Europeans love the idea of international law because it makes them more important than they are in reality.
Law exists not by consensus, but because of the at least implicit threat of violence. People - and even more so, nations - do what courts or laws tell them to do
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I'm actually genuinely shocked by the amount of Americans who commented on this 👇 saying it was perfectly normal for the US not to be bound by international law, and arguing for "America first" as if there was some sort of opposition between international law and American interests.
The current framework of international law, centered around the UN Charter, was drafted by the victors of World War II, very much including the US, to establish common rules and prevent a recurrence of the devastating conflicts and horrors that characterized the first half of the twentieth century.
The US is not on a different planet, it benefits like all others from living in a world with rules. And in fact it probably benefits more from that than most given how connected it is to the rest of the world and given how biased the rules are in its favor, given they're the ones who wrote them in the first place... As a reminder, only five countries have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council so by definition these countries are at a huge advantage compared with others.
Bhutan for instance, the isolated Himalayan kingdom, doesn't care much one way or another if some rules are drawn on, say, international maritime trade regulations. They are not a major player in that domain, and their economy is not heavily dependent on global trade routes. The impact of such regulations on their daily lives would be negligible.
The US however, as global player, would be not only hugely impacted by such rules, but it is unequivocally in its interests that these rules exist. The reason is because, in this instance, without such rules, trade would collapse: the risk premium of sending a container ship on the ocean would skyrocket due to the resulting instability and unpredictability of not having the rules... As a reminder, trade accounts for 26% of US GDP, it enables millions of American jobs and it's also a significant factor in the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency. Looking at things "America first", you actually want international law to exist.
The US also cannot continue having its cake and eating it too, i.e. expect the world to comply with rules while it (and the West in general) doesn't. It might have been possible during a very short period of time when we were in a unipolar world with the US as the sole great power. But in the multipolar world we find ourselves in today, it's completely unsustainable because the US has lost the power to compel other countries to follow its will. If the US doesn't respect rules, all it does is destroy the rules for everyone, and ultimately ends up undermining its own interests.
This current transition from unipolarity to multipolarity is actually the very reason why there is that anti-international law movement in the US today. It is the US realizing that they're now in a world where they not only cannot unilaterally dictate terms anymore but will also need to accommodate others' interests. And having limitations when you previously didn't is always hard to take... Hence the kneejerk reaction.
It will undoubtedly take a while for the US to realize that restoring unipolarity is a pipe dream and that abiding by common rules is inevitable and for the greater good. In a way it needs to relearn the same lessons it did learn after both world wars: hopefully this time around a world war won't be necessary for these lessons to sink in...