( Ten minute read)

Is there really such a thing as “international law,” if there are no actual written, legislated and binding statutes constituting it?

Sadly, this is why international law is a joke.

Countries don’t have army’s to uphold any laws other than laws within their own borders.

The history of our species unfortunately is full of violence and will remain so. But ultimately it comes down to how you define things.

The first difficulty we have is effectively defining ‘what is a law’.

There are lots of competing definitions and descriptions for what a law really is.

But whilst I don’t think there is a universally agreed concept, most people regress to the ‘command of the state’ concept.

If that is so, then international law is clearly not ‘law’ in that sense – it does not represent the command of any state.

The second problem we have is the whole question of ‘what is the substantive content international law’ is actually pretty fuzzy.

The boundaries and the detailed rules are far from clear. So we are not even certain what it is we are trying to find a definition for.

International law lacks many of the keys concepts that we traditionally associate with the term ‘law’:

• the rules do not represent the command of any state or sovereign
• there is no tribunal with original jurisdiction to adjudicate upon the rules
• most international laws only exist because the parties have voluntarily subjected themselves to them
• there is no penalty or sanction for breach or non-compliance – ‘remedies’ in international law tend to be of the self-help nature where they even exist, but countries do not get ‘fined’ or ‘sent to jail’
• In most cases, the parties who are bound by the rules can cease to be bound by those rules at their own election by withdrawing from the relevant.
  
• The truth is and has always been the powerful do as they please. 
• The best views, think of international law like a handshake agreement amongst friends.
• How do you force your friends to hold up their end of things? Except not everybody making the deals are friends.

The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and now Venezuel.

Any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against.

This is completely backwards and illegitimate.

Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

MADURO might be an evil person ( he is far from the first) but this doesn’t give any country the right to enter an other sovereign nation without consequences.

The seizure of Nicolás Maduro from his country in the middle of the night might have violated various domestic and international laws, but it was not at odds with America’s historic willingness to bend all kinds of rules in its own backyard

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com