International law has difficulty taking root in Asia. TWAIL believes this is due to its colonial character and calls for greater participation rights for Asian countries. But the problem goes deeper: Asias alienation from international law is not only due to discrimination (and cannot be overcome by abolishing it), but is determined by the different political experiences of Europe and Asia. The social milieu of Western international law is a stable community of secular nation-states exercising sovereign and effective authority within defined territories. Asia has never had such a community, and its political landscape has been shaped by other factors. The most important factors are the transit position of Asian regions, the original type of economy, Islamic and Buddhist legal concepts, political engineering and the pulsation of empires. The application of Western concepts to Asian realities is often a choice between adapting the former to the latter and ignoring the latter. In practice, courts and doctrine more often use the strategy of ignoring - for example, in situations of determining the mode of self-determination, establishing territorial titles, delimitation, and so on. Doctrine and courts should abandon this strategy and apply international law more flexibly. In some cases, this will require the creation of a lex specialis; in other cases, it will be sufficient to articulate original Asian concepts in the language of modern international law. Abandoning the strategy of ignoring would help to resolve some conflicts and would be an important factor in the effectiveness and universality of international law.
Vladislav Tolstykh (Wed,) studied this question.