“This case is the gravest test for the future of international law since the creation of the United Nations.” So I’m told by Philip Zelikow, a former US diplomat now at Stanford University (who earned kudos in 2004 as lead author of the 9/11 Commission report). What’s at stake, he says — and I agree — is whether the UN, in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, will stand up to crimes against humanity or go the way of the League of Nations when it failed to restrain Mussolini and Hitler. More succinctly: Will we advance international law or let it become irrelevant?

The immediate question is whether countries that hold currency reserves owned by the Russian central bank may legally confiscate that money and give it to Ukraine as war reparations. This concerns about $300 billion worth of assets held in Belgium, France, the US and other places, and frozen since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded two years ago and began committing war crimes.

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