> The problem is that people misunderstand "international law" and interpret it as something similar to the more familiar national law. It's far more basic tha

> The problem is that people misunderstand "international law" and interpret it as something similar to the more familiar national law. It's far more basic than that. Enforcement of domestic laws is based on the monopoly on violence the government carries. In international law, the two parties do not acknowledge each other's monopoly on violence. They are extremely unlikely to just roll over and accept the punishment. Enforcing international law is just war with added steps and a more morally palatable justification. Sometimes nations capitulate before war breaks out (typically because the punishment is less severe than war, or because their odds of winning are low), but it doesn't change that they're surrendering to violence. > Russia doesn't get sanctions because it "guilty" while the US does not because they're "innocent" in the eyes of the law. International law is largely broken. It's predicated on the idea that the combined military power of the rest of the world can overpower the "guilty" country. Nuclear weaponry means that in the event of international law enforcement that threatens the existence of a country, they have just as much ability to make the rest of the world uninhabitable as the alliance of nations does to destroy theirs. We can't meaningfully enforce international law against nuclear capable countries. This is why economy-ruining sanctions are only enforced on nations that lack nuclear armaments. Hypothetically, if Cuba had nuclear missiles, do you really think our embargo of them would have lasted this long? It's just a further division of the world into have's and have nots.