Egregoros

@p there's no law in international relations anyway, even at peace time.

It's anarchy. When two states have shared goals, they cooperate. When they don't, they do coercive bargaining. When coercive bargaining fails, you get war.

Making declarations of war illegal under international law was a mistake.

States still start wars, they just don't declare them, so it just makes things harder to keep track of without any benefit.

@p yeah in this case it's the UN Charter.

And while I'd argue the term "international law" can be defined in a particular context, for example as the sum of all treaties that all countries involved in that context signed, it's not really a law.

It's not even a contract.

International treaties are non-binding agreements that are worth only as much as one participant's ability to punish another.