[JumpCrisscross]

> Isn't it possible (and typical) for contracts to specify a particular forum for dispute resolution?

Tribes are sovereign under U.S. law. In most cases when you sign a contract with a tribe (or under tribal law), the tribe is free to modify it ex post facto.

[physicles]

Looks like they learned this from the US government, which signed a series of treaties with the various Indian groups in the 1800s and then ignored the treaties.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they learned this from the US government, which signed a series of treaties with the various Indian groups in the 1800s and then ignored the treaties

No, the New World figured out empires, exploitation and abrogration of treaty obligations all on its own. The Maya are notorious. But there is a reason even e.g. the Navajo call the ancestral Puebloans the Anasazi [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_Puebloans

[chrisco255]

That's true of all of human history. Alliances shift between nations, disagreements occur, war breaks out and the map gets redrawn.

[tsimionescu]

The USA is really on another level than many other nations in its lack of respect for treaties, at least in modern times. Anyone who signs an agreement with the USA should really expect at most 3-4 years of validity, depending where in the election cycle it was signed.

[JumpCrisscross]

> USA is really on another level than many other nations in its lack of respect for treaties, at least in modern times

Uh, not really. We basically have a pattern of countries with excess power-projection capabilities going on a rampage as soon as they can. Russia in Ukraine (and Africa and the Middle East, to say nothing of Europe). China in Tibet and Hong Kong, with the Philippines and entire UNCLOS treaty system and now Taiwan. Saudi Arabia in Yemen and the region; same for Iran and Israel.

The U.S. was sort of with Europe for a few years on trying to hold the rules-based international order together. Now we're jumping into the international-law-doesn't-matter pool.

[tsimionescu]

I'm talking about a slightly separate thing.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, for example, is a massive war crime and against international law (specifically, it's against the international law of aggression, the specific one for which the Nazi leadership were hanged). But, it doesn't break any treaties that Russia signed with Ukraine in the last decade - Russia last promised in a treaty not to do this in the 1990s, when Ukraine agreed to renounce the nuclear weapons the USSR kept there. So it's *not great", to put it extrmelet mildly, but at least that treaty lasted for 20-30 years.

In contrast, look at the Iran nuclear deal. That went into effect in 2016, and the US unilaterally withdrew from it and reinstated sanctions in 2018, not even two years later (they claimed some breach, but no other party to the treaty agreed that the breach existed, and the EU even tried to block the US sanctions to try to keep the deal going).

Or look at the Paris climate accord, which the US has signed twice and withdrew from twice in the last few years.

Or the USMCA agreement that replaced NAFTA in 2020, which the USA has violated in 2025 by seeking to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

And these are just some of the bigger, better known ones, with the clearest terms. Even Trump's actions on Ukraine right now are a clear breach of some less formal deals made by the previous administration a few years ago, when they were urging Ukraine not to seek a quick peace treaty with Russia - but it's less clear there what the deals were and to what extent they've been breached.

Whenever you'll look at a US deal, at least in the past few decades, you'll have a better than 50% chance it was broken by the USA within at most a decade.

Again, this is separate from the new era of ignoring international law by many powerful countries, and it coexists with the times when the USA was one of the biggest proponents of the rule of international law.

[yakshaving_jgt]

> But, it doesn't break any treaties that Russia signed with Ukraine in the last decade

I don't think that's true. In fact, I think in the last decade (or, 11 years), the russians have done this ~25 times.

A standard russian tactic appears to be to ask the enemy to lay down their weapons, and then when the soldiers comply, the russians shoot them in the face anyway.

Utter barbarians.

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/07/russia-launche...

- https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/risks-russian-...

- https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/02/24/7499797/

[benmmurphy]

you can expect a country that is controlled by its people voting to be a bit schizo to some degree when it comes to treaties. surely, you cannot expect something that is meant to have large effects on domestic policy like the Paris climate accord to be stable in the US when there is a lot of difference of opinion domestically over it.

[selimthegrim]

I believe Russia signed a border demarcation treaty with Ukraine pretty recently like 2010-12

[smeeger]

how is it an argument when both sides are so deliciously correct