Not that I want to be alarmist, but I am not certain that everyone has fully grasped that the Third World War has already begun many months ago.
Armed conflicts still exist: belligerents – potentially supported by other third-party countries – are involved in armed struggles. Yet the truth is that a significant number of States are in conflict in the context of wars that occur primarily on diplomatic, fiscal, economic, and legal grounds.
This is what is called hybrid warfare or lawfare, which blurs all boundaries between the concepts of peace and war.
We are therefore forced to return to our beloved dictionaries.
According to the National Center for Textual and Lexical Resources and the major French dictionaries, modern international politics defines the notion of peace as the “situation of a country, a people, a State that is not at war.” Peace, which exists only in the singular, is defined by antonymy as the absence of war.
It means that we have to define the term “war,” which is used in the plural and whose meaning changes over time.
According to the 1935 French Academy dictionary, war is defined as the “conflict between two nations, resolved by the use of arms” and in fact, the notion of war was simply equated with armed conflict until WWII.
After WWII, in an effort to never again confront the world with a deadly and generalized conflict, international and European architectures were created to preserve global peace.
The UN was founded in 1945 with the purpose of preventing armed conflicts and maintaining peace and security worldwide.
Similarly, the predecessor of the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), created in 1951, did not see itself as acting against war but “protected from war” – by placing control of the war industry at a supranational level. The failure in 1954 to establish the European Defence Community (EDC) deprived Europe of a supranational army, forcing it to consider European security only within the framework of NATO, the UN’s military arm.
Yet, by 1947, two superpowers already found ways to enter into conflict without violating the rules they themselves had imposed within the UN framework. The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union redefined the very term of war, becoming less a territorial war than an ideological war with economic, cultural, scientific, sporting, and media ramifications. Even though colossal resources were devoted to nuclear armament, the two superpowers avoided direct armed confrontation.
Even though a period of détente and a gradual loosening of the Eastern and Western blocs occurred from 1963 onward, the imprint left by the Cold War on the notion of war became undeniable, transforming a formerly armed conflict into one with imprecise and polymorphic contours.
Meanwhile, the UN lost its meaning. Criticized for inaction in armed conflicts in Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, or Iraq, its inaction became even more glaring in the face of these new imprecise conflicts, including immaterial, dematerialized conflicts occurring in diplomatic, political, legal, economic, digital, and media spheres, categorized under the messy label of “lawfare”.
Welcome to a war that does not speak its name.
The term “lawfare” is an English portmanteau combining “law” and “warfare,” understood more or less precisely depending on whether one is in France or the US.
In France, the term “lawfare” is undefined, though it was made known to the public in 2019 during the trial of the political party La France Insoumise, and for now refers mainly to the strategic use of judicial procedures on a national territory.
In the US, the term exists in dictionaries and also refers to the strategic use of judicial procedures to intimidate an adversary. In its international dimension, however, lawfare is a polymorphic weapon that instrumentalizes legal, commercial, and financial principles and instruments, international or regional organizations, and the media to sanction a nation that does not comply with the (economic and financial interests) ideological expectations (lol) of the interventionist country.
These (economic and financial interests) ideological considerations (lol again) are often cloaked under the noble guise of international humanitarian law.
Thanks to the UN-led R2P (Responsibility to Protect) doctrine, aimed at preventing genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing, international humanitarian intervention allows national sovereignty to be considered non-absolute whenever the protection of the population is no longer ensured by the State concerned.
What is sovereignty, you may ask?
The sovereignty of a State under international law can be defined as the exclusive and supreme authority of said State over its territory and population, without external interference. Even though States are bound by international law and peremptory norms prohibiting slavery or genocide, they are legally equal and have the competence to freely determine their political organization, legal system, economy, and society. The use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a State, or interference in its internal affairs, is prohibited. Ironically, it is the UN that defines state sovereignty in this way under international law.
Yet what does the UN do when (a pain in the ass) one of its dominant members decides to engage in hybrid warfare against another State without valid reason? The UN is instrumentalized in a precarious balancing act between respecting national sovereignty and protecting human rights.
The pain in the ass dominant State – (well, at this stage, let’s reveal its name, though it may surprise no one – is the US) issues its own unilateral sanctions, and in turn, international organizations like the UN and the EU – (so weak when it comes to negotiations with Uncle Sam) – declare that, oh my God yes, humanitarian law is violated, and issue their own unilateral sanctions against the targeted country, which is then ostracized by the international community. Sometimes the sanctions target both the State and certain of its nationals.
Through diplomatic and economic contagion, these sanctions deprive the target State of access to international institutions, financial and trade systems, or recognition of its government by part or all of the international community. The target State is therefore silenced on the global stage and subjected to interference.
Its government may be replaced by an auto-proclaimed, exiled, puppet government recognized by part or all of the international community. It can be denied equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines (because, I mean, humanitarian law only works for a moment, you know). This is what happened to Venezuela, hit by US, UK, Canadian, and EU sanctions. Venezuela is not the only country where part of the international community recognized a parallel government; this also occurred in Libya, Somalia, and Syria, always in the prior context of unilateral sanctions.
Superficially, unilateral sanctions aim to achieve political reforms or better humanitarian law enforcement. In reality, through a program of unilateral sanctions, a nuclear program is the true target in Iran, affected by US, EU, and UN sanctions.
Similarly, forced democratic reforms and embargoes imposed by the US on Cuba since 1960 have persisted despite annual UN resolutions condemning the embargo since 1992 – resolutions that are non-binding and regularly opposed by the US and Israel.
I do not claim that the countries mentioned are models of democracy, but as a lawyer, I still can’t see the legal justification for these sanctions (– silly me, I forgot for a second that they are fundamentally economic and geostrategic).
US unilateral sanctions are often accompanied by secondary sanctions: not only is the target country sanctioned, but third countries and their companies engaging with the target may also be sanctioned by the US. The EU regulation forbidding compliance with US secondary sanctions has never been enforced, revealing Europe’s weakness vis-à-vis Uncle Sam.
The new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in 2025 shattered the illusion of any transatlantic alliance and created immense tensions between the US and Europe, as well as with Mexico and Canada.
The narratives remain the same: the Middle East produces terrorists, Latin America produces narco-traffickers, justifying extraordinary actions on the ground. Yesterday it was weapons of mass destruction, today it’s drug-laden ships that the US blows up off Venezuela’s coast – while we all know that Venezuela doesn’t produce drugs (it’s a bit further North, guys).
It is clear today that the international architecture for peace is completely outdated. Worse, it is compromised, caught in hybrid conflicts that degrade the rights of populations in target States, creating humanitarian emergencies – ironically justified under humanitarian law.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has long expressed concern about the devastating effects of unilateral sanctions on the rights of populations in target States; it is evident that ostracizing target States produces no virtuous impact.
Alas, it is always the populations whose protection is supposedly intended that suffer the degradation of their human rights – as the basic necessities, whether medicine, water, or food, are no longer available.
But as you now understand it is never really about humanitarian law – it is always about international hegemony and purely economic and geostrategic interests.
Editor’s note. Here I am, standing in front of the French National Assembly, because it is the Parliament (the French National Assembly and the Senate) that endorses executive action in the context of military interventions. Needless to say, our institutions are outdated, since – as we now clearly understand – war is no longer solely military. So I wonder what I am really doing in front of this National Assembly. All I know is that I am a lawyer, that my first passion led me to administrative law, then to administrative business law, then to private business law, then to children’s and women’s rights, only to finally circle back to my first passion (without renouncing the others), as I now work mainly in sovereign advisory (advising States, to put it simply). I also know that I am tired of reading the newspapers every morning, because wherever one looks across the globe, it is terribly anxiety-inducing, horribly depressing, and profoundly revolting.
Maison Rabih Kayrouz top – Vintage Georges Rech skirt – Louboutin shoes – Tom Ford sunglasses – Chloé purse – Roger Vivier handcuff
October 10, 2025
