 One very disturbing development in recent politics occurred in the crisis over the alleged use of poison gas by Syria in the Syrian civil war. The aspect of this that seems to be very disturbing is that the president took the position because use of such gas, if in fact it occurred, was a violation of international law that it was up to the United States to impose sanctions on the Syrian government for this violation of international law. This to me is an example of a trend that we find throughout the 20th century. The judicialization of international relations, instead of viewing states as bodies aiming at their own interests, the notion has come about that the nation is really an instrument for the enforcing of some body of law that somehow is above all nations. That is just as within a nation there is a legal system. There's supposed to be some international system that nations have a right to enforce. This is very dangerous because nations that violate international law as the proponents of this view hold are then regarded as criminals and instead of having negotiated settlements to dispute, the aim will be to destroy them or render them incapable of any further violations of the alleged international law. It leads to more and more destructive wars and then nations of cures of such violations will fight to the bitter end rather than try to engage in negotiations because they know unless they can succeed in resisting, then they themselves will be subject to criminal sanction and arrested. This was FJP Veal pointed this out in his book, Advanced to Barberism, in the late 1940s and it continues to be a disturbing trend today.