How are treaties enforced?
In: 3
Strongly-worded letters (i.e. they aren’t), legal action in international courts (which are often ignored), economic sanctions (which often don’t work unless the non-violator and any allies it has have a massive soft power advantage), or the threat and application of military force, either directly or indirectly.
It depends on the treaty, how seriously it’s taken by the relevant parties, and the balance of power between them, along with whether or not the treaty violator is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. If they are, they are guaranteed to veto any UN action against themselves and are likely to ignore the courts as well.
The US has a particular distaste for the International Criminal Court due to its refusal to allow any form of trial by jury, for instance. This would make accepting its jurisdiction a direct violation of the US Constitution, which guarantees this right unless it is voluntarily waived by the defendant. Without legal jurisdiction, any attempt by the ICC to arrest an alleged American war criminal under any circumstance would be considered kidnapping and an act of war in and of itself, and legislation has been passed to reflect this. Nuclear-armed countries can get away with a hell of a lot more than non-nuclear ones for obvious reasons.
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