The Finnish president said that the US is now operating largely outside traditional international law.

Am troubled most by the precedent it set.
When governments openly signal that law is flexible at the top, they quietly erode the very idea that law is meant to restrain power rather than excuse it.
International law becomes rhetorical, domestic law becomes selective, and accountability turns into a performance. Ordinary people are still expected to comply, sacrifice, and pay the costs financially, socially, psychologically while decisions that make life less safe and less stable are justified as necessity or security. This isn’t cynicism for its own sake; it’s a rational response to repeated patterns where pre-emptive defense looks indistinguishable from aggression, and where promised benefits to citizens never materialize. If war, austerity, and instability are sold as being in our best interests, it’s reasonable to ask who is actually benefiting, and why the consequences are so consistently borne by those with the least power to influence the decisions in the first place.