[MisterMower]

> 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.

[xh-dude]

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.

[xpe]

>> 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!)

[MisterMower]

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?