| In linguistics, Chomsky is on right now. He might be a veeclr linguist, but not necessarily a correct one.The rant about international law, though, is bunk. Much more accurate is Louis Henkin's observation that almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all the time. Most interstate interaction is legal. There are millions of law-governed interstate transactions every frickin' day. There are plenty of examples where the US got its juristic ass handed to itself and complied (e.g. change from 3 to 12 mile territorial sea, change from conditional to unconditional most-favoured-nation clause, etc.).I'll grant that if it comes down to an international legal ultimatum vs. a superpower responding with Watcha gonna do about it? , the superpower will tend to win. It's also true that in addition to being able to win many such standoffs, the US has a whackload of structural power', i.e. not just winning matches in the game but the ability to rig the odds in its own favour by setting the rules of the game (boujour Foucault!). The US is often covered because it wrote the rule book, but that doesn't apply to a lot of other countries that have to and choose to play by the rules, and not even the US has a monopoly on structural power.Saying that there is no international law is like saying that kids playing sandlot baseball without parental supervision (gasp!) are playing without rules. They might not be playing by MLB rules, and the rules might bend and break over the course of the game, and there might not be a higher power rigidly legislating and enforcing, but the activity is far from random or purely self-interested. Don't throw the baby out with Chomsky's bathwater. (Esp. because it is very important that people believe these rules exist. They have no independent existence outside our heads, and life without them would be even more wretched.)
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