Patrick O'Brian Discussion Forum

maverick

You would be well served to read Politics Among Nations by Hans Morgenthau who was a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.  There is an entire section on International Law.  It is a good explanation as to the significant limits of International Law and why it doesn't work.
It arose with the development of the territorial state.  He also acknowledges all the treaties and tribunals that have evolved over the  years.

The problem is that violations are rarely enforced, and when enforced not always effective.  International law is primitive and largely unenforceable given its decentralized structure. This is in contrast to domestic law.  That is why shoplifting can be prosecuted and punished, but genocide is not.  

Short of war, there was no way that perpetrators of genocide have been dealt with by other countries.  Did International law stop Pol Pot, Idi Amin, the atrocities in Rwanda?

A nation is bound only to those rules of International Law to which it has consented. Nor can any state be compelled to submit to a dispute with another state against its will.  International Law is essentially unenforceable.

On Sun Nov 1, The Last of the True French Short Bastards wrote
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>>The members of the UN agree not to engage in aggressive war.

>Gulf War 2 was an aggressive war rather than a sanction. The justification for it -- WMD -- was shown to be a lie.

>Had Bush and Blair requested permission from the UN to go to war as a sanction for OTHER violations of UN resolutions by Saddam, then the UN could have granted or withheld permission to engage in war in its name; but they did not. The UN would not have granted such permission, so they made up a new one: WMD. As it was a lie, the war was in fact an aggressive war.

>QED.