Thanks for the kind comments Willravel.
I won't pretend to know more about Libya than I actually do--I'll defer to people who've been keeping closer tabs than I have (NYT and The Economist is all I read).
I just thought it was interesting. A student posed the question: "If war represents the breakdown of diplomacy--then isn't war basically the situation where law does not apply any more?"
To which the professor replied (with a cop out): "I think that's illogical...the law governs all war. All war is governed by law and the two are intertwined."
Which made me think about the positivist/natural law distinction.
If you consider every country as a sovereign, and international law as a series of treaties--especially since there is no police force to enforce laws like you would find in a traditional state(maybe except NATO/UN Sec. Council, but they aren't really 'police forces'). Then, a state should be able to declare war on another sovereign without need to comply with the limitations imposed by an international body. Of course, this isn't true if the state is party to a treaty that limits wars to just wars...
It's interesting also, where international bodies impose, through customary law, a 'just war' limitation on states that are not parties to treaties. In short, these international bodies are placing notions of universal human rights or, how war should be conducted, above the sovereignty of a nation.
Given that then, just how strong is sovereignty? Is that a notion that will be further eroded as the world becomes more international? This is especially interesting considering that States are ceding sovereignty in their Tort Claim Statutes..(i.e. Federal Tort Claims Act).
/rant.
I hope this topic takes off, as I find this particularly interesting.