This reminds me of the debate of sovereignty in the context of mass surveilance. Ultimately, you can't keep a country from doing something that affects citizens

This reminds me of the debate of sovereignty in the context of mass surveilance. Ultimately, you can't keep a country from doing something that affects citizens of another country. You can only nudge them away from doing that with treaties, trade pacts and sanctions. China and the United States are Too Big to Care: small countries can't really tell them to stop doing something, and the effects of a sanction would be ridiculously small. The closest you can get to get a compromise from a superpower is to form an alliance of small to medium sized nations and then ask the superpowers to stop doing X. But regional powers already have a lot of trouble keeping good relations with other countries and often have dirt of their own (see the UN), so these alliances are usually ineffective for anything but trade regulations.