German Kaiser, Maduro and Trump: the rise of the individual within international law

Every historical moment could be relativised and placed within a wider context. And it should be - in order to get a better sense of one’s own particular point in time. For instance, let’s imagine that some peculiar circumstances result in a huge spike in airlines’ ticket prices. As a natural reaction, there is a lot of anxiety among the members of our society over the flight affordability. But such anxiety would be very contemporaneous, in the sense that it could only have emerged as a result of us now being totally accustomed to utilising air traffic to get from point A to point B. It goes without saying that our ancestors during the 18th or 19th centuries could not even have imagined our current air traffic infrastructure. Neither could they have envisaged our contemporary way of life in general. Consequently, it would also be absurd to assume that all those previous generations had to suffer morally until the days when our air travel industry had kicked off.

These same historical laws apply equally to social issues. It would be ridiculous to imagine that women and the advocates of women’s rights had to suffer and endure across the ages until finally, in our times, things have begun improving. The previous generations of mankind had completely different notions regarding women, their rights, their relations to men, and so on. Therefore, they definitely did not feel the anxiety that we might feel today when considering their situation in the past. We judge the historical experience of women during the bygone centuries as oppression and inequality because we have very different social consciousness. And it was precisely the historical development of this social consciousness that has incited the feminist movements of the modern ages. You can’t have a social movement advocating for the abolition of slavery if the entire society finds this social relation acceptable.

As far as geopolitics and international relations are concerned, each year seems to produce articles online about how “the world feels so unstable right now”. And yet again, the imperialistic acrobatics at the start of 2026 by the Trump administration should likewise not take us aback. Statements by news outlets claiming, for example, that “the Venezuela strike sets a new low for the world order” indicate, above all, our higher standards and expectations. The list of imperialist interventions by the USA is extremely long and extends beyond the Trump years. However, every passing generation has less and less tolerance towards the double standards and breaches of international law. And just as the pro-Palestine cause has never been so strong, the pro-international law stance has equally been gradually gaining ground - both within and outside of the US. And whenever someone suggests that we're living through the 1930s once again, it might be worth referring to Marco Rubio’s claim that the US actions are “not a war against Venezuela” even after kidnapping its president. Some hundred years ago such a distinction between a nation and its government would have been incomprehensible. Our contemporary social consciousness is simply different now.

In some of the previous commentaries we have noted and emphasized the increasingly greater focus upon the individual within the modern social consciousness. Unsurprisingly, these gradual yet tectonic shifts also influence international law. Essentially, the “currently predominant view [...] places the vulnerable individual at the center of the international order.” Here is a more detailed explanation, within the context of the activities of the International Criminal Court:

“This fundamental reorientation of the law of the international community, as evoked by the tribunal - bearing the handwriting of its first President, Antonio Cassese - can be captured as international law’s ‘humanisation’ (to use the term coined by Theodor Meron) or its ‘individualisation’. That ‘gradual’ process of change, as identified by the tribunal, refers to one of the key relationships in international law: that between the State and the human individual. Over time, it even amounts to an exchange of the human individual for States as the focal point of the international legal order.”

Again, this obviously has not always been the case. Not that long ago it was self-evident that “individuals could never have international legal rights or obligations”. The individual was not relevant in comparison to the modern nation state. Here are some remarks by a former prominent jurist:

“‘For how could International Law, which is a law between States, give rights to individuals concerning their relations to a State?’, Lassa Oppenheim asked rhetorically. And he gave the answer: ‘International Law cannot grant international rights to individuals, for international rights and duties can exist only between States, or between the League of Nations and States.’”

But nothing ever remains the same within humanity’s social history. We have previously discussed the historical development of the rules of warfare in relation to the fate of the civilian populations. Once completely overlooked, today the civilians have become the prime preoccupation within a military conflict. So has the status of the individual emerged above the sovereignty of the state. However, there is another corollary to the above mentioned individualisation within the international law. And that is the idea of individual accountability of the actors that engage in armed activity on behalf of a sovereign state.

Given the conceptions of international law during the days of Lassa Oppenheim, it is not surprising that “the idea of prosecuting a national leader for embarking on a war” was “stillborn at the Paris Peace Conference” after World War I. At that historical moment the international law “neither allowed for the protection, nor for the prosecution of individuals specifically. The Paris peacemakers were therefore unable to legally enforce the international prosecution of the Kaiser, though they did propose that after the conference that should happen in some form.” Here is some more historical context:

“But even the law of war traditionally was mostly silent in terms of mandating specific consequences for individuals who violated it. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions and the 1929 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war lacked any penal provisions, and the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Wounded and the Sick in Armies had only a weak provision.”

Hence, while some victorious states were willing to prosecute the former leader of imperial Germany for his country’s military conduct, such an approach proved to be as yet too radical.

“The American reservation, written by Robert Lansing and James Brown Scott, challenged the majority’s approach, and later became a touchstone for criticisms of untimely innovations in international law. It took issue with the idea of trying the ex-kaiser for his actions when head of state, on the grounds that heads of state were answerable solely to their own people ‘in whom the sovereignty of any State resides’, and should not be held accountable to another sovereignty, such as an international court.”

Indeed, the state reigned supreme. There was nothing above its sovereignty. Before the Great War “attempts to enforce individual criminal responsibility in the Hague Conference of 1899, and again in 1907, were constrained by notions of state sovereignty.” The other side of this coin of sovereignty contained the subjugation of the individual to his own state. For example, “the notion that the law would even govern behavior of governments vis-a-vis their own citizens, let alone prescribe accountability for individuals for misconduct, was anathema to the entire exercise. In that respect, internal sovereignty was, until early in the twentieth century, nearly complete and insulated from the law of nations.” The idea that a citizen could sue his own country over the infringement of his rights would have been seen as utopian and absurd by the contemporaries.

But then arrives the inevitable historical individualisation, namely “a process in which individuals (both as agents and as subjects) increase in importance compared with collective entities for the purposes of explaining and normatively assessing the causes, conduct, and consequences of war”. And the first practical results emerged after the Second World War. The following passage indicates a novel interpretation of the international law:

“International law is concerned with the actions of sovereign states, and provides no punishment for individuals; and further, that where the action in question is an act of state, those who carry it out are not personally responsible but are protected by the doctrine of the sovereignty of the state. In the opinion of the Tribunal, both these submissions must be rejected. That international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as upon states have long been recognized....the very essence of the Charter is that individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual State. He who violates the laws of war cannot obtain immunity while acting in pursuance of the authority of the state, if the state in authorizing action moves outside its competence under international law.”

In addition, “in developing tribunal’s jurisprudence on individual accountability at the 1946 Nuremberg Trial,” Justice Robert Jackson claimed that “crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crime can the provisions of the international law be enforced”.

The year 1946 corresponded to a significantly higher stage of historical social development than the year 1919. The idea that the representatives of a state would be “answerable solely to their own people”, as defended in 1919, now seems irrational from our current perspective. This can be easily attested even by the contemporary statements made by the reactionary US regime regarding Nicolas Maduro - very different from the American position after World War I regarding the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. This doctrine of the sovereignty of the state was finally rejected, at least on paper, in 1946. Of course, the historical law of social change did not stop functioning after World War II. The year 1946 was not yet 2026.

Fast forward to our days, and it is no longer solely Pete Hegseth who might be considered as a war criminal over the murders of fishermen, but every single member of the US army who was involved in those operations. And when a staunch conservative such as Lindsey Graham insists on the legality of everything that either the US or the Israeli military does, he does not hide behind the now obsolete “doctrine of the sovereignty of the state”. He does not mind judging individual state leaders. For instance, Putin or some African presidents. Rather, at stake here is the US exceptionalism as well as the wider notion that some countries have more rights than others. And if Graham’s statement that “the Rome Statute does not apply to Israel, or the United States, or France, or Germany, or Great Britain, because it was not conceived to come after us” seems utterly outrageous, this does not necessarily suggest a regression from an egalitarian world. Rather, it indicates how incompatible any state’s supremacy within the international order has become to our contemporary social norms. And just as in the case of women’s rights, this should be seen as a harbinger of the future global community. Namely, with all the different peoples having absolutely equal rights.

Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230203-why-the-world-feels-so-unstable-right-now
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-04/venezuela-operation-us-blatant-disregard-international-law/106197628
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/04/g-s1-104485/rubio-says-theres-not-a-war-against-venezuela-despite-u-s-capture-of-maduro
https://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/userfiles/people/kirstensellars/K_Sellars_Kaiser.pdf
https://iow.eui.eu/2016/07/11/civilian-protection-some-thoughts-on-the-historical-origins-of-the-norm/
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1453&context=book_chapters#:~:text=This%20change%20in%20the%20law%20flowed%20directly,the%20Nuremberg%20trials%20and%20their%20after%2D%20math
https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/jles-2020-0005
https://academic.oup.com/book/56268/chapter/445190056
https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/graham-defends-trump-admins-boat-strike-campaign-pushes-for-venezuelan-regime-change
https://www.newarab.com/opinion/can-we-stop-us-exceptionalism-destroying-international-law

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