International law and the UN

The situation changed only a little with the emergence of international law and the establishment of the UN. International law was first introduced in Europe some 400 years ago to regulate matters of war and management of the seas—these being matters not regulated internally by states. This was the first time that (more than a few neighbouring) states realised that they could work together. International law resulted in the world we live in today, in the Westphalian nation state (the Westphalian peace was entered into in 1648, shortly after the initial cooperation mentioned above). The Peace of Westphalia warranted that states existed (as named in its text and acknowledged by their peer states), and that their internal matters were managed by themselves alone. Of course, the Peace of Westphalia only included some of the states in Europe. It took hundreds of years for its system to expand to cover all of the planet, to create the system in which we live today in the form of the UN. Effectively, however, the same system is more or less still in effect today, based on the same basic principles: states enter an international (cross-state) treaty, recognising each other and warranting certain rights among them (with the right of non-interference still much contested).

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