Of course history of this goes all the way back to the very first thing the British did in WW1 was to cut the telegraph cables between Europe and America https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42367551
My point is that the calculus for Russia isn't "is there a precedent for breaking this type of international law?", it's rather "can we get away with it?". NS2 didn't figure in the Russia's calculus when planning the undersea cable interruption.
> Ultimately, international law has to be enforced by someone
And who has more moral right to do that than the superpower that supports a genocide, invaded iraq for no actual reason (and the whistleblower who called it "suicided")?
USA doesn't enforce "law", they enforce oppression and the interests of a few rich guys.
I find it weird how some people think that the country who illegally invaded Iraq on a whim enabled a genocide in Gaza could possibly be trusted to enforce international law on any other matter.
There was a period when a law based international order theoretically could have been implemented by the US but since 1991 it's always just followed the principle of "fuck you my guns are bigger than yours" with some bullshit legalistic pretext.
For example, on Jan 7th 2022 the undersea cable between Spitsbergen and Norway was severed. https://www.twz.com/43828/undersea-cable-connecting-norway-w... Turns out a Russian trawler had gone back and forth over the cable until it broke. This was covered in a nordic languages documentary called skuggkriget ('shadow wars') https://www.svtplay.se/uppdrag-granskning-skuggkriget
Of course history of this goes all the way back to the very first thing the British did in WW1 was to cut the telegraph cables between Europe and America https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42367551