[pm90]

Because it blows the cover of diplomacy. Sovereign nations not at war aren’t supposed to conduct hostile ops against each other.

Diplomacy and international relations are sort of their own universe with their protocols, traditions etc. Admitting to the attack would mean that the US appears as the blatant aggressor, and may have to make concessions. Plausible deniability is often safe and has no consequences.

[macspoofing]

>Sovereign nations not at war aren’t supposed to conduct hostile ops against each other.

Says who?

When was that ever true in the history of civilization?

The only peace humanity every knew was within the border of some empire. Otherwise it was constant war.

[wahern]

Says international law, including the United Nations charter (reciting the Westphalian doctrine), which every member state signs onto.

Of course, there are large grey areas in international relations, and nobody can reasonably expect perfect compliance, anyhow. But beyond any specific practical, tactical, or strategic reasons for maintaining plausible deniability, refusing to openly admit to a violation still reflects a degree of obeyance to the law. When large nations start openly flouting norms w/ a giant "F-U", that's when you know the international order and world peace is in trouble.

Plausible deniability of military ops is the nation-state equivalent of the polite fiction in cultural anthropology--an important, useful tool providing resilience to the normative system.

[macspoofing]

>Says international law, including the United Nations charter (reciting the Westphalian doctrine), which every member state abides by.

And who enforces this law?

[wahern]

Not who, but what--self-interest, the natural human predisposition to obey cultural norms, biologically innate concept of "fairness", etc.

A cultural norm is also a mechanism for streamlining cooperation--whenever some person or entity breaks established norms, you don't need to convene and deliberate to decide whether it was wrong, it's just per se wrong and members can instantaneously begin acting accordingly. It keeps everybody aligned. Not perfectly, but to a much greater degree than when the particular invisible boundaries don't exist. And that's one reason why it's in everybody's self-interest to substantially promote obeyance to such norms, and avoid harming the norm.

Some norms are more important than others. In the context of international relations, sovereignty is perhaps still the most important one. Unless you're prepared to conquer the entire world, anything you do that harms the principle harms yourself as other nation-states are less likely to respect your own sovereignty. Balancing these interests (e.g. short-term gain vs long-term harm) is complex, but as I said upholding the principle of sovereignty is one of the most sacrosanct. And so when it's violated it's quite understandable why even super powers like the U.S. and China remain circumspect, invariably resorting to plausible deniability or pretense justifications that at least nominally avoid openly flouting the principle.

[macspoofing]

You're spinning in circles. 'self-interest, the natural human predisposition to obey cultural norms' are abstract ideas, not international enforcement bodies.

>And that's why it's in everybody's self-interest to substantially promote obeyance to such norms, and avoid harming the norm.

Oh yeah? If that's the case, why does a thing like 'tragedy of commons' exist? Is it because without a central authority to enforce order, the rational action to take by each actor is to cheat and to take as much for themselves because if they don't, someone else will? But don't believe me, look at all of history. Peace only existed when an empire was able to enforce it.

Circling back to Iran. Iran has their sovereignty, they just are pariah state because they chose a policy of antagonism against a super-power - that policy hasn't worked out for them at all.

[wahern]

If "might makes right" was the only viable dynamic, the human species wouldn't exist. It's one very important dynamic, but hardly the only one, and not the principle dynamic upon which human civilizations are built. It's why North Korea is still a sh*t hole, while China increasingly relies on nationalism and other social mechanisms to manage its society. Force or even the threat of force doesn't scale very well.

History is important but not determinative. The emergence of the Westphalian doctrine was a novel civilizational development; novel in how deeply and quickly it spread. It's sort of like the concepts of monotheism or "human rights"--decentralized, self-perpetuating, viral organizing principles which can't easily be put back in the box once they achieve critical mass.

EDIT: To be clear, the problem with a nation-state like the U.S. flouting national sovereignty is that the "United States" is a construct predicated on the international sovereign order. Undermining that international order undermines the very identity of the country, an identity undergirding the legitimacy of its institutions and the willingness of its people to promote them, not to mention the legitimacy of its external relationships. So even though there are counter-forces--often very powerful counter-forces--the forces for maintaining the logic of the nation-state order are exceptionally powerful and at work at all levels. Mechanisms like plausible deniability (where plausible implies something that can be tolerably overlooked) are like pressure relief valves for contradictions that threaten the normative order. Someday the nation-state order may collapse, overwhelmed by stronger organizing dynamics, hopefully establishing a better civilizational equilibrium, but so what? The point is understanding the reasons for how and why countries act in the particular, peculiar ways that they currently do.

[AdamJacobMuller]

People get annoyed that "international law" isn't really a think and is more like "international suggestions."

[sudosysgen]

They used the word "supposed", not "can't". There are better arguments for what you're trying to convey.

[macspoofing]

I'm not sure where 'supposed' comes from. OP is arguing that the way the world works in their mind, is how it is 'supposed' to work in real life.

[TheBill]

Enoon. Take a look at China's activity in SEA.

[userulluipeste]

"The only peace humanity every knew was within the border of some empire. Otherwise it was constant war."

This is a bold claim on a very much debatable subject, where it would come down to what "war" is, if it is the same with armed conflict/incident (like opposing force against a robbery), and so on. There are many countries, even neighboring ones (like Serbia and Romania), that say that have never been in a war against each other.

As to the commendation of living within an empire, that is just helplessness against empire's overpowering forces, which is far from the general idea of "peace" as in Wikipedia-defined "societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence".

[macspoofing]

>This is a bold claim on a very much debatable subject, where it would come down to what "war" is, if it is the same with armed conflict/incident (like opposing force against a robbery), and so on.

No. It's not debatable. Show me an example of an extended peace between nations outside of the borders of an empire. This is almost a tautology to say that you need a central authority to have a monopoly of force. Otherwise you're in the 'tragedy of commons' scenario.

>There are many countries, even neighboring ones (like Serbia and Romania), that say that have never been in a war against each other.

Certainly they don't want to, but that's immaterial, they aren't allowed to. They are within the sphere of American order.

>As to the commendation of living within an empire, that is just helplessness against empire's overpowering forces, which is far from the general idea of "peace" as in Wikipedia-defined "societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence".

Well ... OK ... that's all we have.

[userulluipeste]

"Certainly they don't want to, but that's immaterial, they aren't allowed to. They are within the sphere of American order."

If we are referring to the Serbia-Romania example, the peace track record is way longer before what you call American order to be a thing (and even longer if we'd count peace between their people, before statehood), then afterwards it's safe to say that they kept their peace despite America's interests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia