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> have declared the "rules-based world order" dead

I have hunker are confusing two things here - there is international law, which the US and other delinquents break regularly.

And there is Rules based world order, which is what US talks about and attempts to impose.

For example imposing sanctions on Russia does not have basis in international law, but is part of ‘rules based order’

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jki275 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

There is no such thing as "international law" in the way you use the term.

There are treaties that countries either sign or do not sign. The US isn't breaking treaties it has signed, at least not in the general case.

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aguaviva 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For example imposing sanctions on Russia does not have basis in international law,

Of course it does.

Every country is free to choose which countries it does business with.

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cue_the_strings 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.

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aguaviva 5 days ago | parent [-]

Bear in mind that this has no bearing on the point under discussion.

	▲	cue_the_strings 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It definitely does; my point is that sanctions aren't very granular (essentially like surgery with a spade), and make life miserable for a whole bunch of people and companies that you didn't want to sanction. Of course, you inflict a lot of damage to yourself as well, as we're experiencing in Europe currently. But the whole bureaucratic issues are not to be underestimated. At some point, the US eased the sanctions on Iran a bit (under Obama I think), and my former colleague tells me that quite a few European companies were up for doing business with Iran (related to your regular old passenger cars in that case). At some point the sanctions got reinstated, and several German and French companies were threatened with sanctions if not outright sanctioned. My former employer (before my time there) had 2 projects worth ~$5M (of 2010s US dollars, not the monopoly money I earn now) total with some of these companies, and both were axed, even though the company itself had absolutely nothing to do with Iran. They got some compensation, but like not even 10%. Apparently, the whole sanctions thing is considered a "special case" in contracts.
	▲	sudosysgen 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It does, actually. Secondary sanctions are an impediment to free trade and frequently argued to contravene against international law as a result. You could take it up at the WTO if the US didn't just destroy it a couple years ago.

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mianos 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.