Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.
Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.
This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.
You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.
The head of the UN, declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. [1] The US tried to pass a resolution legalizing the invasion of Iraq through the UN, but it failed. The entire "rules based order" is, I think, part of what caused the world to go to chaos. Because there were never any rules besides might makes right, just as always. But it was used as a pretext for hostile actions with relatively gullible populations.
Democracy doesn't really work when people think the US invaded Vietnam attacked they attacked us, that the US invaded Iraq because they have or are building WMD, that we invaded Libya to "liberate" it, and so on. And as for Iran, here's [2] a montage of Netanyahu claiming Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons, and so they should be invaded. The claims started 30 years ago and generally had a timeline of 1-3 years at most.
If the justifications for wars were more honest, even if that entails completely dropping the facade of morality, it'd have enabled populations within countries to have a better understanding of how the world "really" works, and also to make better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support.
>The entire "rules based order" is, I think, part of what caused the world to go to chaos. Because there were never any rules besides might makes right, just as always.
The UN isn't working very well right now, but it's worked considerably better in the past. In the wake of WW2, I think there was a genuine sentiment that war was really horrible and it should be avoided at all costs. Sadly most of the people who saw WW2 have passed away by this point.
In terms of populations "making better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support" -- I think international law is, if anything, helpful in this regard. Foreign policy is complex, and human nature is such that people are always predisposed to see their own interests as just, or at least cloak their interests in the language of justice. On the other hand, total pacifism is also ideologically unworkable for various reasons. (Even most leftists are against "America First" style isolationism for WW2 or Ukraine.) So international law is valuable in the sense that, at least in principle, it helps you figure out who the bad guy is: Who is breaking international law? That may sound rather academic, but in practice it seems to carry more weight than you might expect.
To state my position another way: I think having some sort of international law is a good idea, even if the current scheme needs to be reworked. A better scheme might be: Have some ritualized, non-lethal way for nations to test strength against each other, e.g. through athletic competitions or wargames, as a binding method of resolving disagreements. This could be game-theoretically stable, if success at the "ritual test of strength" is thought to correlate strongly with real-world war performance. Furthermore, any state which initiates lethal, kinetic confrontation after losing the "ritual test of strength" (sore losers who refuse to abide by the outcome) should become international pariahs subject to secondary sanctions.
The point is that there is no meaningful understanding of 'who is breaking international law' when everything is based on lies. For instance at this point in time most of everybody claims they didn't support the Iraq War, yet in reality the overwhelming majority did. At the peak of propaganda and lies, 80% of Americans approved of Bush's actions with regards to Iraq. [1]
And the thing about war is that there's no real way to tell who's going to win. For instance I think many people believe that the war in Afghanistan basically simmered down once the media coverage of it simmered down. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The Taliban was killing US proxies and soldiers alike, by the tens of thousands. The only way we could have even possibly won would have been a full-on ground invasion which would have entailed at least tens of thousands of US deaths, which Americans would never tolerate so it wasn't even an option. We withdrew because we were losing - the Taliban defeated the US. No sort of proxy you could ever create would predict that.
> I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it.
Well, Iran has been funding armies to the tune of millions (billions?) of dollars to attack Israel, as well as funding multiple terror attacks against Jews and against the US for many years.
So, alternative view - the fact that Iran has been allowed to do this, while the entire time stating quite clearly that they intend to destroy another sovereign country, while at the same time develop most of what they need for nukes - the fact that they've been allowed to do all this is actually proof that countries can do whatever they want and get away with it. And stopping their program is actually a way to show that countries can't just get away with it.
But it's not their terror web that is being attacked. Hezbollah and the Houti are fine, today anyway.
I'd love to see a UN resolution calling for the dismantling for this terrorist network. Or if not that, at least some kind of multilateral, or even hell, unilateral declaration on this - "end this or else". But no, it's a western style drive-by shooting. It just so happens the guy who got shot is a baddie.
This is nonsense. Iran spent decades funding proxies to specifically isolate their region economic competitor: Saudi Arabia. Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening.
Sorry, what? You're literally [edit: figuratively] flying in the face of... well, just about anyone who has any knowledge or expertise in the middle east.
It also flies in the face of anyone with general knowledge:
Two of Iran's main proxies are Hamas, that has been shooting rockets at Israel for the last 15 years, and launched a major invasion planned (in their mind) to destroy Israel?
And Hezbollah, which fought multiple wars with Israel, also launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the Gaza war began, and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, as well as tens of thousand of ground troops hidden in caves and tunnels on the border of Israel, with plans to launch an invasion into Israel?
This is all on top of the Iranian regime saying over and over again that one of their goals is to destroy Israel?
I think austin-cheney's point is largely right. Iran has fought a series of proxy wars against Saudi, ever since the Islamic Revolution.
The Iran-Iraq war was the first one, with Iraq funded and supported by the Gulf states.
Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is strategic in this context. The Saudi regime wants rapprochement with Israel and to remain aligned with US interests. But neither of these are remotely popular in the Saudi population. By funding guerrilla warfare against Israel, Iran and to a lesser extent Qatar, keeps the Sauds discredited and unpopular among at home and in other Arab countries. The same applies to Egypt, another regional rival of Iran, whose government have never been off the defensive with the Egyptian people and wider Arab opinion since normalisation with Israel.
Obviously Hamas and Hezbollah themselves are only interested in fighting Israel and not the wider regional conflicts. But Iran itself uses that conflict, quite cynically, for wider geopolitical goals. Its stance is the reason that, from Afghanistan to Turkey to Tunisia, it can always find allies who want to challenge the Gulf states vision for the Middle East. Iran supplies the weapons and the know how, but there's never a shortage of locals to drive the car bombs.
There is an interpretation of Iran's behaviour which sees it as a source of Muslim pride for standing up to imperialism, and suggests in contrast that the Saudi leaders are too decadent, too corrupt, and bring shame by ignoring injustice and exploitation done to Arabs. I would certainly question this, but it's not an unpopular discourse in Saudi and other Arab countries.
If you have never come across the idea of the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine etc being part of a long game of proxy war and influence between Iran and Saudi, I would question how broad your sources of analysis are.
Well, that's fair, and a pretty good analysis. And obviously I view the situation with an Israeli bias.
Still, I think you (or austin-cheney) go way too far in seemingly completely dismissing the idea that the proxies are to fight Israel. Yes, there are a lot of larger strategic implications here, and yes, this is sometimes seen as part of Iran positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim nation that will restore honor to Islam, etc.
But "Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening." doesn't make much sense, given the consistent statements of Iran for the last 40 years, given the fact that they're pouring so much of this funding into Hamas and Hezbollah which, as you say, are only interested in fighting Israel themselves.
(Btw, in some sense, Israel is probably the most powerful regional power in the Middle East.)
In any case, none of this makes my original point "nonsense". The point that it's Iran that's disrupting the rules-based order, not the US, still stands, even if the proxy wars were not "really" to destroy Israel (most evidence to the contrary) and even if it's only funding these proxies which have spread terror and war in the region to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia.
What does that matter? Are you saying you are more of an expert than everyone else?
Would you at least agree that yours is at the very least far from a mainstream opinion? I feel like you at least need to back it up with some evidence given that.
For the record, I have no formal expertise in anything related to this. I do live in Israel, have been living through the bombing campaigns, invasions etc of Iran's proxies for most of my life. The country that just "happened to be in the way".
Except in the case of Hezbollah (first Google result for "why was Hezbollah founded": "Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon."). And except in the case of Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, on the border of Israel. This is the first time I've ever heard Hamas referred to as not mainly having to do with Israel, but with Saudi Arabia.
(In any case, differences in opinion aside, thank you for your service!)
> So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?
No, I didn't say that, and I'm not sure why you're switching to talk about this.
I was specifically refuting this idea from the GP of this thread:
> Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.
This and other parts of that comment implied that, up until now, there was a rules-based order, but this attack somehow goes against that.
I was pointing out that this doesn't make much sense to me, because Iran has been breaking that rules-based order for years and getting away with it. Saying that enforcing the order is the problem, and not the attempt to circumvent it, is IMO incorrect.
You're free to correct me on that idea if you disagree, it's certainly a debatable opinion. But the only thing you disagreed with me on (or at least the thing you called out) was that Iran wasn't funding proxies against Israel, it was to contain Saudi Arabia. That, unlike my alternative view of what the war signifies, is something that is at odds with reality.
Iran does not view Turkey as their primary regional competitor. You could argue that Turkey is not an oil economy and is closer to Europe. There is also an ethic and religious factor. Iran is majority Persian and Shia while Saudi Arabia is majority Arab and Sunni.
Iran has spent 100x more (1000x) preparing for and battling Israel than it has Saudi. You are clearly not counting Iranian-funded rockets in the region or where they point. (Hezbollah had 15,000 of em... zero pointed at Saudi... ditto arms in Syria... ditto arms in Gaza...)
Saudi Arabia does not threaten to fire rockets at Iran on a daily basis or encourage others to do so. That is a striking distinction that cannot be ignored. And also Israel has nuclear weapons.
Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.
This strongly reminds me how naval warfare had period where participants was supposed to act according to certain fair rules. First they would fly the right color, then they would request the attacked ship to surrender, then they would attack if the other party declined surrender, and then they would pick up any surviving sailors that ended up in the water. World war 2 (and to a degree, world war 1) kind of ruined all that.
