January 01, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -  One of the persistent themes of western political leaders is that they support the notion of “the rule of law”. By this they generally mean the system of law as developed by western nations, and in the international context the formulation over the past 120 years or so of international law.

By this of course, they mean “their law”. Any deviation from this by non-western nations is to be deplored and where appropriate punished.
The epitome of this approach was to be found in the Nuremberg trials and their Japanese equivalent that followed victory in the Second World War. The waging of war was declared to be the supreme international crime. The chief American counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal, Robert Jackson, stated that the Nuremberg trials placed “international law squarely on the side of peace as against aggressive warfare.”

The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials may be seen in retrospect as the apogee of the concept that waging war was an offence against humanity. Since 1945 the major western powers, notably but not exclusively limited to the United States, have waged almost continuous war.

This has mostly been directed at countries that lack the ability, military or otherwise, to fight back.