> The police enforce civil order by consent expressed through democracy. There is no analogy in international affairs.

Which is the point exactly. All agreements in international affairs are ultimately backed by threats of violence. Most negotiations don't go as far as explicitly mentioning it, because no one really wants to go there, but the threat is always there in the background, implied.

All policing is to a certain degree by consent, even in dictatorships which only use democratic as a fig-leaf. International law likewise.

Just as the criminal justice system is a deterrent against crime despite imperfections, so are treaties, international courts, sanctions, and warfare.

> I am thinking it will not be the NSA data centre's in Utah, or any data centres owned by nuclear armed states.

For now, this would indeed seem unlikely. But so did the fall of the British Empire and later the Soviet Union before they happened.