You and I are subject to the law. This is not voluntary and it will be enforced against us by the state.

On the other hand, countries are sovereign. They are not subject to "laws", and if they do it is on a voluntary basis. Ultimately it boils down to military and economic strength for a country to be able to stand its ground and do what it wants. We never left this behind, this has always been the case.

From the replies it seems that commenters believe that countries are subject to "laws" the same way that they are...

The goal of the rules based international order was to subject countries to laws, yes. Those laws could have been (and were various times in the past) enforced by larger organizations in the same way the state acts on citizens. Westphalian Sovereignty is not any more real than the rules based international order - clearly Venezuela's sovereignty did nothing for them here.

There was never any "larger organizations", only the larger, more powerful countries that enforced the "international order" that suited them.

There was a time when Germany thought just like that. In the aftermath we decided that maybe it's not such a good idea, this might-makes-right thing and we strove for a world where transitions are peaceful because we realized that our power to kill had grown to proportions unseen in our history and because some of us - rightly, in my view - felt that the human race itself was now in the balance.

If you toss that out you have to at least acknowledge all possible outcomes. People - even powerful people, and powerful countries too - should be subject to the law because no single person and no single country stands above all the others.

Actually, what has happened to Germany is exactly an expression of what I described in my previous comments.

> powerful countries too - should be subject to the law

Perhaps so but that is idealistic. Again, countries are sovereign, there is no such things as "laws" in the sense that applies to individuals that apply to them, only voluntary agreements. Practically you would also need a level above countries with its own overwhelming force to enforce it, and that simply does not exist.

I am trying to discuss the world as it is, including indeed in the legal sense, not as it might be in dreams because that's pie in the sky and totally unbounded in scope.

Yes, you're pretending to be a 'realist' who is wise because of your grounded worldview, but you totally miss the forest for the trees: if we don't want to end with blowing ourselves up then we have to depart from the might is right and 'how the world is' mentality because that stops us from changing into a future where we will not blow ourselves up.

Your worldview is essentially a pessimistic one, mine an optimistic one: I think we are capable of change. We just make the stupid mistake of putting egomaniacs in positions of power all the time and then we are surprised by the outcomes.

Some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history were 'I have a dream'. Dreams are good, especially if they are dreams of a better world and we all should strive to create that world, not to declare it a pipe dream and get on with the business of raping each other.

I am not "pretending" anything. That's quite a personally aggressive term and I don't know what your beef against me is.

I don't have anything against what you wrote but I think that it has no discussion value in context and probably in general.

I would suggest that you take a look at the "Politics and the English Language" essay by Orwell. The person you are responding to is making a fair point that this is well trodden ground, albeit not in the most diplomatic terms. It would be helpful to engage with the arguments presented, otherwise we are just spinning our wheels here unconsciously relitigating issues from the 1930s.

Strange oblique accusation as neither Venezuela nor my comments have anytging to do with the "the 30s" or even politics (or Germany's past). Perhaps there is a lack of perspective and indeed realism in the reply or a Pavlovian reaction to "Trump" conditioned by some media (Trump is a fascist, Musk a Nazi, etc).

As said there were no arguments presented nor anything to discuss about the geopolitical situation so I don't know what to engage with.

An interesting discussiin might be about the reasons for the US' actions and their reasons for this course of action (capture) vs more classic coup.

To be helpful, do you have a solution in mind?

If so, what’s the next step and how long do you think it will take for a world in which no country is above the law… but no mechanism to create and enforce such law?

Einstein had some interesting thoughts about this, I don't have a reference handy but it boils down to a UN with teeth, effectively a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.

Even so, there is a lot of potential for abuse there too and it will most likely never happen because human nature is what it is.

> a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.

I assume you would want such a world government to be some form of democracy? If so, it would mean near-zero voice for Australians (0.32% of world population), Germany (1%), The Netherlands (0.21%), UK (0.83%), France (0.83%).

It would, however, mean much more say for Russia (1.7%), China (17.2%), India (17.8%).

What moral code should such a democratic world government adopt? Would it be secular or religious?

Even if we thought that end-state is ideal, I have a very hard time seeing practical steps that get us there other than through bloodshed (similar to how many current nation states got formed). One exception might be a common enemy that unites the vast majority of humans, e.g. an alien invasion.

Given the huge coordination problem of forming and maintaining a single world government (top-down), I would prefer a more bottoms-up, federated approach where secular, democratic, free-ish market, values continue to spread.

Agreed on all of that and yes, there are obviously some very big problems that would need to be resolved. We are no closer to that today - and probably further from it - than when the UN was founded.

Germany was right about that. They were catastrophically wrong about who was the biggest kid on the playground, though.

No, at the time they were the biggest kid on the playground, their mistake was to think that the playground would be a constant. If Germany had just taken over Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland they might have gotten away with it too. The lack of consolidation and Hitler being drunk on power caused them to continue to set higher goals.

Then once the theater of the war shifted to Global and Japan brought the USA into the war things changed rapidly.