The law of international responsibility situated: From halcyon days to a fragmented global order

The question of how international responsibility fares following the Russian aggression against Ukraine has become commonly discussed and explored. This article argues that the context is nevertheless more complicated as the global order is changing due to power shifts. International norms and institutions as Western states used to know them are no longer secure, but subject to great power contestation leaving it unclear if and how practices, pursuits and invocations of international responsibility change. By analysing, in turn, three institutional snapshots of responsibility from the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court respectively, the article identifies three themes prevalent in current responsibility practices: lawfare, short-term goals like prevention, and accusations of double standards. These attributes reflect the tensions of the reordering of the global order and stands far apart from the story of progress that characterised international responsibility in the Halcyon Days of the 1990s.