Comment by tpm

> Russia and China (and many others) have never even pretended to play or accept these "rules".

This false. They have pretended to play by the rules, and when breaking them, to at least manufacture some pretext, or to deny it was a state activity at all.

One example I can give you is that when invading Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet Union convinced a few Czechoslovak politicians to write a letter inviting the forces for "brotherly help", thus manufacturing a case that it's not really an invasion. They didn't have to do it, the force differential was overwhelming, but they did it because they could point at the letter on international stage.

All this may seem a bit pointless but binding them in international structures brought interesting fruit in the wake of Helsinki conference on human rights. After that they were forced to at least somewhat follow the signed documents which lead to significantly better conditions to dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. And there are many examples like this, when pointing at international rules actually made things better. So let's not throw that away.