Recently, international law, or more specifically, violation of international law, has been at the forefront of the media. For example, the U.S.- Israeli attacks on Iran have been criticized as a breach of UN Charter Article 2(4). The United Nations has “condemned” these actions, but nothing has actually been done. This has called into question the effectiveness of international law: why do these rules matter if countries are not actually obliged to follow them? What’s the point of international law? First, we need to establish there are two kinds of international law: binding and non-binding. So which one is more effective in ensuring state compliance? Binding law carries legal repercussions for violations, and non-binding law does not. At first glance, one would assume that binding law is more effective because there are repercussions for breaking it, which would encourage further compliance and cooperation. If a centralized coercive authority existed to punish states that violated international law, this would likely be true. However, there is no way to actually enforce binding international law in the same way that states enforce their own domestic laws. There is no central global authority, or put more simply, there is no official “world police” to punish violators of international law. Conversely, non-binding law is widely regarded as more effective than binding law because it does not require states to go through their domestic formal ratification processes. Since there is no coercive enforcement mechanism and all international law ultimately depends on voluntary compliance anyway, non-binding law is considered more effective because it is able to establish norms more quickly and broadly. This is especially important for countries where ratification of specific binding agreements is less likely, especially due to concerns regarding sovereignty. For example, the 1948 Human Rights Declaration was a non-binding agreement, but has served as the foundation for human rights norms in the modern day. Essentially, the “point” of international law is that it helps to establish “norms” for states to adhere to. Although international law cannot be enforced in the same way that domestic law would be, states are incentivized to follow international law because it represents a set of established global norms; such as collective security and sovereignty. Breaking these norms would damage a state’s credibility, hurting relations with other states. This is the reason international organizations are successful in sustaining cooperation: because they force states to repeatedly interact with each other, incentivizing “friendlier” behavior for fear that certain actions could cause them damage down the line. Furthermore, norms are entrenched by states and international organizations through a public calling out of violations, this is known as “naming and shaming.” This reputational pressure is the closest thing that international law has to an enforcement mechanism. However, it is important to acknowledge that there are limitations to the effectiveness of “naming and shaming.” Geopolitical affinity, or a state’s relationship to another state (positive or negative) is demonstrated to have an effect on which issues are brought to public attention (Terman and Byun 2021). Rival states are shown to criticize each other on more “sensitive” issues such as human rights abuses, while allied states will scrutinize “safer” problems such as socioeconomic inequality. Therefore, this form of enforcement through reputational pressure, though effective in some cases, is inconsistently applied because it is dependent on states’ political interests. Evidently, some states are more vulnerable to these reputational costs than others. Certain states are powerful and self-sufficient enough to not be dependent on the approval of other states. Also, some states have far more influence than others in setting these norms in the first place. For example, the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council– the U.S., France, the U.K., Russia, and China –possess exclusive veto power regarding proposed resolutions. Why do these countries have such a large amount of influence over international law? Powerful states will always have more influence than other states when it comes to establishing global standards, and this has been institutionalized in international organizations such as the UN. Similarly, in the aforementioned process of “naming and shaming,” the criticisms of larger, more powerful states are given more credibility compared to those from smaller, weaker nations. Ultimately, because there is no central international authority, the cooperation and support of powerful states is vital to the credibility of international law and organizations as a whole. Evidently, international law has limitations: it reflects the existing global hierarchy, lacks enforcement power, and reputational pressure is inconsistently effective. Because of these factors and how they have impacted current events, we might be tempted to write it off as pointless. However, it is important to recognize that international law is still instrumental in sustaining international cooperation by providing a set of norms for states to follow. Although conflict is not eliminated, by creating an international order where criticism is encouraged, it is less likely than in the absence of the forum for cooperation that is facilitated by international law. References: Terman, Rochelle, and Joshua Byun. “Punishment and Politicization in the International Human Rights Regime.” American Political Science Review, vol. 116, no. 2, Nov. 2021, pp. 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055421001167.
By Madeleine Harp
A recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship on the MV Hondius has generated global concern and alerts from health authorities. The hantavirus has already resulted in multiple deaths, and required quarantines of the remaining passengers. Not coincidentally, interest in a treatment for the disease has spiked, as have the prices of Moderna’s stock. During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Moderna, along with Pfizer and AstraZeneca rapidly developed vaccines using mRNA technology, the first of their kind in history. And these vaccines were widely distributed and used around the world, marketed as “safe and effective” by numerous health authorities. But an investigation into recent trends in public health suggests otherwise. It is common knowledge by now that Covid-19 is overwhelmingly fatal to the elderly; in contrast, it only produced marginal excess mortality for young adults and children. Thus, it can be ruled out as the cause for record excess deaths in the same demographic, which started only a year after the pandemic. Life insurance providers in the United States were some of the first to notice this trend of working-age adults in 2021. This phenomenon was especially pronounced in Northern and Western European countries, where Covid-19 vaccine uptakes were some of the highest in the world. And the effect of these vaccines on preventing the disease has been revealed to have been greatly exaggerated. What is the culprit of this spike in mortality? Looking at the side effects of these vaccines, conditions such as myocarditis, diabetes, bells palsy, and blood clots, have become far more frequent since 2021 in younger demographics. Given that these vaccines were developed and mass produced less than a year after the start of the global pandemic, their severe flaws should not have been surprising. Furthermore, Pfizer did not even test its vaccine before release, as part of its effort to deliver it so rapidly. Despite this, numerous people were censored by social media companies for disputing the claims made by Big Pharma, and millions of people across the world were forced to take the vaccines to keep their employment and avoid paying massive fines. What could be Big Pharma’s motive for selling such harmful medications? Looking at their finances, they have earned hundreds of billions of dollars from selling these vaccines, their highest profits in history. Furthermore, by creating a sicker and more medication dependent population that they can sell cures to, they essentially create their own customer base. And they are able to maintain their market power through their exploitation of patent laws on the drugs that they produce. As long as they face no competition, they will continue to be more concerned with their profits instead of the health of their customers. Not surprisingly, actual cures and medications against Covid-19 were discouraged or even banned by health authorities during the pandemic. Ivermectin and Vitamin D administration to covid patients was widely discouraged despite their actual effectiveness. Meanwhile, the lockdowns that shut down many businesses and cost trillions in lost income and employees failed to contain the spread of the disease. As it turns out, those who gave up their essential liberties for the illusion of security lost both in the long term.
By Edward Kim
“All it would take is to stand firm just once, and I can change my whole destiny in a single hour,” the protagonist in The Gambler says. Or something close to that, depending on the translation. The exact wording almost does not matter. What hits you is the feeling behind it: that small, tight twist in your chest, the quiet ash of recognition before you can even put it into words. These days, especially among young men, gambling is no longer just an activity. It has become something more like background noise in life, always present just beneath the surface. You do not even have to look for it. Scroll through your feed, watch a game, or stand in line with your mind half elsewhere, and there it is again: polished ads promising big winnings, instant cashouts, and Lamborghinis lined up next to roulette wheels that no longer need a real casino to exert their pull. What strikes me most is how little resistance so many of us seem to have developed. We grew up in a culture that does not simply value money. It treats money as the only real measure of anything that matters. Success, worth, even identity gets translated into dollars, credits, and glowing balances on a screen. Capital stopped being one way to keep score. It became the only scoreboard — the grammar through which everything else is understood. The only thing that still reliably answers. This whole thing feels like a worn-out, cracked copy of the American Dream. The outline remains, but the heart has been hollowed out. Happiness, love, peace of mind — they all get reduced to numbers you can chase. It is fabricated value chasing fabricated transcendence. And saying the word transcendence out loud these days can feel almost embarrassing unless you soften it with a joke. I have been noticing a quiet but real sorting happening among younger people. Nothing loud or dramatic. Just a slow drift in different directions. On one side are those who are beginning, sometimes cautiously, to turn toward things that cannot easily be priced: deep family ties, real community, faith, and acts of care that do not come with a receipt. On the other side are those who stay inside the loop — working, scrolling, betting, and chasing the next hit while something important inside quietly grows thinner. The numbers, messy as they often are, still point in the same direction. Research from the National Council on Problem Gambling shows that young men between 18 and 30 experience gambling-related problems at roughly three times the rate of the general population. Some estimates suggest that 8 to 10 percent fall into at-risk or problematic patterns. Globally, the National Institutes of Health and other public health sources estimate that somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of adolescents report having gambled in the past year. Here in the United States, younger generations are encountering sports betting and casino-style games much earlier and with far less friction than previous generations did — a shift reflected in behavioral data compiled by the Pew Research Center. Online sports betting did not create this problem, but it has intensified it dramatically. After the Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. NCAA, the apps made wagering continuous, portable, and almost completely frictionless. A large number of young and middle-aged men now keep active betting accounts, and the numbers continue climbing steadily. In several states, calls to gambling hotlines and requests for treatment have increased noticeably after legalization. Young men in particular tend to move fluidly between sports betting, online casinos, daily fantasy, and back again. Participation trends are tracked by Statista. The mental health consequences often stay hidden at rest, and that makes them even more dangerous. Gambling issues rarely travel alone. They tend to appear alongside depression, anxiety, substance use, and a significantly higher risk of suicide. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Psychiatric Association have documented these connections clearly. Many people struggling with gambling disorder report ongoing depressive symptoms and persistent anxiety. Among adolescents, the effects often spill into school problems and difficult relationships — the kind of quiet distress that is easy to dismiss as something else. So what exactly are we chasing every time we tap “spin” or place a wager? A brief feeling of control? A short escape from whatever feels stuck in the rest of life? Or that very human hope — the one Fyodor Dostoevsky understood so well — that this time things will finally break in our favor? The platforms are engineered with remarkable precision to keep that hope alive through variable rewards, near misses, personalized prompts, and seamless integration with the sports you are already watching. At this point, it has gone far beyond simple entertainment. It has become a behavioral environment designed to keep you inside it. Fyodor Dostoevsky knew this world from painful personal experience. He fought a serious roulette addiction, lost heavily, and wrote The Gambler under intense pressure just to pay off his debts. The novel captures the psychology in a way that still feels disturbingly current: the clever rationalizations, the sudden rush of confidence, and the inevitable crash that follows. The core mechanics have not changed at all. What has changed is the accessibility. Your smartphone now places that same psychological trap in your pocket any time of day or night. The house edge stays exactly the same, but the human costs spread out quietly in the form of debt, distraction, and a persistent low-grade dissatisfaction that is difficult to shake. The result is a subtle cultural divide that many people feel even if they cannot always name it. Some are stepping away, or at least trying to, and searching for meaning in relationships, faith, or ways of living that exist outside the constant need to quantify everything. Others remain caught in the cycle, chasing wins that almost never come while slowly normalizing debt, distraction, and the nagging sense that something essential is missing. Overcoming
By Erol Yilmaz
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