Comment by joe_mamba

International rules are meaningless without hard power to enforce them.

Your rules in your country are real because you have judges and police to enforce those rules.

But internationally, there's no planetary police force(other than the US when it wishes to act like one), so solving disputes is dependent to how strong your military is, or on you capability to inflict pain on the offending country through other means like economy or trade.

That why the US walks away unscalved from international conflicts and the EU keeps getting buried further.