international law. i'm a canadian. i have a historical and continued interest in international law. we're the ones that tend to speak up about it.

i accept the reality of the situation, which is that the united states decided quite some time ago that it did not want to be constrained by international law. to me, the problem this presents is how it is that we are to convince them to be constrained by international law, which is admittedly a difficult path to walk, as we are also legitimately the close allies of the united states.

it's kind of like you've got this friend with terrible heart problems, and he just won't stop eating double bacon cheeseburgers three times a day. you kind of feel the urge to say something, but you need to do it in a way that promotes beneficence without sacrificing tact.

this was a low-key issue for me in the last election in canada. while the conservatives didn't stray far from international law principles under their rule in the second half of the 20th century, it was the liberal party that had the legacy of upholding international law in conflicts from the sinai to iraq. it's kind of a consistently liberal ideological principle, as well, in that it upholds states to a rule of law, thereby restricting their actions - perhaps under the threat of sanctions. but, this requires a world where forces are balanced in such a way that the threat of sanctions is real, even if it's unstated.

i think that it's clear, in hindsight, that the united states never really saw the united nations as anything more than a forum to debate the russians in. maybe there were some lofty ambitions for a rule of law floating around in the chattering classes, but the actual levers of american (and british) power don't seem to have ever taken the idea seriously.

the reform movement in canada sought less to discard the rule of law and more to establish a firmer alliance with the united states, for the purposes of further opening oil markets. it was thought that greater integration would have greater persuasive power, but what we learned was that greater integration meant greater imperial control over our resources, which are being put aside for later use.

there is no question that the liberal party's position on international law required some reanalyzing after the failure of the international system to prevent the war in iraq. during the election, i posed the issue as a question: will the liberal party continue to attempt to argue for the international system, given that it appears to be broken? if it accepts that it is broken, what other ideas does it have to attempt to uphold the rule of law? or, will the liberal party carry on the ruling conservative party's policy and accept and adjust to the absence of international law?

in fact, trudeau answered the question in a debate, and it provided a predictive answer: he answered that he thought there were situations where nato could use force outside of the united nations. this is our dauphin, folks, our aristocratic defender of liberalism, through the noblesse oblige of his lineage.

well, we had an answer. i heard it. i didn't like it much. but, it seemed like there was consensus amongst the options presented, so it kind of disappeared as a non-issue.

i remain convinced that a rule of law amongst nations is beneficial to everybody on the planet, but it requires a balance of power where hegemony is not being asserted. hegemony may even exist silently within the rule of law, which is the unrealistic ideal of empires - never truly met. as soon as hegemony asserts itself, though, the rule of law becomes impossible until the hegemony is broken, and an equilibrium reasserts itself. it is the never met responsibility of a good hegemon to allow the equilibrium to reset without force - although the americans have come closest in human history, through rebuilding in germany and japan. in the end, america failed like every other hegemon, and that equilibrium will need to be reasserted with force.

the canadian will need to wait. but, it is with the expectations of a hidden zeal to reform existing institutions for efficacy, whenever the opportunity again arises.

international law has been dead for years.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/19/15345686/syria-un-strike-illegal-un-humanitarian-law

the united states is on some kind of deep state contingency plan run by the pentagon, or something. no, listen - it's an important question to understand in grappling with what's happening. is the commander in chief in civilian control of the pentagon, or does the pentagon use the civilian commander in chief as a puppet? it's supposed to work a specific way for a good reason, but laws on paper are no match for the brute force of reality, even if that reality remains obscured to not raise suspicion. but, we've seen a pattern in american hegemony over the last several decades that seems to imply the existence of a plan for global domination, a plan that any sitting president seems to have little shape over. a president at some point may reassert civilian control, but that president will not be donald trump.

it wasn't going to be hillary clinton, either. it seems that trump is kind of morphing into clinton in a lot of ways, right? but, it's just because clinton had already read the plan, and was broadcasting what it was. trump was saying all kinds of things in weird contexts, with false understandings and just broadly not having any clue, because - the fucking guy wouldn't get briefed. if he'd have listened, right?

see, maybe he thought they'd just give him civilian control. like - here's the keys to the white house door, and the master control network over the entire secret service. it's some kind of hex key or something, to lock into the sixth dimension, in which they may be puppeteered. all those career analysts in massive government services would just go home. here you go, boss. right.

so, of course, the reality is that he walks into a largely scripted situation. he's shuffled along, told where to sign, given this and that thing to read. it's the same script they would have given her, right?

i just want to get across that there wasn't a real choice in front of anybody last november in terms of deciding which foreign policy decisions the incoming white house was going to make.

"Our strategy cannot presume to separate the fight against [ISIS] from the Syrian people's fight against the Assad regime. They are inextricably connected." - john mccain

he doesn't mean what you think, though.

listen: mccain is talking in code, and rand paul is pretending to be naive in taking him seriously.

"It is true that the fight against ISIS and the civil war in Syria are connected, but not in the way neocons infer. Overthrowing Assad may actually lead to an Islamist regime that finds common ground with ISIS, not America."

this is completely incoherent, and mccain knows it and paul knows it.

it's easy to agree with rand paul on the surface, and on the broad face of it he's right - the united states should cut it's losses in syria, and evade the kind of firefight it seems intent on provoking. it's true that the strategy of winning the war on the ground isn't working, but that strategy was chosen for good reason, nonetheless: the strategy of overwhelming force has no outcome but disaster.

but, he's spouting russian propaganda - right down to the feigned naivete at the purpose of isis.

...which mccain is not being naive about, at all.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/opinions/less-military-intervention-opinion-paul/