Vladimir Putin Quotes
I do not exclude this, but I would like to draw your attention to one absolutely key aspect: In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council can sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state is inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.
Putin, Vladimir. "Interview to Channel One and Associated Press." President of Russia, 4 Sept. 2013.
Individual countries are bound only by the treaties and compacts that they have signed and ratified. So very often someone will allege that a country has violated international law, but that nation may not have signed the Treaty or Compact that binds them, so thy may not be in violation at all whereas some other country in similar circumstances would be. Also, many countries (including the United States) sign treaties but take exception to some of the provisions. Then there are not bound by that provision. This is what makes International Law so complicated and difficult to understand.
Estonia had moved a Russian Soviet era monument to WWII dead Soviet Soldiers from a prime location in the center of their capital to a location outside of town. Russian-speaking Estonians were outraged and fomented violent demonstrations and riots that almost paralyzed the city. At the same time 85,000 Estonian computers were hijacked and used to implement a denial of service attack on some of the major government sites including the main bank, blocking all those webservers from serving normal customers on the Internet. The Prime Minister and other Estonian officials accused the Russians of the cyber-attack and likened it to a blockade which is an act of war under international law. What complicates cyberattacks is that there might have been some Russian nationalists who, with no knowledge of the government could have implemented a denial of service attack where so many accesses to servers are engineered that the servers crash. The perpetrators may have been instigated by the Russian government or not. They could have been any place in the world when they did it.
There have been times in democracies where a foreign ministry (State Department) is isolated from the elected politicians and implements a foreign policy that is at odds with the wishes of the elected officials and the majority of the nation. A good American example of this was in 1948 where America had to decide whether to support the creation of the State of Israel in the United Nations and through diplomatic recognition. The professional diplomats in the State Department had developed very close relations with Arab States, and many State Department employees were anti-Semitic. In addition, they thought the most important thing for America was not to risk the Arab oil supply. Meanwhile, the people, Congress, and President Truman were on the other side and Truman had to finally order The Secretary of State to stop his professional diplomats from pursuing their own foreign policy preferences. Even then some did not.
There is no court structure that handles International law disputes. There are some international bodies that hear some types of international law disputes, but no general mechanism. The procedures of these few bodies are very complex and arcane. But worse, there is no body with any power that can enforce any decision that may be reached. Enforcement depends on the good will of the nations involved or the pressure that can be brought to bear by other counties.
Gets was commenting on the Apple Computer Company who refused to obey a court order to create a program that would break into any iPhone. Apple thought the court order was not only bad public policy, but was not legal, so they refused and appealed to start the legal process. However, the FBI which had claimed that they had no other way to view some critical investigative data, found one, and not wanting the case to go to higher courts where they might or might not lose, the dropped the case, thus stopping the legal appeal as in the United States courts will hot hear theoretical cases as they will in some countries. Since apple was not in danger of being held in criminal contempt any longer the could not longer appeal.
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is serving as the current president of Russia since 2012, previously being in the office from 1999 until 2008. He was also prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. As of 2021, Putin is the second-longest serving European president, after Alexander Lukashenko.
