Its funny because the problem in world war 2 was that everyone assumed they should learn the lessons of world war 1 and prevent conflict via compromise when actually it was a different situation. Now people are doing the same and wrongly assume that this is like world war 2 and that no compromise should ever be made when actually this is again a different situation to world war 2 .

Some the best international relations specialists, who are far from anti-American, have been making this criticism of the USA for decades.

The problem is that the USA is in a position to create a situation where it would be in the interests of other powers to follow international law/rules. No other country has that ability (or ever has)

This is not a 'tankie' opinion its an accurate criticism of US international political strategy.

Precisely. The USA is a global superpower and is capable of creating a situation where it would be rational for countries like Russia and China to abide by international law. But it needs to follow it's own rules to do that.

It amazes me how hostile people are to this. There seems to be this idea that peace achieved by coordinating rational self interest is somehow illegitimate and that unless Russia and China are to willing to unilaterally compromise themselves in pursuit of peace as a moral goal (which will never happen) we should just accept inevitable war.

No doubt the Chinese etc have a similar mentality but unlike China the USA is actually capable of creating a rational peace due to its massive power advantage.

It's not just hypocritical, it completely undermines the entire concept of international law. It sends a big fat signal to countries like China that the 'rules based order' rhetoric is simply propaganda. If other states don't trust the most powerful country in the world to follow international law in good faith they sure as shit aren't going to follow it either.

What's worse is that US officials genuinely can't understand this and don't grasp that as the dominant superpower the USA's actions define the incentives that every other state responds to.