Читать книгу Environmental crimes in a transnational context. Topical issues of international environmental disputes as a risk of threat to the world legal order - Giorgi Matiashvili - Страница 7

International law is always inseparably linked with the politics of states. It is a continuation of their policy, fixed for a certain, often very long period, in the form of norms that create a legal obligation for these states to act exactly as they agreed in their agreements.

Throughout the history of international law, it has been based on the principle that the ancient Romans formulated as “pacta sunt servanda” – “treaties must be observed”. In contrast to the situation within the state, where the observance of law is ensured by the state apparatus in international relations, where there is no supranational power, states are forced to take their protection into their own hands when their rights are violated. At the same time, they seek support from other states, interested in maintaining the authority and effectiveness of international law, in order to jointly resort to sanctions or other coercive measures to restore violated rights. Currently, these actions of states are regulated by the UN Charter.

By being closely connected with politics, international law itself was in the past and currently remains a field of acute political struggle between various groups of states for the development and application of its institutions and norms in accordance with their interests.

In the era of Ancient Rome, international law reflected the relations of the hegemony of Ancient Rome and its subordinate peoples that existed at that time, in the Middle Ages it determined the relations of states – suzerains and vassals, and at a later time – the relationship of European monarchies with each other.

In the 20th century, there was a significant democratization of international relations, and, nevertheless, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, some of the most developed states seek to limit the effect of the sovereignty of other countries, proving that in the era of globalization and economic and technological progress, the borders between countries are erased. Some authorities and groups of NATO states\ (this is a military-political bloc, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the North Atlantic Alliance (Eng. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO;) – uniting most of the countries of Europe (including Turkey), the United States of America and Canada) \ lay claim to the exclusive right to maintain Western-style order and democracy in various parts of the world. Under the pretext of “humanitarian intervention”, they are ready to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, acting as an international policeman. Often, the “struggle for the right” undergoes along the line of dividing the interests of the countries of the developed North and the developing South. Unfortunately, the attempts of individual states to ignore the norms of international law and sometimes directly violate them, have not gone away, which ultimately has a destructive effect on the ecology of the regions.