{"id":28115,"date":"2026-03-24T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/?p=28115"},"modified":"2026-04-08T18:22:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:22:03","slug":"rebuilding-the-ship-of-theseus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/rebuilding-the-ship-of-theseus\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebuilding the Ship of Theseus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The remarks<\/a> of US Secretary of State\u00a0Marco Rubio\u00a0at the Munich Security Conference illustrate contemporary anxieties about the \u201crules-based order\u201d (RBO).\u00a0Rubio declared\u00a0that \u201c[\u2026]\u00a0we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations\u201d.\u00a0German Chancellor\u00a0Friedrich Merz\u00a0took it further, claiming<\/a> that the RBO \u201cno longer exists\u201d. A few weeks prior, Canadian Prime Minister\u00a0Mark Carney\u00a0said<\/a> that the international legal order is enduring \u201ca rupture\u201d and that we ought to \u201cstop invoking RBO as though it still functions as advertised\u201d.\u00a0Similarly, Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister\u00a0Mette Frederiksen\u00a0said<\/a> that \u201cthe old\u00a0world order no longer exists\u201d.<\/p>\n

The growing chorus declaring the demise of the RBO evokes a familiar philosophical dilemma. In Plutarch\u2019s Ship of Theseus<\/a> thought experiment, an object incrementally replaced plank by plank becomes a puzzle of identity: once sufficient parts are substituted, continuity rests on interpretation rather than substance. The metaphor translates readily to the RBO: as norms and institutions are replaced, the identity of what is still termed the RBO comes into question.<\/p>\n

Identifying the Ship<\/strong><\/p>\n

It should first be acknowledged that considerable conceptual ambiguity<\/a> persists regarding the relationship between\u00a0international law, the\u00a0international legal order, and the\u00a0RBO<\/a>. These are distinct<\/a> yet interrelated notions that illuminate different dimensions of international normativity.\u00a0International law\u00a0properly denotes the corpus of binding rules and principles governing the conduct of States and, increasingly, other international actors, its authority resting upon the consent of States expressed through treaties, customary law, and general legal principles. The\u00a0international legal order\u00a0encompasses this body of law but extends beyond it to include the institutional, procedural, and value-based structures through which international law is created, interpreted, and implemented \u2013 ranging from international courts and tribunals to the United Nations and related mechanisms of governance. The\u00a0RBO, by extension, represents a wider and more politically inflected construct, merging legally binding norms with non-binding political commitments and aspirational standards advanced by both State and non-State actors. Emerging<\/a> largely from post-1945 Western liberal thought, the RBO was further consolidated in the aftermath of the Cold War, when the apparent unipolar moment enabled the projection of liberal norms as the organising principles of global order.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0international law\u00a0remains rooted in consent and obligation, and the\u00a0international legal order\u00a0embodies its systemic institutionalisation, the\u00a0RBO\u00a0deliberately blurs this boundary by fusing legal and political norms into a broader schema of legitimacy and expected behaviour that extends beyond the confines of the law. Against this backdrop, the\u00a0RBO\u00a0may be conceptualised as akin to the\u00a0Ship of Theseus, in its current state subject to significant change. However, because of the interrelation between the RBO, international law, and the international legal order, discourses that contest, recalibrate, or seek to preserve the RBO inevitably exert a domino effect<\/a> on the latter two.<\/p>\n

The \u201cPlanks\u201d of the RBO<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the RBO were conceived as Theseus\u2019 ship, its endurance would hinge on the continual renewal of its constituent \u201cplanks\u201d, though much debate persists over what those planks actually are. Nonetheless, certain core elements<\/a> can be discerned \u2013 some institutional, others substantive, and still others geopolitical \u2013 together forming the ship\u2019s distinctive identity.<\/p>\n

Institutional planks form the architecture that allows the RBO to operate. Chief among them is the United Nations system. Yet these institutional foundations have come under increasing strain. For instance, the central competence of the Security Council has been undermined by unilateral uses of force as well as by ad hoc<\/em> security mechanisms and proliferating unilateral sanctions<\/a>. President Trump\u2019s \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d epitomises<\/a> this trend.<\/p>\n

The substantive planks of the international order consist of the legal norms and principles that confer coherence and legitimacy upon it \u2013 most notably the UN Charter\u2019s prohibition on the use of force, the system of collective security, sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and pacta sunt servanda<\/em>. Increasingly, however, these norms are being re\u2011interpreted or strategically instrumentalised. This is evident in coercive regime\u2011change operations illustrated by the recent abduction of Maduro<\/a> and the expansive invocation of anticipatory self\u2011defence in a purported \u201cdouble pre\u2011emptive\u201d war<\/a> against Iran. These recent developments reflect an increasingly pronounced disregard for the territorial integrity and political independence of other states.<\/p>\n

Geopolitical planks concern the distribution of power and alliance structures through which the RBO is articulated and enforced. In recent years, this architecture has been visibly re\u2011configured, most notably through President Trump\u2019s deliberate rapprochement with far\u2011right leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, Javier Milei<\/a> and Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>, and his open disparagement of traditional partners in the European Union<\/a>, Canada<\/a> and the UK<\/a>, as well as his recurrent questioning of the NATO<\/a>. These shifts signal an attempt to re-anchor the order in a narrower constellation of ideological allies<\/a>, loosening its historic moorings in broader Western consensus and professed commitments to multilateralism.<\/p>\n

The crucial question is whether these changes still serve the RBO, or whether they mark the emergence of a successor system.<\/p>\n

Materialist Analogies: When Planks Matter<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to a materialist reading, if core rules such as the prohibition on the use of force, the principle of sovereign equality, or the binding character of treaties are eroded or re\u2011conceptualised beyond recognition, the \u201cship\u201d has, in substance, been replaced. Applied to Rubio\u2019s remarks, a materialist would be suspicious of any reform agenda that, in the name of \u201cvital interests\u201d, normalises broad exceptions to foundational rules or relegates multilateral restraints to merely optional tools. If such reforms systematically privilege flexible, interest\u2011driven bargains over generalisable, reciprocity\u2011based norms, the planks that once defined the order\u2019s identity may be removed one by one. Under this account, past some threshold of replacement, we should find ourselves looking at a new vessel.<\/p>\n

Functional and Continuity Views: Structure and Purpose<\/strong><\/p>\n

Continuity theories would underline the persistence of function: a normative framework that structures expectations among States by allocating competences and furnishing procedures for cooperation and dispute settlement. Even if particular rules and institutions mutate, the enterprise remains the same order so long as it continues to organise relations among entities recognised as States or functionally analogous actors, claims a certain formality in rule-making and interpretation, and preserves its basic roles of coordination, cooperation, and constraint. Rubio\u2019s call to \u201creform\u201d and \u201crebuild\u201d the RBO presupposes that deep structural change is compatible with continuity of identity; he presents<\/a> the United Nations as retaining \u201ctremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world\u201d while conceding its \u201cfailures\u201d in Ukraine and Gaza, and his framing further suggests a hierarchy in which national interest may trump international commitments. This forms part of a broader discourse that laments the erosion of the post\u20111989 RBO while simultaneously advocating its selective preservation, exemplified by Trump\u2019s assertion that he\u00a0\u201cdoes not need international law<\/a>\u201d, even as such claims paradoxically confer normative consistency<\/a> to the RBO. From this angle, Rubio\u2019s insistence that \u201cabandonment\u201d is unnecessary reads as an affirmation of functional continuity: the ship is still expected to cross the same seas, albeit with a different hull and course. On such a view, shifts in the balance between national interest and multilateral commitment do not destroy identity, provided that the system\u2019s basic function \u2013 supplying relatively stable, general, and prospectively applicable norms \u2013 remains intact, a perspective reinforced by the observation that this<\/em> order has long accommodated alterations in its material components \u2013 new States, treaty regimes, and institutions \u2013 without relinquishing its claim to be \u201cthe same\u201d.<\/p>\n

Culturalist and Practice<\/strong>-B<\/strong>ased Accounts: Who <\/strong>I<\/strong>s to Say What <\/strong>I<\/strong>t <\/strong>I<\/strong>s?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A culturalist account asks whether states that once championed the RBO still regard their conduct as compatible with it. The statements surveyed above \u2013 all but Rubio\u2019s \u2013 largely signal resignation to its erosion, pointing not just to decline but to potential replacement. What might supplant the RBO remains unclear, as those statements shed little light on the matter.<\/p>\n

For decades, the RBO largely expressed the voice of Western liberal states. Yet rival conceptions of order<\/a> have long exposed deep disagreements over its fundamental nature. China<\/a>, for example, advances a sovereignty-centred order prioritising territorial integrity, non-intervention, and regime security over liberal universality \u2013 recasting international law as a tool to curb hegemonic interference while preserving great-power autonomy. Russia<\/a> promotes a \u201cmultipolar\u201d order that reserves full sovereignty for great powers and rejects \u201crules-based\u201d liberalism as a Western project, a stance reflected in its 2016 joint declaration<\/a> with China \u201con the promotion of international law\u201d. These are not mere policy preferences but competing templates for legal and political authority. So far, they have coexisted within a shaky yet functioning system buttressed by the veto power of these major players. The current uncertainty over the RBO\u2019s successor, however, introduces new risks.<\/p>\n

If these visions harden into stable practices of invocation \u2013 through BRICS, the SCO, coordinated UN General Assembly voting, or forums like the \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d \u2013 they may give rise to parallel normative orders that share international law\u2019s vocabulary but pull it in radically divergent directions The question would then become whether the international order can endure the strain of being drawn in opposing directions.<\/p>\n

The Sea Corrupts: Bad Faith as the New Environment of the RBO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carney, Frederiksen and Merz\u2019s somewhat resignatory adherence to the view that we\u2019ve reached the end of the RBO as we know it \u2013 far more radical than Rubio\u2019s remarks \u2013 may suggest that the problem is not the ship in itself, rather in the waters upon which it sails: waters that have grown increasingly turbid with bad faith, deceit<\/a>, and a frank indifference to the very idea of restraint. For decades, internationalits consoled themselves with the thought that even when the ship creaked and leaked, the surrounding sea was at least normatively hospitable: negotiations were presumed to be in good faith, treaty participation signaled a minimal willingness to be bound, and the rhetoric of sovereign equality operated as a thin but real constraint on unilateral excess. Noncompliance was marketed \u2013 notably by the US, however unconvincingly<\/a> \u2013 as compliance. Today, by contrast, we are confronted with an environment in which a sitting head of state can be courted through ostensibly serious negotiations and promises of concessions<\/a>, only to find himself abducted<\/a> and paraded before a foreign court a few hours later.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration did not invent this instrumentalism, but it gave it a vernacular and a program: a vocabulary of volatile \u201cdeals\u201d (see examples here<\/a> and here<\/a>) and \u201cAmerica first\u201d (illustrated by the \u201cneed\u201d for Greenland<\/a>, Panama<\/a> and even Canada<\/a>, alongside Rubio\u2019s emphasis on national interest) that recast multilateral bargains as disposable transactions, normalised threats of withdrawal from foundational regimes, and made it intellectually respectable to argue that international law binds only so long as it serves immediate national advantage. If the RBO is a Ship of Theseus, the deeper anxiety is that the surrounding waters have changed their chemical composition altogether: once structured, however imperfectly, by ideals of good faith and mutual restraint, they now seem to reward perfidy, selective compliance, and the overt subordination of legal order to geopolitical opportunism. Under such conditions, the question is not simply whether the ship remains \u201cthe same\u201d over time, but whether any vessel can preserve its identity when the sea itself has turned corrosive to the very materials from which the order is built. One can only dread whatever order might supplant the RBO under such conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The remarks of US Secretary of State\u00a0Marco Rubio\u00a0at the Munich Security Conference illustrate contemporary anxieties about the \u201crules-based order\u201d (RBO).\u00a0Rubio declared\u00a0that \u201c[\u2026]\u00a0we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations\u201d.\u00a0German Chancellor\u00a0Friedrich Merz\u00a0took it further, claiming that the RBO \u201cno longer exists\u201d. A few weeks prior, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6639],"tags":[7499,3796],"authors":[7952],"article-categories":[6000],"doi":[],"class_list":["post-28115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-international-legal-order","tag-rule-of-law","authors-mira-hamad","article-categories-article"],"acf":{"subline":"The Trump Administration, Reform, and the Identity of the \u201cRules-Based Order\u201d"},"meta_box":{"doi":"10.17176\/20260324-162911-0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28118,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28115\/revisions\/28118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28115"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=28115"},{"taxonomy":"article-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-categories?post=28115"},{"taxonomy":"doi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doi?post=28115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}