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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1479 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 19, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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What legal technicalities are we talking about? If we talking about war with other nation, I am not sure "legal" has any meaning here. We have a legal system in the US. You know, Congress, laws, courts, lawyers, police, 9th Circus, SCOTUS, all that beautiful arrangement. But none of it - beyond trivial cases of military cook stealing supplies and selling them on the side - has any bearing on military actions against a foreign country.

Are you referring to a fictitious notion often called "international law"? If so, I think naming it "law" is one of the biggest swindles ever perpetrated on humanity - it's just a network of voluntary vows taken by various sovereigns, each of them could be at any moment revoked or ignored by any of them. It has very little in common with that we call legal system within the US, and probably as much with any legal system in any existing country. So I don't see any problem in the military not being super-concerned with those. It doesn't mean military should not have any rules or limits - the military is ruled by the civilian leadership, and the civilian leadership can impose on it limitations stemming from our culture and sensitivities. Like, trying to minimize collateral damage, not harming noncombatants if possible, not using munitions that cause excessive harm to noncombatants, not acting in a way that may be repugnant to our culture, etc. But I don't think those can be properly called "legal technicalities", and I think it's not the military's position to define those - it's the outside constraints placed on the military (necessarily and justly), but within these constraints, they should do their thing.

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