Whatever the actual form of this monopolistic competition, the underlying reality was that it required expanding markets, and those expanding markets meant the creation of multinational states, such as is in formation with the EU, and the various similar blocs across the globe. Global imperialist competition, now, takes the form of competition between these various large, multinational blocs. As with the previous shifting alliances between nation states, so too these blocs form their own shifting alliances as they jockey for position.
For a long time, after WWII, as US imperialism was hegemonic, and as the other imperialist states faced the USSR, they subordinated themselves to US imperialism, and its determination of what constituted “international law”. The US created NATO, with its subordinated allies in Europe, prompting the USSR to respond by creating the Warsaw Pact. Superficially, NATO acted to “protect” Western Europe from the threat of invasion from the USSR. But, in reality, Western Europe was not under threat of invasion from the USSR. It sought only to hang on to its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, assigned to it, at the end of WWII, in the conferences at Potsdam and Yalta, to assuage its fears of itself being, again, a victim of invasion from the West, as it had been repeatedly.
US imperialism stationed its troops in Europe for the same reason it created its military bases in 80 countries across the globe, not for any kind of altruistic, defensive reason, but to assert its own global reach, and interests. NATO was the means for US imperialism to spread the cost of its own military expenditure, to serve the interests of US imperialism, just as the US used the role of the Dollar as global reserve currency to pay for its expenditure with increasingly worthless, paper Dollars, which led to the inflation, and global currency crises of the 1970's. Europe acted as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and early warning system, against any nuclear missile attack from the USSR, the form that any actual war with the USSR would inevitably take, as against any significant, conventional ground offensive.
European countries in NATO, whose real protection against the USSR came from their higher living standards, were obliged to spend money on weapons and weapons systems they were never going to use in Europe, but only ever in support of US imperialism in its militaristic adventures across the globe, for example, in South-East Asia, or Africa and the Middle-East. More than 60% of European military spending goes directly to US arms manufacturers, directly subsidising and justifying the large-scale production of those US companies, and further subordinating European states to the US. Another reason for US imperialism's troops in Europe, was to deter the working-class in Europe from advancing its own interests.
For so long as US imperialism was hegemonic, the role of international law was to represent the interests of US imperialism, and, to a lesser degree the interests of its subordinates in Europe and Japan. The global para state bodies designed to plan and regulate global capitalism, such as GATT/WTO, IMF, and the World Bank also fulfilled that function. But, even within those constraints, as soon as US hegemony began to break down, as US industrial capital went into relative decline, in the face of the rising power of imperialist capital elsewhere, in Europe, Japan, and most notably China, the façade began to erode.
As early as 1971, when France demanded payment of US debts in Gold, at the official exchange rate of $35 an ounce, the US, ended convertibility of the Dollar, bringing the Gold Standard crashing down, and initiating a decade of global currency instability. A surging Japanese industrial capital, dominated world markets, replacing the once dominant US multinationals, and amassing huge trade surpluses with the US in the process, leading to the US using its remaining dominance as global superpower to impose measures on Japan to limit its expansion. Trump is not the first to engage in such actions.
Over the last 40 years, the US has repeatedly imposed tariffs on imports to the US, as its domestic industry has continued to decline relative to its global competitors in Asia, and Europe. Whilst, its actions have been referred to the WTO, it has largely ignored the international rules based order it created, as soon as those rules ceased to operate in its favour. When it comes to other global bodies that has been even clearer. The US, never backed the creation of the International Criminal Court, for example, because it clearly saw, in advance, that its own global military adventures, its own record of military and paramilitary actions, would be a hostage to fortune. It has been its subordinates in Europe that did sign up to the ICC, and ICJ, that again, have been the ones left trying to justify the hypocrisy of an international law that only sought to put defendants from third world countries in the dock, whilst giving worse war criminals from the imperialist states a free pass.
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