian is the Regional and International Affairs Cluster Coordinator at IFI. Comments are closed.
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