"...powerful states also ignore the rules when they get in the way"

This is true some of the time but I doubt all of the time. If it is not true in every case then there is more to the story then "power" or "interests".

This discussion is situated in international affairs but it seems to me the same issues apply to domestic law and this is a more familiar context. Our government has been breaching the laws and the constitution quite a bit lately and I think it is the sign of a sick society. I have not seen a thorough explanation of what outcomes can be expected from this state of affairs, however.

EDQ makes a good point. To draw it out a bit, I think there's a limit to the number of times a dominant state can break the rules. The US has crossed that threshold -- which is party why Bush failed so miserably to bribe, bully, and/or blackmail other states into joining his "coalition of the willing." And now, having brought the Western banking system to its knees, and prolonging the Great Recession through its congressional stupidities, there is no way the US will get away with rule breaking much longer.

Second, it is quite clear that Washington's unconditional support for Israel -- the biggest rule-breaker on the planet -- is itself the biggest rule that the US is currently breaking. That both Palestine and Turkey have worked up the courage to send the US-Israel codependency the message that they have had it up to here with this outrageous behaviour says much about how really far beyond the threshold the US has gone.

What we need is an IR theory with the explanatory and predictive power to deal with that can of worms.

“defining the system as "rule-based" doesn't make much sense if the leading state(s) can ignore the rules whenever they want to.”

I am not at all sure that a system that is not rule based can really be called a ‘system’ at all. Having rules and following them are quite separate things. Rules are more maps than moral imperatives: ‘for the guidance of wise men and the observance of fools, and 'there to be broken', as the sayings go. Laws and regulations, however, are quite another matter and defying those demeans moral integrity and causes local, even widespread, harm.

On the 22 July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, an Islamophobic right wing Norwegian, set off a bomb outside the prime minister's office in Oslo. He then entered a summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utoya where the youth wing of Norway's ruling Labor party had been holidaying and shot dead 69 people.

Breivik is now in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Breivik had cobbled together a "manifesto" that laid bare his reasons for the attack and the motivations. Under interrogation, he told police he had no regrets about the massacre because he had to save Europe from being taken over by Muslims and from multiculturalism.

A closer look at the 1,500-page "manifesto", A European Declaration of Independence, which Brievik emailed to his online community hours before the crime, was replete with material and quotations from a small but tightly knit transatlantic network of anti Muslim demagogues and bloggers, of how Europe was becoming "Eurabia", a myth propagated by Bat Ye'or. With some exceptions, the names of his favorite inspirations read like a Who's Who of the Islamophobia industry. This underworld of the Islamophobic blogosphere which includes writers, self styled experts on Islam, dubious "historians" and from which Anders Brievik took his inspiration, has come into the spotlight since the horrific massacre.

European Far Right
Brievik cited heavily from the now notorious anti Muslim blog “Gates of Vienna” (GoV), his fellow Norwegian white supremacist, Pedar Jensen, wrote for under the anonymous alias of Fjordman until he was interviewed by Norwegian police. Fjordman has since gone into hiding.

Gisele Littman, better known as Bat Ye'or is a Cairo born Jewess, who fled in the 1950's leaving behind everything she landed in England. She now lives in Switzerland. She is the author of "Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis” and other books. She claims to be a historian on "dhimmitude". Her works are alarmist in nature, she claims European elites made secret deals with Arab rulers to bring in immigrants to Europe in exchange for oil. She gives dire warnings of impending “Dhimmitude” where Christian and Jewish Europeans would be servile dhimmis to their Islamic Arab overlords. Her theories have generally been dismissed by historians, but since 9/11 some like Bernard Lewis cited her work on Assyrian Christians. Islamophobes propagate her work and Brievik bought into her conspiracies.

On July 25th the Associated Press reported that Bat Ye'or " has expressed regret that her writing might have helped to inspire his rampage." It is perhaps not surprising that Bat Ye'or's revisionist history of Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule, found an eager audience amongst Islamophobes. What is surprising is that a respected historian like Sir Martin Gilbert, who has received some flak from his peer group, would give her work credence in his book "The House of Ishmael". Sir Martin Gilbert is a Zionist Jew, as is the American historian Bernard Lewis who has also cited her.

The "Eurabia" conspiracy was eagerly lapped up by the European far right. For over a decade the far right in Europe has been critical of the immigration policies of their countries. The Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the PVV in Holland (Geert Wilders party) the Front National in France and the FPO in Austria, and The English Defense League which has a Jewish Division.

Geert Wilders, whom Brievik admires, has called for the Quran to be banned. He was the subject of a BBC documentary "Europe's Most Dangerous Man" and claims to have been to Israel over 40 times. His legal fees during his prosecution in the Dutch courts for incitement were met by Daniel Pipes' "Middle East Forum".

The British journalist Melanie Philips, author of "Londonistan", and columnist for the Daily Mail and The Jewish Chronicle was quoted in the "manifesto". Philips is known for her right wing views, she was in favor of the Iraq war, in contrast to the majority of the British public. Brievik cited her from an article she wrote describing the former Labour government as being guilty of "unalloyed treachery" for allowing mass immigration to "destroy what it means to be culturally British and to put another 'multicultural' identity in its place".

Seeking allies to further their aims and for funding the European right wing populists, and white supremacists have forged alliances with far right Zionist extremists. The traditional hatred reserved for Jews by these same far right extremists, has now been exchanged for a new threat, that of Muslims. To this end, there have been some bizarre alliances, amongst ultra nationalist Europeans and the far right Islamophobic Zionists in Israel and the USA.

The Islamophobia industry has a network of funders, activists, and bloggers sympathetic to the far right wing Zionist aim of expanding settlements and ridding the land of Palestinians. For this they need to keep up a steady stream of propaganda, of the type that brought about the Iraq war.

American Islamophobes
Islamophobia became an industry after 9/11 in the USA.
The pseudo-academic Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was referenced 55 times in Breivik's manifesto. Robert Spencer a Catholic writer who is the director of Jihad Watch which is owned by David Horowitz and his “Freedom Center", publishes Front Page mag, whose columnists regularly churn out anti Muslim and anti Palestinian propaganda.

Daniel Pipes, a neo con Muslim basher who was active long before 9.11 was mentioned over 18 times. The extremist blogger Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs is cited too. She operates an Islamophobic organization in partnership with Spencer, Stop Islamization of America, which has a European sister organization named Stop Islamization of Europe. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been on talk shows and on Fox TV, giving them a degree of exposure, visibility and an audience. Geller was the ringleader in the controversy over the Cordoba House's "Ground Zero Mosque" in 2010. Conservative media favorites like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mark Steyn are quoted by Brievik as is the historian Bernard Lewis. Patrick Buchanan opined that “Breivik may be right" about the supposed clash of civilizations between Western Christianity and Eastern Islam.

The Funding
Aubrey Chernick is a publicity shy software tycoon with a personal fortune of $780 million. He and his wife Joyce Chernick are amongst the biggest donors to David Horowitz's Freedom Centre which owns Jihad Watch. Another recipient of their funds is Aish HaTorah, an organization which claims to educate Jews about Judaism. With an office in New York this group has branches in and is active in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Aish HaTorah shares an office address with the mysterious Clarion Fund which produced "Obsession", a DVD warning of the dangers of Jihad. The Clarion Fund was responsible for distributing over 25 million DVD's in the US 2008 election race. "Obsession" had a roster of Islamophobic speakers warning of the dangers of Islam. Clearly it was a propaganda piece designed to scare voters into choosing a candidate that would continue the bloodshed and war in the Middle East that had been the trademark of the Bush presidency since 9/11.

America's free speech laws zealously guarded in the first amendment rights and the nature of the internet provide a fertile breeding ground for extremist bloggers to propagate their hate free from any kind of scrutiny and with relative anonymity. The Arab spring proved how influential online social networking media can be in influencing opinion.

Zionism, Palestinians and the Middle East
What does all this have to do with the Middle East? American foreign policy, lobby groups, media propaganda and the demonization of Islam, ultimately influences the politics and economies of not only Palestine, but the wider Arab and Muslim world as tools to be manipulated for an agenda. A selection of some of the more prominent personalities engaged in the Islamophobia industry gives us an insight into how the dots are connected:

"Let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists," Breivik wrote in his manifesto.

Commending Israel for robbing most of its Muslim citizens of civil rights, as opposed to the freedom Muslims enjoyed in Europe Brievik spoke highly of Netanyahu for including the Yisrael Beiteinu and the Shas parties in his ruling coalition. A number of Israeli professors were quoted in his "manifesto", including Itamar Rabinovich and Eyal Zisser.

Ten years earlier, Netanyahu could barely conceal his glee when asked for his reaction to the 9/11 attacks. “It's very good”, he gushed, then realizing how it would sound, quickly added, “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy”. This was a heaven sent opportunity to the Zionist lobby to propagate the myth of Israel and the United States as having the same enemy. In the heightened climate of fear, this propaganda of Islam and Arabs being the enemy found a receptive audience particularly amongst the millions of Christian Zionists. Thus was born a whole new Islamophobia industry, complete with "ex Muslims" like Walid Shoebat, whose fake narrative has now been exposed as a sham.

David Yerushalmi, a Brooklyn lawyer who settled in Jerusalem, and is affiliated with Lubavitch Hasidic Judaism, has been the architect behind the anti-Sharia bills in the USA. He is Pamela Geller's and Robert Spencer's legal representative.

Aish HaTorah, the Jewish educational organization which receives funds from Aubrey Chernick is active in the settlements of the West Bank, in Palestine. Most of the funds for the expansion of settlements come from the USA, from Jewish and Christian Zionist charities.

All of the writers and bloggers mentioned above have expressed their revulsion and distanced themselves from the carnage in Norway. Since coming under the spotlight, their reactions have ranged from expressing regret (Bat Ye'or) being on the defensive (Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders).

Gates of Vienna meanwhile is inferring that Anders Brievik may be working for covert forces, and Frank Gaffney and Jihad Watch have put forth bizarre conspiracy theories of the Norway massacre having being a false flag operation to silence the "counter jihadists". Debbie Schlussul, who like Pamela Geller is notorious for her pro Israel and anti Muslim rants, has condemned the attack but crowed that it was "karma" for Norway, as it is an anti Israel country.

Up until the Norway massacre, the underground world of Islamophobic bloggers did not merit the attention of the law enforcement agencies. After Utoya, Europol announced a new EUR50 million fund to monitor far right extremism. Previously right wing extremism had been deemed as less worthy of attention and not as serious a threat as that posed by Al Qaeda and Islamists.

This is to stop offering FP readers in effect, his leavings. Today's is one more of many recent blogs that start out by boasting that he participated in some damn conference, and he said this, that and the other. None of this is any help to FP's readers but evidently it makes the perfesser look good (and if FP pays by the word, makes Mr Walt some money). He offers value in reporting what other contributors to the conference had to say.

He could do that without the lengthy prolog about his own participation, and his ritual "I won't try to summarize the discussion (in which many good points were made" [14 words, including ritual obeisance to those who were there on the day without the benefit of his Harvard perfessership]).

I wish he would.

This is from my own opinion only, we cannot live with war all the times, it is better to have reform before entering to any bloody war..

all you bet

Whenever anything has continued for a long time, people look for reasons. E.g., in the 1st decade of the 20th c. there were a number of influential books that are still widely known, if not read, explicating the idea that trade was creating an era of perpetual peace. You didn't see very many such books published in 1919. What was happening with writers like Norman Angell was that something (peace) had continued for a long time, and Angell found something (trade) that correlated with it, and he imagined that correlation was causation. He made no allowance for luck, that the two things might simply have coincided. He was practicing a version of data snooping, where precise rules that seem to be predictive are extracted from a quantity of past data, but where in fact there is no such causal relationship. Ikenberry has imagined that because what appears to be a "rules-based system" has coincided with a period of peace, the system must have caused the peace. Look at what Sin Nombre wrote above: "Still, after all, what was arguably the biggest and brightest rule said to be learned in the wake of WWII? No violence-based territorial aggrandizement." It's true that no major violence-based territorial aggrandizement has taken place since WW2 (unless you count the unification of Vietnam) but that is a very different thing from saying a rule *prevented* violence-based territorial aggrandizement. I'm saying that the period 1945-2011 just happened to be a period when no major wars occurred, and that, coincidentally, there were also some rules, but the idea that the rules were binding is an artifact of perception, a kind of cognitive illusion. As we know, there were no wars between the great powers in Europe from 1871 to 1914, and had Ikenberry and Sin Nombre been alive back there I'm sure they could have pointed to some factor that was "causing" that period of peace, just as Norman Angell did, but they make no allowance for chance. In 2011, looking back on decades of peace between the great powers, it's an argument that can appear convincing, but it won't appear so convincing after the Great War of 2035.

You were simply having an argument of semantics. It certainly undermines his point that the US violates his rules. He admits as much, so, really you were having a semantic argument as to what "rule based" means. Even in a fully libertarian world, there are rules, lines you don't cross and all that. Social scientist love to define observations which are neither causal nor predictable and call it science.