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Comment by sambe | Hacker News Reader

Contract law and international arbitration do exist though. The ultimate inability to enforce seems like it is a separate issue and not limited to bilateral contracts - nation states are more powerful than international courts in many cases.

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Particularly at that time, there were no international courts that I know of who would have anything to say about a secret pact between two belligerents in the second world war.

The contract was to be enforced by the militaries of these belligerents, and to be interpreted and settled privately.

The International Court of Arbitration already existed, and there were other such courts even earlier.

It may well be the case that this was never intended as a formal contract, but I am responding to the assertion that there was no way for it to be. I stand by the claim: the issue is authority/power, not the necessary legal means.

When you say "nation states" here, do you really mean states which are based on cultural/ethnic values and self-determination or do you just mean "country"?

In the US, a "state" came to mean, well, a US state, and a "nation" (or "nation state"), a country. ('State' in the original sense, a government, is still used in some research contexts.)

While it is true about contract law and international arbitration, it would be inadequate to compare courts of early Soviet Union and today. As stated in the article, these agreements were meant to be privately handled between Adolf and Stalin, meaning there would be no overseeing court body to interpret the legality of their proposal. If anything, this agreement was their blueprint to lay a foundation for their own court system with them being their own judge and executioner.

Yes; that is what I'm saying: power is the real issue, not lack of legal framework/remedy (and in most cases, private contracts are specifically the purpose contract law; "I intended it to be privately handled" would not be a winning argument. "I have the Soviet army over that hill" might be though).

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