This is your premiss, but it is unsubstantiated. I could equally well say that a state has no rights vis a vis other states except those which it negotiates.
And if you said that, you would be correct insofar as the sovereignty of the state and the sovereignty of the other state were upheld.
Image a new volcanic island forms; people rush to it and establish a new 'sovereign' state.That state then starts developing nuclear weapons and vows to conquer the world. Because it has never ceded any rights to other states, would the rest of the world have to leave it alone until it was strong enough to attack them? That would be ridiculous.
Well, this is sort of flawed from the start. Instead of this being a situation where laws or rules were created after the fact of an act and imposed despite other states doing the same during the same time period (like WWII), it is actually a position where you advocate a state be punished for acts yet to be committed. There is a big difference there in that one is dealing with an act already happening and the other is dealing with an act that might or might not happen.
Now, the presence of Nuclear weapons alone is not enough for an outside state to interact with them. The threat to another nation is not either. Iran and North Korea are in a different situation then you describe because they signed treaties giving up their rights to nuclear weapons and reaped benefits those treaties gave. This is why the IAEA is able to inspect their so called energy facilities looking for weapons development and international sanctions have teeth. If you were to look at countries who have never surrendered their abilities to own or hold nuclear weapons like India and Pakistan, Countries who have not only threatened other countries but went to war with them after possessing Nuclear weapons, you will find the situation is quite different. Look at Israel too, they never signed the treating banning nuclear weapons and do not face sanctions for having it, or any of the hostile acts they participate in while trying to secure their country.
So you accept that there are rules in war? The argument would then be about what those rules are.
There can be rules, rules in which all parties subjected to them agreed to be bound by them. And by parties, I do not mean Captain Stupid or lieutenant idiot, I mean the countries in which they serve and follow order of that holds them sovereign. This in effect does mean that Captain Stupid or lieutenant idiot would not be bound to your rules of war if their country never decided to obligate themselves with it.
The right I said they do not posses is a human right. not a rule, but a right to have actually had a law in place and in effect before an act that was otherwise legal is considered illegal and punishable. It does not matter what horrible thing in your mind they did, it is no different then the state all the sudden saying chewing gum is illegal and because you were caught chewing gum on camera 4 years before it became illegal, you are now going to serve 10 years in prison. Absolutely no difference other then how ridiculous one is and how you can use emotions like hate and wanting to seek revenge on the other.
I'm not saying that, but people do - it's the 'eye for an eye' argument, and a tenable position.
The argument doesn't even follow logic, it's not right for X to happen so we will do X+y to whoever does X? Ask yourself, why is it that if someone kills your wife or daughter or someone else close to you and is apprehended by the police, trialed and convicted, that is it a separate crime for you to punish the person yourself by either causing physical harm to them, locking them in your basement, or kill them in an eye for an eye fashion? Lets even skip the trialed and convicted part and say he got off on a technicality or escaped before that happened and you found him.
Nobody ever says that - it's a 'straw man' accusation.
Wrong, everyone knows it's wrong but it's said enough because people do it. But it's no more then a strawman then the eye for an eye argument you claimed was tenable.
So Jew-killers of the Third Reich get a pardon?
After all, it's hardly retroactive legislation to say that killing people is wrong. That's why I don't think local legislation can be sovereign.
Nice appeal to emotion there. Most if not all of the convicted jew killers are dead already, including the one man convicted and sentenced to death in abstention which should be enough alone to ask how legimate the tribunals were. Imagine a popular trend in courts convening and convicting people with a sentence of death without the accused ever setting foot in the court, hearing the charges made against them, or being offered a chance to defend themselves against those charges. That is exactly what happened.
But yes, it would be retroactive legislation to say that killing people is wrong and therefore illegal. States give powers to kill people all the time, especially when participating in war but there are also executions, and it appears that suicide and abortions are morally right depending on who you talk with, as well as killing off the elderly so you do not have to pay for their health care or watch them cling to life or let them suffer (euthanasia).
Even at the time, Eugenics was a popular scientific practice/thought principle. Some of the most popular people in America were staunch supporters of Eugenics and it wasn't until somewhat recently that Killing people for certain reasons, or even forcing abortion and sterilizations for the same was not considered wrong so lets not put something that happened 80 years ago solely into today's so called enlightened perspective.
You've already indicated that you believe there are rules in war, therefore there are war crimes, therefore local legislative procedures can not be sovereign.
Not at all. I have consistently said that in order for rules to exist, the sovereignty of those involved have to be compromised by with parties agreeing to be bound by them or by force. This entirely supports the sovereignty of nations. Unfortunately, it also creates situations where unjust circumstances happen depending on who the victor of the force is.
Yeah this has already been answered:
Well, like I said, the allies were doing the same as the axis except we won and held mock trials then killed them for doing it. It was considered a war crime at the time to target civilian populations but we redefined the two cities as military industrial complexes because they gave support to and housed most of the workers at nearby factories used to maintain the Japanese war machine. But this was nothing of a stretch as allied command in Europe would actually looks for targets close to residential areas in attempts to inflict panic in the public. We firebomed cities, more or less taped explosives and incendiary devices to bats and dropped them from planes over cities knowing they would seek shelter in the flamible rafters of the buildings.
The interesting thing here is the mindset that this type of action was proper warfair at the time justifying it with "there was no surrender" when both the Germans and the Japanese were prosecuted and hung for much the same thing as a war crime. It's called victors justice and it is only there to make one side feel better.
Now when do I get to enact Godwins law?
Ha.. Good joke.. I about spit my Gatorade through my nose when I saw that.