The UN Charter isn't real?

"Article 1 (2) establishes that one of the main purposes of the United Nations, and thus the Security Council, is to develop friendly international relations based on respect for the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”. The case studies in this section cover instances where the Security Council has discussed situations with a bearing on the principle of self-determination and the right of peoples to decide their own government, which may relate to the questions of independence, autonomy, referenda, elections, and the legitimacy of governments."

https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/purposes-and-...

> The UN Charter isn't real?

Correct. The UN charter is a piece of paper.

Pieces of paper don't do anything. They are not magic spells that enforce anything, and they only matter in so far as they are enforced by other actors with real power.

If you want to talk about what other countries with a military or trade power might do, go ahead. But the piece of paper is rarely relevant at the international stage.

The only thing that matters is what the guys with the guns want to take from you

That was certainly the case on The Walking Dead with the various surviving communities. But we should hope the actual world would operate a little more lawfully than a post-apocalyptic free for all.

The law is only lawful because the guys with guns say it is

So Russia's invasion of Ukraine will be legal if Russia wins? I doubt most people in the West will see it that way. Might makes right has never been a good basis for law.

I would argue that the concept of "legal" has no meaning in this setting. But if Russia wins in Ukraine, everyone will call it illegal, and nobody will do a damn thing to push them out. Eventually the world will recognize it as Russian territory just like they recognized it as Soviet territory and part of the Russian Empire before that. So yeah, it will be legal.

Keep hoping!

It isn't. There isn't a force standing behind to enforce the charter.

With politics and most importantly international politics, there is no law and no right & wrong. It's basically actions and consequences and whether the advantage you gain from your actions is worth the consequences.

People and groups of people (nations) will press their advantage. We press our advantage every day. Most people driving frequently exceed the speed limit - why? Because you can get away with it. If one could skip paying taxes and get away with it we would have done it. The reason the tax skipping doesn't happen often is because the consequences of doing it are high compared to the advantage.

The US just pressed its advantage today because it could get away with it and with minimal cost.

Failure to understand this is a primary cause of a lot of unneeded consternation

Then it's just "might makes right" and you pick a favorite imperialist to cheer on to invade their next peaceful neighbor.

Sorry, but I don't buy into that imperialism shit.

Always has been

That imperialism shit doesn't care what you think because it's bigger and meaner than you are and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it.

Once normal people get desperate and mean enough, imperialism tends to loose in a big way. History has proven it at great cost.

Yep, the "great cost" is something that seems to get lost in the shuffle sometimes in conversations about this. No leadership realizes the error of their ways before a lot of suffering.

International law is real. It has discernible content, people who professionally study it, and it does influence (however incompletely) the behaviour of the world’s governments

This idea that law can’t exist if it doesn’t have a clearly identified enforcer is very modern-a lot of traditional/customary law (e.g. the Pashtunwali in Afghanistan or the Kanun in Albania) never had a clear enforcer but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, people sometimes paid attention to it, it influenced how people behaved even if they sometimes got away with ignoring it

Law is defined as "a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior".

International law is defined as "the set of rules, norms, legal customs and standards that states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generally do, obey in their mutual relations".

When people say that international law is not real, what they mean is that "international law" is to "law" as a "guinea pig" is to a "pig".

The primary differentiation is enforcement.

People bastardize the term law, because they like to throw the word "illegal" around and imply "evilness" without being arbitrary. But guess what: Trump can be evil, without his actions being "illegal".

Without international law, actions would be the same (Serbia gets punished, Rwanda gets away), but you would have to argue for morality individually. Instead, people can point to some tome some unelected people wrote and say "this book says you're evil and you can't argue with it". The book says it's illegal and that's that.

". . . people sometimes paid attention to it . . ."

Exactly.