The High Cost of a Lawless World

The international legal order was always mainly about economics. It has provided a degree of predictability that has kept risk premiums affordable, stabilized shipping lanes and made long-term investment across borders rational. Markets never put a number on it because they never had to: It was ambient, like oxygen. No one thinks to put a price on oxygen—that is, until the room starts running out of it. With oil prices crossing $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, the global economy is increasingly finding itself short of breath.

The price spike in oil isn’t just a reaction to the Iran war. It is the first significant market pricing of a pattern that has been building for months: the systematic dismantling of the legal architecture that made the global economy predictable.

In January, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve, snatching Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his compound in Caracas in a raid that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called “a dangerous precedent.” Operation Epic Fury followed in February, without authorization from Congress or the U.N. Security Council. When Spain invoked the U.N. Charter to deny U.S. forces access to its bases for the Iran strikes, Washington threatened completely cut off trade. Cuba, meanwhile, has faced a U.S. oil blockade since January, with President Donald Trump openly threatening that Havana is next in his crosshairs.