Statements by the US and Iranian delegations after the breakdown of negotiations in Islamabad indicate that the gap between the parties at the talks was rooted not in technicalities but in a deeper conceptual difference. At the heart of it seems to be the fact that Iran sees itself as a sovereign state with the privileges one normally accords to a sovereign state, including the right to develop its own resources in the manner it sees fit, while the US sees it only as a “regime”, that should be grateful for whatever rights the US chooses to grant it. It is unsurprising that this sort of gap couldn’t be bridged by a single round of dialogue. The breakdown of talks in Islamabad should worry India, not just because it signals the extension of what has been an economically painful conflict but because it exemplifies the near impossibility of states negotiating peace in a world order where the sovereignty of some states is treated as absolute while that of other states is treated as conditional.India routinely urges that all international disputes be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. Curiously though, it fails to see how its own silences when sovereignty is violated, out of fear of alienating one major power or the other, are augmenting a world order that is making the resolution of disputes through dialogue and diplomacy impossible.The reemergence of conditional sovereignty in international lawAt the core of international law, which deals with how order is created among states, is the principle of sovereignty. Unlike the European states, which were presumed from the very origins of the field to have sovereignty, the path of the non-European states to sovereignty, through the processes of colonisation and decolonization was more complicated.Scholars like Antony Anghie argue that the different process by which the non-European states gained sovereignty, leaves their sovereignty with enduring vulnerabilities. While European sovereignty is treated by international law as existing, and inviolable, non-European sovereignty, which is seen as the culmination of the civilising mission in Western eyes, is often at risk of being treated as conditional upon the state meeting Western standards of civilisation. Major churns in international law, including most recently during the global war on terror, tend to bring these vulnerabilities to the surface. While the jurisprudence accompanying the global war on terror revolves around the argument that conventional international law is insufficient to combat the threat posed by non-state actors, the effect of much of this discourse has been to create non-state states – states whose sovereignty is dispensable. The evolution of three concepts in international law during this period best exemplify this. Use of forceBy expanding the scope of the use of force against non-state actors, the global war on terror effectively made state sovereignty conditional on a state being able and willing to act against terror groups operating from their soil. As terrorism was cast as a global threat, American supported regime-change operations became recast as self-defence against that threat. From the American invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, states that were seen as unwilling or unable to act against terror groups proscribed by the US, or whose governments by themselves were viewed as threatening to the US, faced invasions, and those invasions, instead of being treated as unjust violations of sovereignty were treated as self- defense against terrorism.Also read: US-Iran Talks in Islamabad: What We Know and What We Don’t After Marathon Day in PakistanAssassinationsIn 1988, the assassination by Israel of senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) figure, Khalil al-Wazir in Tunis, was met with near universal condemnation, including through a UN Security Council resolution, that the US abstained from, but did not veto. By contrast, the international reactions to the February 2026 assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s head of state at the time, have ranged from open approval in the West, to silence from countries like India. A shocking opinion piece published in the Washington Post last week even suggests that the US should threaten to assassinate Iranian negotiators if they fail to accept American terms in Islamabad. While many international law scholars have pointed out that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marks a new low in the erosion of the international law against assassinations, it is important to note that the erosion of this norm has not been universal. The Pannun case in the US and the controversy around the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada (which India denies involvement in) brings this into sharp relief. International law appears to be alive and well when assassinations are attempted or carried out on Western soil. What is eroded is therefore not the international law on assassinations, but the universality of its application. In other words, the sovereignty of some states is accorded more value than the rest. Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructureWhen US President Donald Trump threatens to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages” and to kill entire civilisations, he is feeding off an impunity that has been steadily growing in international law since 2023. Since the genocide in Gaza, the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure has become almost routine. Within hours of the US and Iran announcing a two week pause in hostilities, Israel launched one of the worst attacks on Lebanon in decades, killing at least 350 people in a span of ten minutes. The targets were almost entirely residential neighbourhoods, buildings and commercial areas. It is telling that India’s expression of concern about this latest targeting of civilians fails to condemn, or even name, the perpetrator – Israel. While there has been some international condemnation of the strikes, little has been done to rein Israel in.By contrast, the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine by Russia has been met with a much stronger international response. This has included specific condemnation from the broader international community, backed by the full force of international law, including a broad-based sanctions regime. As with assassinations, it appears that it is not the norm that is eroded but its universality. While human rights scholars bemoan the collapse of international law, it is important to understand that international law is not collapsing. It is reverting to its pre-World War II contours. Increasingly, the sovereignty of non-Western states is treated as being conditional upon the modern equivalent “civilisation” – their willingness to order their internal affairs to the liking of the West. India’s silence in the face of attacks on sovereign states is therefore not just neutrality. It has the effect of legitimising a world order where parts of the Global South risk being pushed into a condition of lesser sovereignty. This is not merely of theoretical interest. It has material implications for how India interprets and deals with the world. What does India need from the world?India’s deepest vulnerability today is not military or strategic. It is the 800 million or so Indian citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder, who have since the pandemic depended, on and off, on subsistence rations for their survival. For this vast population, there are no buffers, and any disruption is catastrophic. While the cost of conflict in the immediate region is well understood, globalisation means critical supply chains are now spread across the globe and conflict anywhere along these supply chains has the power to disrupt the Indian economy. Further, the Indian government’s policy of exporting its vast semi-skilled labour force to other countries has created a diaspora that is too large to be evacuated from danger. Indian workers have been killed in almost all major conflicts ongoing today, including in Russia, Israel and now in the current conflict in the Gulf. India therefore needs stability not just in its immediate neighbourhood, but along its supply chains and wherever Indian workers are sent. This is not a simple ask, and as the US is rapidly learning, this stability simply cannot be created by military strength. Unequal or conditional sovereignty sets up a world where conflict is the norm. States that are denied their full sovereignty cannot be expected to acquiesce to their lesser status without resistance. Even states that are forced to accept their lesser sovereign status through brutal violence, like Lebanon has been from time to time, tend to see the emergence of non-state actor led resistance to these conditions, perpetuating fresh conflict. For India, peace in the world is not just a romantic ideal. It is a material necessity for its most vulnerable citizens. It is important for India to therefore recognise that the ability of states to resolve disputes peacefully is rooted in a world order that strives to promote sovereign equality and that India, like all other countries, bears a responsibility towards the maintenance of this order. The Indian public discourse tends to either wildly overestimate or underestimate India’s ability to shape the world order. While India might not be able to stop conflicts with a telephone call, it is not powerless. India can still, as it has in in the past, effectively use its voice to determine what international norms become acceptable. To do so however, Indian foreign policy needs to ask a fundamental question of itself: What kind of world order does India need to thrive in, and is our foreign policy furthering or hindering the emergence of this world order? Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.