It always boils down to, we do what we want (to preserve the peace / our world order), and then if you try to do the same thing we'll come mess you up with our military. The whole point is to create legal and rhetorical justification for what amounts to administrative, State-sanctioned violence to protect the functioning of the empire. The ideas are as old as empire.<p>In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”<p>Aptly the document is written by the Navy.