Spectrum: International Law As Permission, Regulation, And Restriction (Part II)

By Cenap Çakmak

Before examining the concrete forms in which international law operates in practice, it is necessary to situate the relationship between law and politics within a broader analytical spectrum. This spectrum illustrates the extent to which legal norms are activated or constrained by political authority. At one extreme lies absolute anarchy, where the absence of an effective political authority to uphold common rules, coordinate expectations, or ensure harmony leaves the law vulnerable to fragmentation and lawlessness. At the other extreme lies an all-powerful political authority where authority has become so dominant that it absorbs the autonomy of law, reducing legal norms to mere instruments of power and leaving no meaningful space for law to discipline or constrain behavior. The practical reality of international law is shaped not at these two extremes, but in the broad and contentious space between them. In this intermediate zone, where normative commitments interact with political interests, institutional capacities, and struggles over legitimacy, applicable international law takes three distinct forms, each reflecting a different configuration of legal authority and political power.

Applicable International Law as Permission

The first and politically broadest form of applicable international law can be understood as law as permission. This refers to the broad legal and political space where behaviors are not explicitly prohibited, authoritatively clarified, or effectively monitored by institutional mechanisms. In such contexts, the absence of explicit legal restrictions does not create neutrality; rather, it creates a permissive space where political actors can transform ambiguity into justification. Elements that are insufficiently regulated become politically exploitable and, through interpretation, doctrinal expansion, or strategic framing, become legally defensible. The underlying logic here is not that behavior is unquestionably lawful, but that the legal order leaves sufficient ambiguity to allow states to present their actions as consistent with the system’s fundamental rules.

In the historical evolution of the regime governing the use of force, this permissive space was once considerably broader. Under the classical sovereignty model that prevailed before the consolidation of the modern treaty framework, war itself largely remained within the discretion of sovereign states. The use of force was treated as an accepted instrument of state governance, and the law focused more on the formalities of declaration and conduct than on prohibition. In this sense, classical international law encompassed a broad legal sphere of permissibility surrounding the authority to declare war. The post-1945 order has significantly narrowed this scope through Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and the architecture of collective security; however, this permissive logic has not disappeared. On the contrary, this logic reemerges in a more sophisticated form when states invoke textual ambiguities, institutional paralysis, doctrinal debates, or exceptional interpretations regarding self-defense and humanitarian necessity.

Recent examples illustrate how this permissive space operates. The 1999 intervention in Kosovo is perhaps the most frequently cited example: despite the absence of explicit Security Council authorization, NATO member states justified the operation on the basis of an emerging humanitarian justification—one that was neither explicitly permitted nor strictly prohibited under the existing framework. The legal uncertainty surrounding unilateral humanitarian intervention has created a contentious space of authorization where the use of force can be defended not as unlawful but as exceptional. Similarly, the use of force by various states in Syria after 2014 has relied on broad interpretations of the concept of collective self-defense against non-state actors operating across borders; particularly in cases where the state in question is “unable or unwilling” to address the threat on its own. Since this doctrine remains contentious rather than definitively settled, it illustrates how uncertainty sustains a legal environment that permits unilateral use of force.

This dynamic is analytically significant because it helps explain one of the defining paradoxes of the contemporary international order: states continue to legitimize unilateral use of force while affirming their commitment to the Charter system. They generally do not reject the legal order entirely; instead, they operate within the margins of interpretation. Thus, as a source of permission, law reveals how legal uncertainty itself can become a source of power. Rather than acting outside the law, states often act in areas where the law is silent, uncertain, or politically unenforceable. For this reason, the persistence of unilateral power should not always be interpreted as evidence of a legal collapse. In most cases, this reflects the existence of a tolerant legal space that allows political actors to transform legal uncertainty into claims of legitimacy while maintaining their formal adherence to the system’s normative structure.

Applicable International Law as Regulation

Regulation constitutes a middle ground between permission and prohibition. Unlike legal prohibitions, which aim to prevent conduct through explicit restrictions, regulation does not always categorically reject an action. Instead, it introduces shared expectations, accepted procedures, and institutionalized practices that shape how conduct is performed, justified, reviewed, and challenged. The effect of this is not to eliminate political discretion, but to channel that discretion through normative and procedural frameworks that make the state’s behavior understandable to others. In this sense, regulation does not eliminate power politics from international relations; rather, it socializes power within an environment of recognized rules, expectations, and forums of accountability.

At this level, the international system moves beyond the image of a completely anarchic order composed of formally equal but otherwise unconstrained sovereign states. It begins to resemble a classical international community, where sovereignty retains its central position but is embedded within practices of diplomacy, tradition, and institutional interaction. Here, sovereignty does not merely diminish; it becomes relational: states retain their autonomy, but they are expected to exercise this autonomy through procedures that acknowledge the existence, interests, and judgments of others. For example, diplomatic engagement ceases to be merely a political convenience and becomes a regulatory expectation that frames how crises are communicated, escalate, or subside. Similarly, traditional norms provide established expectations even where treaty law remains silent, and without imposing categorical prohibitions, they allow for the stabilizing effect of repeated practices and opinio juris.

However, the most significant dimension of this regulatory sphere lies in global governance. This is where international law functions not merely as a set of rules, but as an architecture for coordinated decision-making, oversight, and legitimization. Global governance expands the scope of regulation beyond interstate interaction by incorporating international organizations, specialized agencies, monitoring bodies, regional institutions, and sometimes non-state actors into the management of the international order. The significance of this layer lies in transforming law into an ongoing process of administration and collective governance. Rather than asking whether a behavior is abstractly lawful, global governance examines through which procedures decisions are made, who is authorized to participate, what review standards are applied, and how legitimacy is constructed in the public sphere.

This is particularly evident in the regime of the use of force, where the United Nations system exemplifies law as a regulatory framework. The Security Council’s authority under Chapter VII does not always operate as a strict prohibition-exception model; rather, it typically functions as a regulatory mechanism that governs collective expectations surrounding the legitimate use of force. Council resolutions establish procedures for threat assessment, burden-sharing, reporting obligations, temporal limitations, and post-intervention tasks. Even when political consensus is difficult to achieve, the requirement for states to seek authorization, present evidence, negotiate the text , and justify objectives demonstrates a functioning regulatory logic. Thus, the system curbs unilateral impulses by shifting questions regarding the use of force into a governance framework based on negotiation and institutional approval.

A good example of this is the 1991 Gulf War, where the use of force against Iraq was not merely “authorized” but was incorporated into a collective security process encompassing Security Council resolutions, coalition mandates, and reporting structures. The operation’s legitimacy stems not only from its legal basis but also from the fact that it was implemented through global governance institutions. More recent examples include the missions authorized by the Security Council in Libya in 2011 or the multinational anti-piracy operations conducted off the Horn of Africa; in these operations, the use of force was regulated through mandates, scope limitations, and periodic reviews. In any case, the legal significance lies not in absolute authorizations but in the procedural and institutional frameworks that make power manageable.

This regulatory sphere also brings to light procedural legitimacy, which is playing an increasingly central role in contemporary international law. Today, states seek legitimacy not only by referring to substantive legal rules but also by adhering to accepted procedures: consulting with allies, notifying international organizations, publishing legal justifications, or participating in multilateral negotiations. Such practices are significant because they signal compliance with the norms of the international community, even if the substantive agreement itself is contentious. In this sense, procedural legitimacy has become one of the most powerful tools of global governance and often shapes how actions are politically and legally assessed long after the event itself has occurred. Accordingly, as a regulatory framework, law should be understood as a sphere in which international legality operates through governance rather than through explicit rejection. This is a sphere where sovereignty is preserved yet regulated, where the power of diplomacy and tradition is transformed into predictable interaction, and where global governance institutions transform dispersed authority into collective oversight. Particularly in the realm of the use of force, this form of legitimacy demonstrates that international law generally operates not by prohibiting action, but by regulating the conditions under which an action becomes acceptable, reviewable, and institutionally legitimate.

International Law as Restriction

Restriction represents the strongest and most authoritative form of international legality. While permission signifies the realm of political feasibility and regulatory structures guide behavior through procedures, restriction is the point where the law speaks with its clearest prohibitive voice. Here, norms do not merely guide or channel behavior; they also define the boundaries that actors are expected not to cross. Behaviors are either explicitly prohibited or strictly limited, and consequently, the expectation of compliance is much stronger. Most importantly, violations are not left entirely to political improvisation. Even in situations where implementation remains inconsistent, the institutional and normative consequences of a violation are at least predefined; this allows the international community to define the violation in legally comprehensible terms. In this sense, restriction is the point where international law most closely approximates the classical domestic legal image of restriction.

The clearest example in the regime governing the use of force is the prohibition on the unilateral threat or use of force contained in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter; this provision requires all members to refrain from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. Because this provision transformed war from a historically existing sovereign privilege into an exceptionally limited legal possibility, it remains the cornerstone of the post-1945 legal order. Unlike the old international system, where war could function as an accepted policy tool, the Charter operates on the opposite premise: the use of force is unlawful unless it falls under a recognized exception, most notably self-defense or authorization by the Security Council. Thus, the restriction reverses the logic of classical sovereignty by establishing not the freedom to use force, but the avoidance of force as the fundamental norm.

However, the analytical significance of this restriction lies not only in the clarity of the rule but also in the global governance structures that underpin its authority. Restrictive norms become most powerful when embedded within oversight institutions capable of identifying violations, coordinating interventions, and maintaining the rule’s reliability over time. It is at this point that global governance becomes indispensable. 2(4). The prohibition in the article derives a significant portion of its practical power from the broader United Nations structure: the Security Council’s authority to identify threats to peace, the General Assembly’s role in normative consolidation, the International Court of Justice’s interpretive jurisprudence, sanctions committees, fact-finding bodies, and regional organizations that reinforce collective expectations. In other words, a prohibition is never merely a textual ban; it is a governance ecosystem that transforms legal clarity into institutional outcomes.

This institutional dimension is of vital importance, as restrictive laws remain heavily dependent on political conditions. The existence of a strong rule does not automatically ensure strong compliance. Restriction is most effective when oversight bodies are sufficiently representative to gain broad acceptance, sufficiently legitimate to foster voluntary compliance, and sufficiently capable of responding to violations in a timely and consistent manner. In the absence of these elements, even the clearest prohibitions can devolve into selective enforcement. The legal norm remains formally intact, but its practical authority becomes dependent on the willingness and capacity of institutions to respond.

The Security Council serves as a powerful example illustrating both the strength and fragility of constraints. On the one hand, sanctions provide a collective enforcement mechanism for the prohibition on the use of force through peacekeeping mandates and determinations of aggression. On the other hand, when geopolitical divisions among permanent members block action, the restrictive norm may remain legally clear but become institutionally weakened. The 2003 Iraq War is particularly instructive in this regard. The legal debate surrounding the Security Council’s failure to grant explicit authorization did not diminish the strength of Article 2(4) as a restrictive norm; rather, it demonstrated that even the strongest legal rules depend, in terms of practical power, on institutional legitimacy and political consensus within global governance bodies. The violation could have been interpreted precisely as a legal problem because the restrictive framework was so clear, but the failure of oversight bodies to respond decisively revealed the conditional nature of the application.

A similar point can be made regarding Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where the legal prohibition was unequivocal and institutional responses—General Assembly resolutions, sanctions regimes, cases before the International Court of Justice, and coordinated reactions by regional bodies— demonstrated the enduring vitality of restrictive law even under significant geopolitical pressure. This example demonstrates that global governance can partially compensate for dysfunction within an institution by redistributing oversight functions across multiple centers of authority. Thus, the regime of restrictions persists not only through individual sanctioning bodies but also through a pluralistic governance network comprising legal, diplomatic, judicial, and economic responses.

Procedural legitimacy is of central importance here as well, though in a different form than under regulation. In the realm of constraint, legitimacy stems from the reliability of violation detection and intervention mechanisms. The more representative and procedurally fair oversight bodies appear, the more authoritative the constraining norm becomes. Conversely, selective enforcement can weaken even the clearest prohibition by making the legal restriction appear to depend on power rather than principle.

Accordingly, international law as a form of restriction should be understood as the point where legality most fully aims to restrict through a prohibition supported by governance capacity. This is the strongest legal form not merely because it says “no,” but also because it is tied to an institutional order designed to detect, process, and respond to violations of this prohibition. Especially in the realm of the use of force, the resilience of restrictive law depends on the quality of global governance: the representativeness of institutions, the legitimacy of their procedures, and their ability to translate normative clarity into collective action. The stronger these governance mechanisms are, the more effective restriction becomes as the highest form of international legal authority.