Shall we start with ones which insist that fair and equal means what they choose to mean instead of what they mean universally?

"What they mean universally" is actually a harder thing to peg down than one might assume, which is one of the reasons we still have separate countries in the first place.

It's also why the "rules based international order" is not much more than PR for violent hegemony.

I don't think I understand what you mean. Is the European Union a rules-based international order? It doesn't seem to be a violent hegemony from the outside looking in.

The EU is not the rules based international order, it's a supranational entity.

The "rules based international order" is supposedly the body of international laws and customs as well as their enforcement internationally, and is what the US uses to justify their hegemony, placing them as the guarantor of this order - while themselves violently breaching it.

It's also called the "US-led international order" or the "liberal international order". Put simply, it's the US and its allies enforcing a set of rules internationally with violence or the threat of violence (or economic sanctions)

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order

EU happily bombed seasteading projects.

Also Somalia originally wanted to split in multiple countries and NATO interventions happened to prevent that and force them to remain only one country, and remain in Civil war

> EU happily bombed seasteading projects

How the EU member states act towards parties outside the EU seems a bit beside the main point: that the EU itself actually is about international rules and not a cover for violent actions between the various member states.

The EU isn't about international rules - members of the EU don't care at all about international rules. It's simply a covenant between countries that can be willingly entered and left.

The "rules based international order", on the other hand, is not voluntary. If the US decides that you are in breach, then it will be rectified with hard power. It's simply an abstraction for hegemony, and you don't get a choice to parcipate or not, the choice is made for you by the hegemon (which also happens to be its enforcer).

Yes, especially them (assuming you're talking about the US here)

There is no free trade. Trade sanctions are used left and right for political goals.

Trade itself is used for political goals: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300031

You think -any- country is fair and equal when it comes to spying and their intelligence agencies? It's strictly limited by technical capabilities and nothing else. You're living in dreamworld if you think all countries aren't doing it.