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Since the Cold War, high—some would say naïve—expectations of a world in which law, impartially interpreted and applied, would have primacy over politics have not materialized. Differing visions of desirable and possible world orders are accompanied by propaganda warfare where even international law is used as a tool of hegemonic dominance or, on the contrary, as an instrument to counter such dominance. Instead of the Cold War rivalry between the liberal capitalistic and communist creeds, today the main competition is between ideologies justifying the continuation and expansion of the uni- or non-polar world with one centre of power, the world that has to become more and more homogeneous (liberal democratic), and a multi-polar balance of power world. This article argues that, taking account of the very size and even more so the cultural and developmental diversities, as well as the complexity and increasing reflexivity, of the world, the only realistically possible international system is a multi-polar one. Moreover, international law, as a normative system based on the balance of interests and compromises and not necessarily on shared ideology (this may underpin domestic legal systems or EU law), can function relatively well only in a multi-polar, balance of power, concert of powers system which is consciously and conscientiously built and accepted as legitimate. And though the processes of globalisation have a tendency to homogenize the world while making many, if not most, societies organized as states more heterogeneous, attempts to accelerate these processes are almost bound to be counter-productive.
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