Comment by rixed
3 days ago
What I find interresting and would like to see discussed more, is the psychology at play that makes us believe this is another "exception to the rule of international law". I wonder if one could generalize the terror management theory (TMT) to social obedience?
"Be the change yo want to see", I guess. So, my pet peeve theory is that "the rule of law" is not something the ruling class needs to cover their track; it's something the ruled class needs to cover their shame. Shame of being ruled, but also terror of being ultimately subjected to arbitrary power.
For instance, I believe that in the feodal past lay people used to genuinely believe that kings got their authority from God; not because kings were good observants of the precepts of religion (they were not), but because that protects the self-esteem and helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes.
I find it surprisingly hard to try to convince myself that there is no such thing as "rule of law", that for instance the overthrown of a non-aligned regime could be just about the oil and competition with China, although I know that's how future historians will deal with that non-story; There is some surprising amount of resistance from within to this idea. It's interresting to do the experiment.
Have you read Thucydides, "The Melian Dialogue"? Or Zweig, „Schachnovelle“?
Zweig yes, but I can't remember it well enough to connect it to this story. Could you elaborate a bit just to give me a clue?
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What international law is being broken here? And why does that law take precedence over the laws of Venezuela and USA?
When I said this discussion about international law was not worth taking place on HN, I actually meant it, sorry.
In principle, our diplomats have mentioned "respecting the prohibition on the use of force enshrined in international law and the territorial integrity of sovereign states"
using those words as search terms yields:
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2/english/rep_supp7_vol1_a...
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml
In practice, command responsibility is generally upheld against losing commanders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
but an effective way to avoid being tried, at least in the short term, is to be a winning commander: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0072-...
(Alexander the Great, on his deathbed, was asked who would inherit his empire; whether because he was an early "realist" or because he was apathetic or simply narcissistic [or?], he replied: the strongest)
Apart from command responsibility, every combatant has a duty to disobey a manifestly unlawful order; note the restrictive adjective "lawful" in both https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title10/html... and https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title10/html...
Furthermore, even before the purely legal aspects of UCMJ, there's the plain common sense of Adm. Holsley (Ret.): https://www.southcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/Article/4359115...
> "To be a trusted partner, [SOUTHCOM] must be credible..."