International law (n.) offers a court for territorial disputes, but a ruling would take two years, and the State Department said America could not wait that long to sail into the Gulf of Sidra.
International law (n.) had its great champion in Moynihan, who boasted of making the U.N. utterly ineffective against the invasion of East Timor.
International law (n.) has no police force — no Martians to enforce it — so it works only when the great powers agree to it, and a lawless state simply ignores the World Court.
International law (n.) counts only when its rulings go Washington's way; any other outcome is declared inappropriate for the United States.
International law (n.) becomes, under the "new thinking," a set of private contracts the stronger party may apply or ignore at will — strict for investors, quaint when it restrains aggression.
International law (n.) appears in two of sixty-one columns on a war the World Court condemned — a fair reading of the dominant culture's regard for the rule of law.
International law (n.) is just "hot air" — a convenient discovery for the one state able to write the new non-rules for itself.
International law (n.) was what Cuba followed when bombed from Florida — it brought pilots' names and bomb details to the UN, and got assurances of no aggressive purpose while the invasion was being planned.
International law (n.) functions, in one liberal commentator's cynical view, to legitimate the western powers' deadly force; obeying it is for the weak.
International law (n.) is, in the mouth of a president in a conference room, whatever the lawyers say and I don't care.
International law (n.) broken by rogue states does not guarantee disaster, but nobody may act surprised when disaster arrives.
International law (n.) is judged, like democracy and free trade, by its outcome, not its process: fine when the majority agrees with Washington.