Breaking The Law Essay

In the United States, states and people follow the laws because the government has a way to enforce cooperation, by threatening punishment on those who break the law. The enforcement of laws is how most institutions promote cooperation. At the international level, however, there is no central authority that has the ability to make and enforce laws, in other words it is an anarchy. For example, countries like Russia or the UK do not have to do what the United Nations tells them to, since they cannot enforce anything. Because of the lack of enforcement, cooperation has to be self-enforcing, meaning the states have to punish the defectors and take responsibility when they don’t cooperate.
Without a way to enforce the rules then every state would have an incentive to break the rules. This creates a prisoner’s dilemma where each actor is better off to defect. For example, after the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States set up an agreement to limit the amount weapons each could have. However, in the international system the agreement isn’t enforceable so they would both collect weapons they are not allowed to have even though they would both be better off if each actor cooperates and doesn’t collect anymore weapons. On the other hand, if

two people set up an agreement in the United States they would both have an incentive to cooperate and not break the rules, because the laws are enforceable by the executive branch.
Although most states at an international level have an incentive to break the rules of the agreement, this goes away when the actors have repeated interactions. If the actors do not know how many times they will work together then neither will want to upset the other by defecting. If they were to defect, then the next time they work together the other actor may also defect in order to get retribution. This iterated game is one way that states in an anarchy can still cooperate. Another way is for states to set-up agreements with rules, institutions to verify compliance, and a way to enforce cooperation.
The states who are creating an agreement together need to set clear standards of behavior. This can be done by writing down their set of rules with specific details and instructions on what a state can and cannot do. NAFTA is twenty-two chapters long and the agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was hundreds of pages long to lay out all the specific details. These details allow other states to know which members of the groups are breaking the agreement. In order to prove their compliance countries will sometimes submit reports detailing their cooperation with the agreement or there would be an agency created in order to inspect the participating states. When states have differences on how to interpret the agreement they may have national courts resolve the dispute, like an impartial state not involved in the agreement. Although, most agreements do not have procedure set up for disputes.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty is between 189 states and was agreed between all the states to allow only five states to possess nuclear weapons and all the others are prohibited from trying to build or have nuclear weapons.

This treaty had specific standards of behaviors that the nuclear-weapons states do not give their weapons to non-nuclear states and the latter promise to not try to develop nuclear material. They use an IGO, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to monitor compliance by having inspectors go to each state to check up on them and make sure their abiding by the rules. Then if any rules were broken the UN Security Council would enforce cooperation by imposing sanctions on a state that broke the

rules.
All the states came together because of the fear of a nuclear war and worked together to create a treaty that would protect everyone involved. The treaty did slow down the spread of nuclear weapons because the signatories has gone from 61, in 1970, to 189. Some countries that were building nuclear weapons gave them up and others had the technology to build nuclear weapons but didn’t and signed the treaty instead. They created an effective way to monitor compliance through the IAEA. It has proven effective in cases against North Korea and Iran, in which the inspectors found proof that both countries were working on nuclear weapons. In this case the IAEA has to submit the charges to the UN Security Council. The Security Council is their way of enforcing the treaty, however it is not an impartial body. The Security Council is led by the P5+1, which are China, Russia, France, United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. Any of the states can veto any action they do not agree with. This has happened with both North Korea and Iran, in which the council has tried to implement sanctions but Russia and China has vetoed this action. Another reason that anarchy makes it harder to create this treaty is because not every state has to sign. There are some states, like India and Pakistan, that have created nuclear weapons because they never signed the treaty and there is no way to force these states to sign or prevent states from leaving the treaty. Other states have also had nuclear programs after signing the treaty and were able to escape detection. There also some states who don’t care about economic sanctions and will continue building or acquiring nuclear weapons, like North Korea.
International institutions have a harder time enforcing cooperation because it is an anarchy. Having repeated interactions with these states allows for cooperation between states that do care about the repercussions. Also, the states creating their own agreements with ways of enforcing and resolving problems also solves some of the problems with anarchy.