Comment by mytailorisrich
3 days ago
Perhaps people forget that countries are sovereign and can do whatever they want. The "global order" has always been based on strength: the stronger do what they want and the weaker do what they can.
What the US have just done is not something new because of Trump.
We are told about "international law" and "norms" so much that we perhaps forget that this is mostly BS.
This is the attitude that permits world wars. In the aftermath of WW2, a lot of people genuinely believed in the power of international law to prevent WW3. Now, it seems like a ton of people think that's just BS, and the fact that so many people think that is what makes it BS. If a strong majority of people actually believed in international law, it would be "real".
I guess sometimes you just need WW3.
"It's in your nature to destroy yourselves"
The people who actually experienced (either directly fighting in, or living through it) have already died or are rapidly dying out.
We have no concept of just how horrifying a world war would be.
I do. I've visited countries that were at war and I have my grandmothers diaries.
Everybody that is cheering this on has a significant gap in their education.
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1951. And just as powerful today.
> > If a strong majority of people actually believed in international law, it would be "real".
International law has always been BS, what works is fear of retribution by the offended party or retribution from the observers thinking they might be next and getting together to enact preventive measures
If international law had any effect people would believe in it. You're mixing cause/effect. This situation has been going on for years and the lack of response by international organizations makes people lose all confidence in them.
It's the same with money: if people believe in it it works, if they stop believing in it it stops working.
So there is no cause and no effect, it is something mutually reinforcing.
It is not an attitude. It is a statement of fact.
"International law" are voluntary agreements but countries remain sovereign. The only way to force something is to have bigger guns and/or more economic power than the other countries and, as it happens, the US are #1 on both.
Edit: The best protection we have against WWIII is not "international law", it's that the big guys can instantly nuke each others.
I don't think you're wrong, but it's one of those facts that's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy, like "the bank is failing" (which, if people think is true, quickly becomes true) or "money has value".
The US is a superpower of course, but world wars are multilateral, and US alliances are not what they were just a year ago.
You forget that the cold war wasn't won by the US alone. But by the alliance systems which centered around the US.
The US is no longer a credible partner, and without coalition forces the recreational wars in the 2000s would have been a lot less "fun".
I'm not so sure you want a global order based on strength. You don't want small countries with little to loose arming do with nukes. But voting for it is suddenly very attractive.
That's interesting because the post-WWII Western alliance system at large is largely born of the US military and economic might: most of those countries were invaded by the US and then helped economically by the US. Obviously a commom adversary (the communists) helped but it was, and still is "led" by the US for a reason.
The global order is based on strength, both military and economic strength. I am just stating the obvious here.
Countries that joined NATO did so voluntarily. The pressure to join NATO was never from the US, it was always from Russia.
> The global order is based on strength,
To an extend yes, but small countries wouldn't be as eager or willing to play with the US, if the rules weren't largely followed.
The conversation is about what's right
People commit crimes despite it being illegal. That doesn't make laws "BS".
And yes, this is not something new. It is something old. It is something that we have left behind us and Donald Trump should therefore be condemned.
You and I are subject to the law. This is not voluntary and it will be enforced against us by the state.
On the other hand, countries are sovereign. They are not subject to "laws", and if they do it is on a voluntary basis. Ultimately it boils down to military and economic strength for a country to be able to stand its ground and do what it wants. We never left this behind, this has always been the case.
From the replies it seems that commenters believe that countries are subject to "laws" the same way that they are...
The goal of the rules based international order was to subject countries to laws, yes. Those laws could have been (and were various times in the past) enforced by larger organizations in the same way the state acts on citizens. Westphalian Sovereignty is not any more real than the rules based international order - clearly Venezuela's sovereignty did nothing for them here.
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