International Law or Lawlessness βοΈ
As a trained-criminologist, I can scream for hours at concept of legality.
Laws are fickle things, made to evolve over time and political environments. Laws are written by the political elite to reflect mainstream societal norms and public sentiment. Legality is an ever-changing definition because society is evolving through culture, politics, and public discourse. What is legal today was not legal yesterday. What is illegal today was widely practice yesterday.
To truly understand legality on a material level, it always comes down to how a law is enforced, and by whom.
A reminder: Lawful β Right Illegal β Wrong
International laws exist when a group of (Western) nations came to an agreement on a common vision of values, formalized by a set of rules and conventions: human rights and dignity, war conventions, environmental protection, you name it. I would not be alone in the globalist discourse to view and experience international laws as a neoliberal virtual signal.
International laws are violated every day, criminals get away with it every day. Countries like Israel, Russia, and People's Republic of China aren't afraid of getting labelled as a "war criminal." They face no significant consequence in the face of international law. Perhaps a few condemnations, sanctions, and diplomatic responses, but never anything substantive.
Enforcement of international law on a global level nation-states is a bloody mess. Few nation states can fully agree on what is considered to be international law, let alone who gets to enforce such laws. This is where multilateral institutions become stuck in bureaucracy and fail peoples. The realist side of me often laugh at multilateral institutions upholding international law, a toothless tiger that is largely ineffective. However, the idealist side of me believes in the importance of international law.
The ineffectiveness should not make it obsolete to regulate nations and international relations. On a global scale, there should be - and must be - some values universally shared by peoples. International law should serve as a shared foundation for humanity to define wrongdoing and practice boundary-making.
As much as my ideological world would be free from nation-states, borders, and police... International laws should exist, it should be enforced through global institutions, it should have power to protect marginalized peoples.
How? Thatβs a question for smarter people. I just think aloud on the internet π€·π»ββοΈ
But also fuck borders, fuck nation states, and fuck political hegemony.
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