You are correct -- the highlighted. But since "international laws" are enforced only if someone is militarily powerful enough to enforce them and on whims, there is no reason to respect them, and every member of the UN know it. So it is less about 'international laws' being un-enforceable but more about arbitrary enforcement that made UN members, strong and weak, sneered at 'international laws' behind closed doors. It is kabuki theater, be honest.
So absent respect for the laws, we have norms and it is the respect for norms, or shared values, that started civilizations and sustains them. Shared values creates shame, disapproval, and ultimately expulsion. The last without a single act of violence. That is what we want -- internally compelled compliance. Conscience. And every nation-state is capable of it.
Well, as I said, as much as a society, there are always people who follow the law, and there are always people that break them, the issue is not whether or not the law is enforceable, because it's going to be the same as we had discussed before, we can't police everybody in a community, that's a futile exercise.
Which means the "norm" is the majority of the people in the community, and the question is, do you think it's the norm that people think the law should not be applied to the powerful? Or regardless, we should still respect the law?
I don't know whether or not you have lived in Mexico or even a country like Bolivia, those are the place that law does not apply to the powerful, that's why cartel happens, and if you think the higher up in the echelon level of government should not respect the international law because the US government is all powerful, how do you think that will applies to the community, if we started to think we should be above the law because we live in the better side of town, or I have more guns than everyone else?
But the reason we stop at red light, or a four-way stop intersection, is because each of us WERE RAISED THAT WAY. Each of us were TAUGHT BY ELDERS of what happen if we do not obey these signals, effects not just by law enforcement but by other vehicles, aka collisions.
Do YOU see the UN raised its members to respect the freedom of speech?
JPN learned their lesson only after two nuclear bombs on their soil. Punishment, not inculcation of morals, aka shared norms.
That's not where the norm is tho, though. We didn't follow the law because we listened to our elder. After all, when you think of it, our elders have their elders to a point; there is a first generation of that line of ancestry, then who do these people follow? Or were they all just outlaws?
Your second point is more closer to the point I raised, because there are always conseqence if you don't follow the law, laws are there to protect EVERYONE, not just people with power or people with money, yes, it may not seem that way, but regardless of either end, that's the argument I made before, no matter how powerful you are, how many guns you have, a burglar just need to get lucky once, and all your defensive mechanism need to work all the time, that's the same as country, again, you may think we are powerful, because we have nuke, X amount of aircraft, whatever and however strong Navy, again, it don't mean shit, because the same principal applies, all of our country defense mechanism had to work ALL THE TIME, and our enemy only need one lucky strike to cause problem. As my line of work always says, "You only need to fail once and your name is going to be headline."
And Japan didn't surrender because we dropped two atomic bombs on their soil, they still wanted to fight, and our intelligence back then also said they would fight; that's why Operation Downfall is still planning ahead after the bomb was dropped, and not until the treaty was signed on August 15 when they finally shelved it. We can open a thread and argue why Japan surrendered, but it has to come down to how the Emperor of Japan sees the situation, and he sees no point in getting going, and conforming to the law we impose on them.
Power is not everything, not now, not since 2001, when people can attack us asymmetrically, i mean, see how we go in Afghanistan? We can bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age every day, but does that change anything?
Yes. Not just the US, but every country since creation had allies. The US can have, and has had, multiple bilateral relationships before the UN and NATO. There is nothing, not even by the UN, to prevent US from making such relationships again.
The highlighted is a curious argument.
We have 'Bad Guy' and 'Worse Guy'. But the problem is that both guys keep moving the goal posts of non-acceptable conducts because no one stop them. The 'Bad Guy' will always be bad because there will always be a 'Worse Guy'. Who was worse than Stalin, not outside, but inside the SU? Many said Beria, but perhaps we will never know. So either we deal with the 'Bad Guy' now, or later we will deal with the same 'Bad Guy' who just done 'Worse Guy' level deeds.
No, the US do not need to invade Iran. We can, you know it, but we do not need to. The ME, Europe, and Asia have 3 yrs to learn how to deal with Iran. The US do not need the Strait of Hormuz. When Trump said: "Get your own oil", he meant it. Personally, I have no problems with US drops everything as is. Uranium enrichment? The US can deal with that separately.
The problem with the bolded part is, IT IS OUR PROBLEM, like it or not, Hormuz still is a part of our economy, have you ever wondered why WTI (US Oil Price) went up even if we don't have 5% of traffic out of Hormuz?
Because that is a global price, which means whatever happens there will affect our situation at home. First, this is what our EIA said
www.eia.gov
First of all, 490,000 barrels a day may not be a big number if you compare it to the region's export of over 20,000,000 barrels a day, but in a grand scheme of things, 490,000 barrels a day means 180 million barrels a year, and we have to find a replacement for over 100 Super Large Tankers worths of oil to replace that loss, sure, that's not as bad as Asia, but it still going to hurt us.
Second thing is, Asia is going to need oil, and we are not just talking about China, but every country in Asia, including Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand. Which, in case you didn't notice, that's 90% of the world's industrial output. Oil going to the Asian region will need to be replaced, or nothing is going out of those regions, and guess where they are going to buy oil from? A large part will be in the US simply because we are the world number 1 oil exporter, smaller replacement maybe from Russia, but mostly from us, and they won't buy it at the market price, because that's gonna be a whole new war fighting for resources, which is why it not just bump up the Brent price, it also bumped ours.
On the other hand, we are not fighting this war because of Hormuz; it was open before we went in blasting. We went to war with Iran because we wanted to stem their nuclear and ballistic weapons program, which we had not done in this war, to be quite clear. So what happens when the next time Iran says, "We are going to develop nuclear weapons", we're gonna bomb them again? And they close the Strait again? Asia doesn't care whether or not Iran has nuclear weapons; we care, so are we going to keep doing this til the end of time? Or are we going to go in and try to remove the Iranian regime? And we can't invade Iran just by ourselves, we need NATO and Northern Alliance help to invade Afghanistan 20 years ago, and that went nowhere, and that is with NATO, and most of our allies help, and you are suggesting that we invade Iran, which is about 3 times the size of Afghanistan with 3 times the population, we are going to need around 400,000 troop to do that given we had 180,000 in Afghanistan, we don't have that amount of troop to do that, unless we start a draft.
