Sovereign Hypocrisy: The New Grammar of Global Power

“It is not law that restrains power. It is power that decides when law counts.”

By Glênio S Guedes ( Brazilian Attorney-at-law )

Let’s start with the uncomfortable question. The kind you don’t ask at dinner.

Can hypocrisy become a legal institution?

Not a moral flaw. Not an accident. A feature.

Look around. The answer is already filed, stamped, and classified.

Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the United States didn’t merely break international law. That would be boring. Predictable. Old news.

What happened was better. Cleaner. Smarter.

Illegality with paperwork. Violence with a footnote. War wearing a lawyer’s tie.

This isn’t about ignoring the law. It’s about speaking the law fluently while emptying it of meaning.

1. Exception Is the New Routine

Once upon a time, exceptions were emergencies. Now they’re workflow.

War isn’t war. It’s an operation. Invasion isn’t invasion. It’s enforcement.Kidnapping a head of state isn’t kidnapping. It’s law application.

Same bombs. Better branding.

This isn’t semantics. It’s political product design. In a world drowning in rules, you don’t need to abolish law.

You just relabel violence until it sounds responsible.

2. Hypocrisy Isn’t a Bug. It’s the System.

Hypocrisy used to be embarrassing. Now it’s efficient.

Demand sovereignty when it protects you. Ignore sovereignty when it slows you down.

Demand due process when you’re the defendant. Forget due process when you’re the judge.

This isn’t inconsistency. It’s selective legality.

Rules don’t disappear. They’re reassigned.

Mandatory for some. Optional for others. Decorative for the rest.

Hypocrisy doesn’t break the system. Hypocrisy is how the system breathes.

3. Law as Alibi

When power gets caught breaking the rules, it doesn’t run from the law.

It downgrades it.

Minimal arguments. Thin justifications. Legal fast food.

Enough calories to survive the press conference. No nutritional value.

Law stops being a structure. It becomes a collection of excuses.

The goal isn’t coherence. It’s insulation.

Not justice. Damage control.

The robe isn’t there to judge. It’s there to cover the stains.

4. Geopolitics and the Cult of “No Choice”

Then comes the final trick.

Fatalism.

Security demanded it. Stability required it. Strategy left no alternative.

Translation: Don’t blame us. History made us do it.

Responsibility dissolves. Decision disappears. Violence becomes weather.

This creates a neat equation:

Power decides. Law explains. Critics are naïve.

If you object, you “don’t understand how the world works.”

Which usually means you still believe rules matter.

5. Juricide, Step by Step

Call it what it is: juricide.

Not the murder of one rule. The slow execution of the idea that law can limit power at all.

When hypocrisy becomes policy, the message is honest:

Law exists when convenient. Law vanishes when inconvenient. Law returns when needed as decoration.

Foreign policy doesn’t follow law anymore. Foreign policy decides when law exists.

Conclusion

So let’s ask again:

Can hypocrisy become a legal institution?

In theory, no. In practice, it already has.

The real danger isn’t one illegal act. It’s the normalization of double standards.

When hypocrisy stops being shameful and starts being managerial, what collapses isn’t a treaty.

It’s the belief that law is anything more than scripted dialogue for power.

Because when power learns to talk like law without obeying it, what remains isn’t order.

It’s just violence with better grammar.