On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Konstantin Kisin points out that calling it “International Law” gives it a semi-mythic quality that it absolutely does not deserve:
All the bleating about “international law” shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become.
International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades. It was never real and now the world has reverted to its default setting: Great Power politics.
This is why, as a strong Ukraine supporter, I have never talked about international law or called Putin’s attack an “illegal invasion”.
Laws are based on submission to an overarching authority backed by force. There is no such international authority and even if you view the UN as one, it does not have the ability to use force against those who violate “international law” other than against small countries with weak militaries.
When the US attacked Iraq, the UN did nothing.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the UN did nothing.
If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, the UN will do nothing.If you cannot enforce a law, it’s not a law.
I do not support Ukraine because naughty Vlad broke the rules. I support Ukraine because it’s not in OUR interest in the West to have Russia marauding its way through friendly countries on the borders of Europe. It’s in our interest for us to be as strong as possible and for our adversaries to be as weak as possible.
President Trump is a realist and a pragmatist. He sees through the fictions other “leaders” cling to.
A good leader advances the national interests of his country. If more Western leaders did this, our civilisation would be in a much better place.
I commented on another post that,
For a lot of people (Canadian Liberals and American Democrats in particular), the invocation “international law” has a mesmerizing effect on their ability to reason [insert usual disclaimer that if they could foresee the results of their enlightened beliefs, they wouldn’t be progressives]. They seem to have a quasi-religious belief in the UN as if it were some kind of God-given supergovernment that is always right and must always be obeyed. “World opinion” might as well be the hand of God to them, so any time the legacy media can portray the US (and Trump in particular) as going against “world opinion” they want to get out the sackcloth and ashes … or sack a city and turn it into ashes, whichever comes first.
vittorio analyzes the default position of most progressives on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
most political issues nowadays can be explained by understanding that american leftists dont have positions, they have oppositions.
their entire belief system is defined by negation of whatever the right supports. this is why portland chants “free maduro” while actual venezuelans celebrate in the streets. they’re not pro-venezuelan or pro democracies, or pro tyrant, or pro maduro, they’re simply anti-american-right.
they’ve outsourced their worldview to institutional narratives for so long that genuine self-reflection would require questioning everything. for them it’s much easier to just oppose. the beliefs arent coherent because they were never meant to be coherent. they only need to signal tribal membership, and leftist membership is gained by opposing the right.
trump does X? the left screams and cries because they wanted Y
trump does Y? the left screams and cries and riots because even if they said they wanted Y, what they meant is that X was the way to go
trump cures cancer? they’ll argue that the cancer cells are alive have a right of free determination
trump saves lives? they’ll protest because somehow those lives didn’t matter and should have been ended
no coherent word model. no logic. pure opposition
at some point you just have to stop engaging with it as if it’s a real political position. it’s not. it’s aesthetic opposition wearing the costume of ideology
As Severian at Founding Questions often remarks, progressives’ core belief is The Great Inversion: “whatever is, is wrong”.
Bingo Bobbins makes the case that “International law is fake and gay”:
Was this operation necessary? Was Maduro really a “narcoterrorist”? I admit that I haven’t really been following all the drama with Venezuela recently, but my intuition is that Maduro was probably accepting bribes to look the other way with regards to drug trafficking, rather than being directly involved. And sure, he was a socialist dictator but there’s plenty of those around. The US doesn’t go and topple dictators unless there is a perceived US interest in doing so.
What Maduro was actually doing was cozying up to China. In fact, he had just finished a meeting with some Chinese ambassadors hours before Delta Force snatched him up by the scruff. This was actually a warning to China not to mess around in our hemisphere. The Trump administration is re-establishing the Monroe Doctrine, or, as he recently called in a press conference, “The Donroe Doctrine“. As far as I can see, this is completely in keeping with my preferred Vitalist Foreign Policy.
You can agree or disagree with this show of force, but please don’t whine to me about “International Law”. International Law is fake and gay. I certainly don’t care that the Trump administration “targeted a political leader”. This is the complaint being leveled by many leftists in regard to the operation. Really, this is just because leftists are anti-American third-worldists, and they are filled with butthurt because “their guy” lost. But, let’s examine this “rule” of not being allowed to target a countries rulers, because it’s particularly ridiculous.
If you have a problem with a specific country, who do you really have a problem with? You have a problem with that country’s leaders, since they are the ones making the decisions. Why wouldn’t you target the leaders? The only reason is that all the leaders from all the countries got together and agreed that they wouldn’t target each other. They would rather resolve their differences by throwing cannon fodder at each other, while keeping themselves off the table. And sure, I understand why that is great for them, but not why it would be great for me (or you).
Of course, the CIA has been ignoring this “international law” for decades, but they’ve been doing it in a very effeminate way, skulking about the world, funding Color Revolutions and clandestinely arming insurgent groups in order to subvert existing regimes. The Donroe Doctrine is much better. Imagine if the Trump administration had tried to handle Maduro the way the Obama administration tried to handle Assad. Fund a decades long civil war, accidentally establish a caliphate, fight a war against said caliphate, facilitate the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians, all to have an even worse dictator eventually rise to power.
Update, 6 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
