The international laws and norms Trump has barged through had already been loosened by previous US administrations. The operation most closely resembles the 1990 invasion of Panama and forced surrender of its strongman, by the first Bush administration.
That was followed by the younger George Bush with the invasion of Iraq on false grounds, and his administration’s broad use of rendition of torture. Barack Obama failed to hold his predecessor’s administration to account and pursued his own legally questionable drone assassination campaign against suspected terrorists.
These are arguably discrete acts of hypocrisy by earlier presidents, who claimed exceptions from international laws in the pursuit of US interests, but mostly embraced global norms in the knowledge that the “rules-based system” overwhelmingly favoured America.
From the article,
The international laws and norms Trump has barged through had already been loosened by previous US administrations. The operation most closely resembles the 1990 invasion of Panama and forced surrender of its strongman, by the first Bush administration.
That was followed by the younger George Bush with the invasion of Iraq on false grounds, and his administration’s broad use of rendition of torture. Barack Obama failed to hold his predecessor’s administration to account and pursued his own legally questionable drone assassination campaign against suspected terrorists.
These are arguably discrete acts of hypocrisy by earlier presidents, who claimed exceptions from international laws in the pursuit of US interests, but mostly embraced global norms in the knowledge that the “rules-based system” overwhelmingly favoured America.