Nihilism in the international system after the war in Ukraine

Abstract

The repercussions of the war in Ukraine have extended beyond the military and geopolitical spheres, impacting the legal foundations upon which the international order has been built since the end of the Cold War. The Ukrainian crisis has revealed a stark contradiction between international discourse and practices that prioritize strategic interests and redefine rules according to power dynamics.

In this context, nihilism emerges as an analytical framework for understanding current transformations. It is a political phenomenon reflecting the erosion of moral and legal constraints in international relations and highlighting the fragility of the frameworks supposedly governing the behavior of international actors.

This research is based on the premise that the Ukrainian crisis did not create nihilism in the international system, but rather accelerated its emergence and revealed its latent presence within the system's structure itself. The researcher seeks to analyze the manifestations of nihilism on the international stage following the Ukrainian crisis, and to demonstrate its repercussions on international organization, in an attempt to determine whether the world is moving towards the re-establishment of new international values, or towards the consolidation of an explicit pragmatism that redefines legitimacy based on power rather than values. The researcher adopted the descriptive-analytical method and the structural approach.