Despite the importance of the UN in international law, it is in no real way a superordinate authority, and therefore there is no monopoly of legitimate coercion and hence interpretation internationally. The only bodies able to provide the necessary coercion for international law are the subjects of that law themselves, the states. Given the extraordinary disparities of power between those states, and given that the real content of the legal regulation will be the struggle between them, it is no wonder that materially effective international law, as opposed to the high phrases and noble interpretations of the idealists, has favoured the stronger states and their clients.

International law is a relationship and a process: it is not a fixed set of rules but a way of deciding the rules . And the coercion of at least one of the players, or its threat, is necessary as the medium by which particular contents will actualise the broader content of competitive struggle within the legal form.

– China Miéville, Between Equal Rights, p.151.