You're still misrepresenting international law, though. It's not as ephemeral as your portray it, most of it is based on existing treaties, declarations, and agreements, and the rest of it is also not arbitrary but rather based on convention and customary procedure among states.
There is a reason why countries like the US and Russia go at great length in arguing that what they do is not violating international law in cases when they are actually breaking it.
Moreover, even those states who occasionally break it most of the time conform with international law and resort to treaties and conflict resolution mechanisms associated with them. It's not as if Russia (or the US, for what it matters) ratify no international agreements at all or always break them or completely ignore international agreements.
Overall, your position is unrealistic and does not reflect the reality of international relations. Countries do not just do whatever they want out of a position of power, and for most part even those that break treaties, agreements, and habitual rules of conduct only do so as an exception to the rule. I can assure you that Russia cares a great deal about being recognized as a rational and reliable actor rather than as a mad rogue state.
What you say about the morality of states (whatever that means, to me the concept is meaningless) is clearly just your personal opinion, so let's ignore that.
Any specific existing treaty that forgives or wipes away a war crime? Or many. Despite the tens of thousands (conservatively) of dead civilians resulting from direct US military action, the US has not even been accused of a single instance of a war crime. Why do you think that is? Well I'll tell you, as someone who's been elbow deep into this for quite a few years of my life: international law is an esoteric, negotiable concept, it's a guideline, and it relies on consent and the power to apply your view. Kind of like the rules of conduct in a company. You don't slap your CEO even if they deserve it, and you don't go to an HR that is controlled by them. In the same vein, international relations is the "science" of agreeing on an outcome the stronger party wants and the weaker one can live with. International law is there as a framework but there's no accepted "Supreme Judge, Jury, and Executioner" who just presses charges, delivers a verdict, and carries out the sentence in the name of the victim or the planet, and everyone has to abide.
A strong enough player is untouchable, they can break a treaty and it's up to the others to decide the action... or let it slide. Who do you think has the power or guts to gather the necessary evidence and the international support to investigate the US for war crimes? And if it went through, who has the power to impose any kind of measures against the US? What kind of retaliation can they expect afterwards? Do you really think there are no perks to being the wold's biggest superpower?
Armchair international politics is a lot more fun than the real thing, I'll tell you that.
> Countries do not just do whatever they want out of a position of power
There is some give and take but for some it's literally what they do for a living. The US has openly pressured the EU to do things for decades, from supporting sanctions they didn't agree with, to changing Galileo frequencies to something that the US could more easily jam. And they've been doing it on every continent under threat of war, sanctions, or interference. It wasn't as a favor between friends, and it certainly wasn't in the spirit of cooperation and all those international treaties.
> the morality of states (whatever that means, to me the concept is meaningless) [...] so let's ignore that
A bit of reading comprehension goes a long way. That was exactly my point, that there are no good or bad, no moral and immoral/amoral countries. They do what they need to do to stay on top of the pile. Don't ignore something because you can't parse it. It's clearly the best way to form an uninformed opinion and then state it firmly, assuming you have an iron clad case.
There is no substantial disagreement between us, once I start to ignore some of your unnecessarily snippy and needlessly condescending remarks. Lack of enforcement of international law is due to lack of ratified treaties for such an enforcement. There is a reason why the US refuses to ratify the treaty for the International Court of Justice. So far, attempts to get better enforcement mechanisms were partly successful, but not successful when members of the UN Security Council are concerned. The problem is that allied powers decided to give the UN security council members veto rights. Any change would have to start there - a larger council and abandoning veto rights. In the current political situation that will not happen, but maybe in the future it will.
However, you're still under a false impression. You're just looking at a few global superpowers and former superpowers such as Russia, China, and the US. However, the UN has 193 member states and there are countless bilateral treaties that entangle countries in a positive way.
> There is some give and take but for some it's literally what they do for a living.
That's not true, as I've said, your view of international relations is unrealistic. You're thinking way too much in black and white terms. As I've mentioned earlier, even the countries who occasionally break international law normally adhere to it and consult their experts about it and try to avoid breaking it. Your remark is especially ironic in the context of a thread about Denmark. There are more countries than the US, China, and Russia. Most of these countries work quite well with each other on the basis of international law. For every case that you believe demonstrates arbitrary power abuse, you can find another case in which international treaties, conflict resolution mechanisms by UN, and diplomatic channels have worked.
You're generalizing from very few hand-picked nations, which are known to have particular geostrategical goals that other countries do not have. Denmark is not waging illegal wars or annexing regions of other countries, for instance. Most countries don't do these kind of things.
> That was exactly my point, that there are no good or bad, no moral and immoral/amoral countries. They do what they need to do to stay on top of the pile.
You did not understand this point. I'm saying that countries cannot be moral actors because they are not uniform entities. Countries are not actors at all. If at all, you can talk about particular governments this way, but these change all the time. Or, you could say that certain geostrategical goals seem to influence a government's actions, but that involve a lot of interpretation and background knowledge. You need to assign moral properties to decision makers, or perhaps governments. So it only appears as if we agree on this point.
Of course, there are immoral actions of governments, though. Russia's annexation of the Crimea is a prime example of one. So are US drone strikes, Guantanamo, and the false pretenses for the 2nd Golf War.
If your suggestion is that governments cannot be held accountable for their actions, then I have to say I'm baffled and have no idea what made you adopt this outlandish view. They are being held accountable all the time, as well as individual members of governments if it is clear they are responsible for a certain decision.
Sometimes people use the country name as a shortcut and if it's clear that they mean the governments and other institutions during a certain time period, then that's alright. But talking about countries in general as if they were uniform actors is always nonsense.
> Don't ignore something because you can't parse it. It's clearly the best way to form an uninformed opinion and then state it firmly, assuming you have an iron clad case.
You seem to be talking about yourself here. Psychologists call this projection. As I've said, there does not seem to be any substantial disagreement between us - now that you've changed your mind about international law, or at least chose to change the subject to a more general topic. Yes, a few countries such as the US and Russia sometimes break international law, presumably because they think they can afford it in light of too tame opposition. If that's your big geopolitical insight, so be it.
> If your suggestion is that governments cannot be held accountable for their actions, then I have to say I'm baffled and have no idea what made you adopt this outlandish view.
No, their argument is "The US has done bad things, so Russia should do bad things too, and it is UNFAIR to react to that." The rest is just pseudo-intellectual justification for that position.
There is a reason why countries like the US and Russia go at great length in arguing that what they do is not violating international law in cases when they are actually breaking it.
Moreover, even those states who occasionally break it most of the time conform with international law and resort to treaties and conflict resolution mechanisms associated with them. It's not as if Russia (or the US, for what it matters) ratify no international agreements at all or always break them or completely ignore international agreements.
Overall, your position is unrealistic and does not reflect the reality of international relations. Countries do not just do whatever they want out of a position of power, and for most part even those that break treaties, agreements, and habitual rules of conduct only do so as an exception to the rule. I can assure you that Russia cares a great deal about being recognized as a rational and reliable actor rather than as a mad rogue state.
What you say about the morality of states (whatever that means, to me the concept is meaningless) is clearly just your personal opinion, so let's ignore that.