International law has no enforcement mechanism - it depends on willingness of countries to follow it or force others to. It does not have a proper system of courts to decide the law. Different bits of it can clash with each other.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...
the difference is that the US used to pretend that international laws mattered - at least, they selectively only ignore some when it's advantageous, but pay lip service to it being relevant and claim to follow it.
Now, however, trump has blatantly disregard the norms without regards. While everyone knows that the US will get their way militarily even before trump, it used to be a negotiation with law and order at least being pretended to matter. After trump, the pretense is off. It leads to less trust, less negotiation and more hard-lining.
Within one term, trump has destroyed the trust that took more than a century to build.
International law has a number of enforcement mechanisms.
> it depends on willingness of countries to follow it or force others to.
All law depends on the willingness of its subjects to follow it, and failing that of its other subjects to force them to. This is not unique to international law.
Some systems of law (e.g., typical modern national criminal law) may have a particular group of people (usually with a formal heirarchy) who are expected to do the executive part of enforcement, and a similar (possibly the same or overlapping, but often distinct) group of people employed to do the adjudicative part of enforccement. International law has the latter (in several forms), but lacks the former. But anyone who is familiar with more than a narrow range of the most idealistic systems of national law will be aware that that that executive body can be a single point of failure—the real problem with international law isn't that it lacks such a single dedicated executive body, but that the important issues under it frequently involve significant conflicts of interest for any of the groups with the capacity to take on the executive role in the particular case, which is problematic under any system of law whether it has a single dedicated body for the executive part of enforcement or whether it relies on ad hoc case-by-case posses for that purpose.
That's rather naïve.
How do you propose to enforce the law when the offender possesses the greatest military/economic/technological might, even compared to the rest of the (law-biding) world combined?
US, for quite some time, is the international law.
Not sure what your agenda is but that's just the law *enforcement* doing the enforcing part. You can argue that it is unjust, that's a separate issue.
If you see the difference as being “in the national case, justice is expected”, you either have an extremely naive view of national law, or at a minimum of an extremely narrow and privileged one.
In the international case, it is understood that the "law enforcers" are not obliged to play by the same rule. The "enforcement" therefore only applies selectively. Then the law cannot really be said to have been being enforced, because they don't apply to the "enforcer".
That is true in the same sense for national law as it is for international law (that is, true in idealized theory, much less true in practice. Actually, its somewhat less true in many national law systems than of international law at the intermediate level between pure theory and practice of the concrete, on-the-books law, where law enforcers, especially at the apex, often enjoy on-the-books immunities from some or all of the law that they enforce.)
I think most people would not argue that “US federal criminal law has no enforcement mechanism”, they would argue that “US federal criminal law has a significant practical enforcement problem where enforcement of the law conflicts with interests of the chief executive”.
No, its factual.
> How do you propose to enforce the law when the offender possesses the greatest military/economic/technological might, even compared to the rest of the (law-biding) world combined?
Had you read the entire comment you were responding to, you would note that as well as pointing out that international law has enforcement mechanisms, that I pointed out how the executive part of those differs from what many national criminal law systems use (which is a real difference), and moreover the problem they have with conflicts of interests between any of the available executive agents with many important enforcement issues (a situation which also happens with national criminal law systems even where, unlike international law, they have a nominally-dedicated executive body for enforcement purposes rather than relying on the adjudicative/determinative body calling for an ad hoc posse the way that international law generally works.)
Was it you who wrote the lines for Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister?
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/
In the Treaty of the Danish West Indies the US will "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland" https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-39/pdf/STATUTE-3...
The story here is that the US seems to not currently believe international law is an effective tool for projecting its power. Whether correctly or otherwise, it has believed that up until now.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/ "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land"
Then you have major power like Russia that constantly abuse it while trying to cover its ass with "internatiomal law" once they themself get hit. This is whem you get system is broken.
I get it suck for people inside the US to see democracy dismantled, but honestly I dont mind Trump to deal with dictators and repressive regimes.
Putin, friends and alike put a lot of effort to prove that only power should matter so its a good irony to see Trump dealing with them their way.
I don't get the impression this is or ever will be a goal. To an outsider it seems more like he wants to be one of the repressors.
Accepting multiple massive bribes from Crown Prince MBS Bonesaw in plane sight, and giving Putin free rein to set terms for war and peace in Ukraine?
Yet America just bust into a sovereign nation to arrest its president
Putin shows no signs of ending Ukraine war and claim adds weight to accusation Trump favours Russian president
title needs to be fixed as above and becomes BAU.
As a European who's been as continue to be against Chinese authoritarianism, I have to admit that China looks like the better partner going forward.
The thing is that soft power is extremely effective. Many other countries, including China, try hard at acquiring a fraction of the soft power US naturally had.
Trumps administration, sooner or later, will pass. Whether it is voted away, or if it turns into a form of dictatorship, at some point in the future it will not be there anymore. The US won't be able to return to "how things were" when that happens. New trade deals, new alliances, a different ordering of things will be in place.
It appears to me that the US will continue to iterate downhill.
I'd prefer it weren't the case, but that's what my intuition is telling me.
And if it can start to restructure on the fly, it's going to be a long, difficult process. But it's still better than revolutionary structural / regime change.
International law even more so. For national laws, there are enforcement mechanisms. If you break a national law, there is a court deciding on punishment and an executive punishing you according to that decision. With international law, there might be a court, but often there isn't even a court. Sometimes there is the UN general assembly, UN security council or a similar body deciding on a political basis whether some violation might have occured. Usually those kinds of decisions are far from impartial, not even pretending any kind of neutrality or fairness.
So even if some international court or some council arrives at a decision that a violation of international law has occured, where is the executive? There isn't one. There is only the equivalent of old wild west dead-or-alive bounties: The decision is an authorization to go to economic war (like in sanctions or blockades) or shooting war. There might be states interested in doing that, but generally only if they think they can win and profit.
So international law is only ever enforced against powerless states without a coalition supporting them. For any larger power, there is no actual international law.
Equally, I think international law was a useful reference point for everyone, including the US. My prediction is that US's intoxication with its own power now, and disdain for international law, will lead to a decay of its power, and more challenges that will be costly to fend off.
So while I agree to some extent international law was always a fiction, it's also true that the US will a real price for destroying it.
But the U.S., and most other countries, did heavily constrain themselves by it, primarily for their own good.
Some of this is clearly evident from the fact that many of the actions the U.S. has taken, such as kidnapping Maduro, doesn’t really help the U.S. at all, or plans on taking, such as annexing Greenland, will end up being a massive net negative.
Africa is not represented. India is not represented. South America is not represented.
But we have the UK, which at that time included its "empire," down to two islands today.
And then someone came up with "rules based order" to replace international law. What rules? What order?
I have no respect for Trump, but give him credit for not being a complete hypocrite like his predecessors.
I think that the UN has been pretty crap (because of the security council and hypocrisy), but like a lot of unsatisfying compromises, we'll miss it when it's gone.
There's international law, in the form of treaties, as ratified by groups of countries.
It was never meaningless. It was rather like the rights enumerated in the US bill of rights back before the Civil War. Aspirational, rarely enforced but something that (some) people some of the time tried to live up to.
One Indian economist has pointed out the circular nature of these "rules" - a hedge fund comes up with ESG rules, IMF et al adopt it and then use that to decline or foreclose on poorer country loans. International law and ratified treaties never come into the picture which is why this term "rules based order" is used: "we make the rules and will order you around."
(One of the reasons why the Chinese BRI is so successful is because the Chinese are much more clear in the transaction: resources for infrastructure. No silly ESG and climate rules.)
I'm reasonably sure that it came from a US partisan split, where the Republicans were claiming to be an empire, while the Democrats wanted to be a "reality based community".
That being said, the ideas behind it are much, much older.
> a hedge fund comes up with ESG rules
I don't understand why a hedge fund would do this. Certainly a bunch of asset managers cared about ESG when it helped them win new business but that's all.
> IMF et al adopt it and then use that to decline or foreclose on poorer country loans.
The IMF is basically a disaster, has it ever been successful?
> (One of the reasons why the Chinese BRI is so successful is because the Chinese are much more clear in the transaction: resources for infrastructure. No silly ESG and climate rules.)
I mean that's all fine till they forclose on the loans and you end up with Treaty ports/foreign economic zones in your country.
After WWII it referred to the establishment of the UN charter
The rules-based international order as we know it today is predicated on a system of laws, rules, and norms, and it has underpinned international interactions since its formal establishment in 1945. Whether its overall influence is positive or negative continues to be predicated on the actions of the members of the international community, but one cannot influence what one does not fully understand.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
While it appears the term is indeed older than what I thought, the usage which we in India (also the "third world, global south) are familiar with is some USAian official talking down to us without specifying which treaty they are using to place their latest unilateral demands.
And now it appears the term backfired and Carney is one the first to show some spine: "We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim."
The last part of his statement resonates especially when it comes to conveniently labelled "war crimes" committed by non USAian and non European heads of state and subsequent abduction and "prosecution" by corrupt institutions in the West.
I've read many takes on current events in recent weeks, some from historians, others from various factions of many of the larger countries and economies.
One that still resonates was an opinion piece in Al-Jazeera Greenland is not just a territorial concern. It is a reckoning
It is quite ironic that the imperialism Denmark helped normalise for decades now threatens Danish sovereignty.
Australia has been equally complicit in following in America's wake despite increasing concern over the past quarter century.
Perhaps countries should have insisted many years past that Kissinger be put in front of an international court.
"Rules for thee and not for US" is getting old fast now.
And in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies the US will "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland" https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-39/pdf/STATUTE-3...
This is an end to the United States Executive branch considering the Constitution binding.
Article 6 of the Constitution: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land
I have no doubt that the international community will cave in an allow America to annex a land 1,200 miles away from it's nearest border, just like it allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia in 1938. Trump needs breathing room.
The Democrats could have won if they didn't support Israel unconditionally. Unfortunately when you claim to support human rights but also support what happens in the middle east it creates cognitive dissonance among the population.
Many American pro-Israeli's are more concerned about Iran at the moment than any of the ICE/Greenland news.
poisonarena•2w ago
watwut•2w ago
YetAnotherNick•2w ago
defrost•2w ago
And yet: https://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA...
~ https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-caseYetAnotherNick•2w ago
I don't think there is any country which explicitly mentions that international law would supersede their law.
defrost•2w ago
* " Land belongs to people who can control it, and always has."
* @watwut asserted: "Nazi says that, yes."
* @YetAnotherNick expanded on that "Communist say that too as do socialist as do almost all ideology."
* @YetAnotherNick then "asked" (perhaps rhetorically) "Why do anyone want to give their power in your land to any other politically motivated entity."
* @defrost provided an example of a legal doctrine that returned significant areas of land to original first inhabitants after that land had been claimed by others with crown troops.
Now that land belongs to people that lack force to control it, and it was given to them by people that considered it their land by colonisation.
If you're interested in the answer to the question you posed "Why do anyone want to give their power in your land to any other politically motivated entity." (which isn't entirely well posed) then perhaps the reasoning of the judges in the Mabo case might give you some insight into their thinking.
YetAnotherNick•2w ago
Can you specify which part are you disagreeing with rather than give AI powered summary of thread.
disgruntledphd2•2w ago
All EU countries agree on the supremacy of EU law, so that's not quite correct.
watwut•2w ago
Exactly as it is for Trump.
Communists seen themselves in ideological fight and communist leadership was also about giving power to "politically motivated entity".
BLKNSLVR•2w ago
And I don't think there are many people that would prefer to live under 'might is right'.
Or at least they'd find out pretty quick that it's not exactly what they thought it might be.
y0eswddl•2w ago
that's all "the law" is in the first place - Power making rules and enforcing them through threat of exercising said power.