In class, we discussed what the professor shouldn't do - hitting students, for example. It's not ethical or legal to instill corporal punishments on students. In the same way, we can see what states shouldn't do. States shouldn't kill millions of their own citizens like Mao Tse-tung or Joseph Stalin, among hundreds of other historical leaders, did. Yet they still do. States shouldn't provoke war with countries that aren't affecting them in any way. However, we see states attack others because they want territory or resources another country has, even though the provoker doesn’t need it (like the US during the Spanish-American war). Others go to war because they disagree with another country’s political/religious/etc beliefs (if you read Bob Woodward’s books about the War in Iraq, it focuses a lot on the spreading of democracy aspect of going to war vs. the weapons of mass destruction). It still happens. I guess we can make what to do and what not to do lists all that we want for states, but it’s not going to change anything.

The professor realizes what he shouldn't do and actually follows it (for the most part, although there are examples in the news of some that go a little off the deep end and break the rules) because he fears the punishment - losing his job, going to court, etc. We have international law, treaty organizations, and etc. to try and prevent leaders from doing what is commonly accepted as what "shouldn't" be done. Maybe the reason that leaders continually make poor choices on the international stage is because they don’t fear the punishments that could come or believe that they can deal with the fallout of the decisions they are making, caring more about acquiring power, for example, as oppose to maintaining a good profile for the rest of the world.

These standards are a combination of the two. There are definitely social expectations about attempting to maintain peace and work out differences in a diplomatic, rather than militaristic, way. I think that power and self-interest actually have the opposite effects of setting limits – they are what motivate countries to break what we would consider politically acceptable to seize what they may perceive as some type of advantage.