OK, Russia broke the "law".
Law needs a lawgiver. Giving the law is an attribute of sovereignty.
Conservatives, of which you are a prominent one, need to be VERY careful with the idea that there are supra-national or transnational lawgivers. Once we accept that premise, the chances that it will be used against us are great.
In the end, Might Makes Right....Always has, always will.
You want to stop Hitler? You have to be mightier than he is.
Look Jim, I agree on point, but there are established norms when it comes to international give and take. What Russia did here doesn’t fit into any civilized version of those norms.
What I wind up thinking after your comments, is that we can get mired down into the semantics of things and lose site of the evil that took place.
We can’t paralyze ourselves trying to do triple back flips in order to make sure we don’t enmesh ourselves in penalties for something we wouldn’t do.
It has been approaching 200 years since the United States took military action to add to it’s territory, and even then we paid for it as well.
On top of that, there was a real question if the entity we were dealing with, had any claim at all to the territory in question.
Spain grabbed that territory just like it grabbed Mexico. Mexico wasn’t a clear heir apparent to the large Spanish holdings in North America. It hadn’t owned them before Spain came along.
We do take military action in nations around the world, but it’s generally after getting international approval. And then we try to set those nations up with stable governments that can then chose to develop the allies they wish, sometimes to our own detriment.