Comment by xpe
3 days ago
Arguments over definitions really bore me. To any reasonable person predicting the future, international law is an important factor. It cannot be simply waved off because it is flawed and unevenly enforced.
Any predictive model I would construct about geopolitics does include international agreements such as treaties and laws.
I challenge anyone to build a predictive model that ignores these factors. I’ll make this bet: any such model you come up with could be improved by including notions of international agreements and laws.
> International law is an important factor
I mean, if you ever needed smoking gun proof this is a lie, you got some today.
Countries appeal to international law when they don’t have enough power to achieve their goals through brute force alone.
Countries that do appeal to international law but also have the wherewithal to do what they want only make those appeals to conceal their naked ambitions under the guise of the rules based order. It’s just good marketing. Nothing more.
The model you should construct should assume treaties and agreements are stable insofar as the incentives for players to maintain them remain in place.
It’s all about national interest, always has been, and at this point I’m surprised anybody can be so dense as to not be able to see this.
I don’t think anyone in int’l law is mistaken about the constraint that enforcement is so thoroughly contingent. The argument is just that the stability elicited from int’l law amongst players trying to (mostly) cooperate can have utility.
>> International law is an important factor
> I mean, if you ever needed smoking gun proof this is a lie, you got some today.
You are misunderstanding me. I had hoped my claim was clear, but maybe not, so I'll try again: if you want to understand and predict the world well, factoring in international law is an important factor. Claim: no serious scholars or analysts would disagree. Of course they will build different models (unfortunately relatively few are quantitative, but there are exceptions) and argue the details.
Now to your statement "I mean, if you ever needed smoking gun proof this is a lie, you got some today."...
Recency bias has a huge effect on people. But today is one data point out of many. It matters, in context, weighted appropriately. But how to weight it? Have you put thought into this? What was your prior and how much did today change it? (Admittedly, few people write down their priors, so for most of us, this exercise is sort of like a retrospective where we realize we probably never thought about it carefully in the first place!)
I will reiterate my original point more clearly: international law does not affect how superpowers behave.
When convenient they will use international law and norms as justification for actions they would take regardless. When inconvenient, they will just ignore them.
To the extent that superpowers do “follow” international law, it is only because those laws were written by the superpowers themselves or align with their interests at any given time.
Appeals to scholars or analysts is meaningless in this context. You should post why those people think they matter, or what their reasoning is, not, “hey, guys that I think are smart say this matters.”
My priors before this were that international law mattered a little, but this event has convinced me it’s all a farce. Exhibit A: the UN’s increasing irrelevance as we move toward a multipolar world.
Why do you think international law constrains nation states, despite much evidence to the contrary, including today’s events?
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> I’ll make this bet: any such model you come up with could be improved by including notions of international agreements and laws.
And you'd have lost the bet with such a naive understanding of geopolitics and power dynamics played by nation states. Are you reading the thread you're on?
To the commenter above: it seems like you are responding to something other than what I wrote. Perhaps my meaning didn't come across? I'll try again:
Start with model M which does not account for international law.* For any such model, that model can be modified by including information about international law. Call that M'. I claim M' will do better than M. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
Onto my next point. Please take the context into account. I was responding to a comment that said:
>>> Having said that, international law is a myth.
This is why I said:
>> Arguments over definitions really bore me. To any reasonable person predicting the future, international law is an important factor. It cannot be simply waved off because it is flawed and unevenly enforced.
I am having a hard time understanding how you think I'm naive for saying the above. To me, it would be naive to ignore international law altogether, simply because it is nuts to ignore relevant information. Am I just redefining my claim to be "this information is relevant to predicting an outcome". Maybe, but even this seems to be getting lost in translation.
May I ask if you've done geopolitical analysis at the international level? I have no idea -- you very well might have. By the same token, I may have as well. This isn't a who-has-the-bigger GPU question. I'm just trying to understand if you understand the game we're talking about. If you're trying to predict price stability, election outcomes, how long a dictator stays in power, etc... what models do you build?
If you want to compare some models on this, let's do it. We'll compare and see if including international law/agreements has predictive value (relative to not including them). Are you game?
* It is possible a model could build up an internal representation of international law even if not provided it directly. If such an internal representation proves useful and predictive, this serves to prove my overarching point, albeit in a different way; namely international law (conceptually) matters. It doesn't matter if we call it 'real', 'fake', 'a myth' or whatever. Arguing such terminology is a waste of time. If we can measure it (somehow, to some degree) and use it to make better predictions, that is good enough for me.**
** It is also good enough for physicists! People may argue the _metaphysics_ of quantum physics tirelessly, but if the equations work, that is pretty darn impressive. Call it "spooky action at a distance" or "entanglement". In an an important sense, these are just words, metaphors, attempts to make sense of reality. Focus on how to turn the crank on the theory and don't get hung up on what is 'real'.
Yes I was incorrect to say such a model would be strictly worse off. But my read is that you over index on the notion of laws, hence your general befuddlement on the current outcome. Sovereign nations follow international law and order to the extent their goals align and perceived costs of contravening them exceeds some threshold. Might ultimately makes right, has always been the case. That's realpolitik for you, unfortunately.
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