Rules

"Funny" how it was the thing they emphasized, seeming to truly believe it set them apart from their predecessors (including Obummer), but then the opportunity to facilitate the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians came along and they couldn't resist!

If the United States was frustrated by that negative reaction, imagine the reaction, post-Gaza, that awaits Washington the next time it seeks global support for the target of an adversary. The dead-on-arrival passage of resolution 2728 may very well be remembered as an inflection point in the decline of the rules-based international order — which is to say the world that the U.S. seeks to build and maintain.

Rising powers will be happy to cite U.S. precedent as they assert their own exceptions to international law. For as Gaza shows in a horrific manner, a world with exceptions to international law is one in which the least powerful suffer the most.