>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 recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/United-Nations-History-Stanley-Meisle...
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.