----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:21 AM Subject: FW: What America Does with its Hegemony
> From: Dan Minette [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I don't recall all the details of Rwanda or Bosnia, so I take your points as given. > I would argue that there was sufficient warlike activity going in both places for > the reasonable person to classify them as wars, but you raise a good point. > When is it a war and when is it a country perusing its own legitimate internal > security program. I would think we all agree that in both these cases what was going > on was more then just internal security. But there will be cases where it is less clear. That's true. I'll ask my Zambian daughter about some of the details when she comes home from her trip to South America. But, I was not thinking about the demarkation line as war/legitimate internal security. I'm thinking about it as war/one group in control. The slaughter of the Jews in Germany (which is just part of the Holocaust of course) wasn't a war because the Jewish people didn't have an effective armed resistance. Since Poland offered some initial resistance, then the slaughter of Jews in Poland might be called part of war. I think we agree that both would be worth intervening over, and neither is a legitimate security interest. > >> There should be, in my opinion (and I think Doug discusses this above) > >> some sort of body to make these decisions. The UN is flawed, in many > >>ways, but it does have the only claim to being a world government. > > >But, the reality of world politics is that this will only happen when other > >sovereign states are threatened. The first Gulf War is a great example of > >how this works. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq portented the possibility > >of Iraq taking over most of the oil production in the Middle East. If the > >US didn't stop it, there would be chance that Saudi Arabia and the UAE > >could stand for more than a few days. So, the US got the world's blessing > >to reverse the invasion, but only to reverse the invasion. They had to > >promise to leave Hussein in power in order to obtain the world's blessing. > >Bush Sr. took the gamble that Hussein would fall after a big defeat. It > >didn't happen. > > I didn't know that. I have always wondered why they did not take him out. > It highlights the current problems with the UN I guess. Who made Bush > promise that? It was the only way to get the rest of the world to cooperate. I > > >I understand how that is nice in theory, but it doesn't really happen. The > >UN just gave its tacit approval to the genocide that is developing in > >Sudan. The UN insisted that its forces should not stop genocide in Bosnia. > >The UN refused to consider > > Yes, and there is the rub. I am thinking of a meaningful UN, cos yes, > as it stands, there is too much politics. I think that this may be an indication of the foundation of our differences. While I can admire idealism; I don't think an idealistic goal without a practial plan to get there is a real option. One rule of thumb in engineering is that the best is often the enemy of the good. > >Let me understand your point clearly then. Take Gautam's example of the > >advisability of the British and French stopping the remiliterization of the > >Rhine. By your standards, that would have been wrong. > > Again, my lack of history is showing here. But I thought that happened after > war had been declared over Poland? They didn't start a war over the Rhine did > they? Or am I barking up another tree? At http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005439 <quote> In the 1925 Treaty of Locarno, Germany had recognized both the inviolability of its borders with France and Belgium and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. On March 7, 1936, however, Hitler repudiated this agreement and ordered the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) into the demilitarized Rhineland. Hitler's action brought condemnation from Britain and France, but neither nation intervened <end quote> Many people think that this was a place were WWII could have been stopped, with a relatively small price to be paid. Indeed, since Hitler had ordered his troops to retreat if this move was opposed, the lives lost would have been mostly due to accidents. Looking back at WWI, one of the lessons learned was that the nations were too quick to go to war over treaties. Indeed, the lessons could be said to be overlearned, with France and Germany overcompensating for previous errors and not taking any prudent measures to stop Hitler...until it was too late. It appears to me that you think it was immoral to stop WWII at this point. > > Well, see, I don't call intervening to prevent genocide as in Rwanda is > starting a war of aggression. And I don't want the US to be the one to have > to fix it. >I want the world community to agree genocide is happening, do all > it can diplomatically to prevent it, and then, if needed, assemble a > multi-national force, empowered by a UN mandate, to go in, stop it, and get out. I also want that. But what do we do when that is impossible, as it often has been? I think that this is another example of our fundamental disagreement. I'm an experimentalist at heart. I tend to gather data to try to understand likely outcomes. My observation of the UN indicates to me that human rights are really a low priority. So, its reasonable to conclude that, if we wait for a UN mandate to stop genocide, that means that we will, more often then not, have no mandate to stop it until its completed. > Your example of the Rhine is an interesting one. Of itself it had nothing to do > with genocide did it? The Nazi's may have been committing genocide but that had > little to do with the Rhine did it? No. They just, like Hussein, violated a treaty. > No, I don't substantively disagree with your reading of recent history. > I was arguing more from the point of view of what I would like the world to be, > not how it currently is. And yes, there does have to be some acceptance of > genocide, and some escalation of danger. It has to reach some point where the > world community says enough. If the world community finds that the slaughter of millions is acceptable, then it is immoral for the US to intervene? This is not some random hypothetical. Right now, it appears that there is a chance that there is a new Rwanda starting in Sudan. The UN's reaction was to give them a green light. >We are on tricky ground here. When is it a harsh prison system and legitimate internal security and when is >it genocide? Are you arguing that Hussein's actions were legitamate? > Some could argue that the reduced life expectancy of Australian Aboriginals > is a form of genocide. > Its why we need some body to decide these things, > a world body, not individual nations that may have too much self-interest to be > objective. OK, I want to live in LA LA Land, but its our world, and we can > make it how we like. This is an extremely clear example of our disagreement. I don't think that we have infinite choices. I don't think, for example, that we can have pollution free energy by developing technology that just takes heat energy out of the oceans and turns it into mechanical energy. That would be wonderful, but its not possible. I don't think ruthless dictatorships can be stopped without the legitimate threat of force. I think the tragedy of the commons is real. Second, it is also clear that, with very few exceptions like small scale interventions here and there, the heavy lifting will have to be done by the US. So, the US is expected to spend its treasury, watch its sons and daughters die, but only act when the rest of the world tells it to. That is such a dysfuctional arrangement, nothing good can come of it. > I stand by my original statement. Nations should not start wars of aggression. I think you and I have a fundamentally differnent idea of wars of agression. > I would not classify Rwanda or Bosnia to be wars of aggression. Iraq is a > different kettle of fish. Was genocide going on in Iraq? It wasn't pretty > but was it genocide or civil war and total lack of civil order like Rwanda > or Bosnia? I would say no. None of this is to condone what was going on Iraq, > but it was a stable, if brutal regime. Even the Kurdish situation had stabilised > to a degree. And it is a matter of degree's, as always. There are plenty of places > with just as much horror and brutality as Iraq. I'm curious to see where the situation is really similar. North Korea comes to mind, but the price of intervention there is hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. In addition, the slaughter in Iraq had been decreased as the result of the continued armed intervention of the US and Britian. Where else was the continued presence of foreign armed forces needed to stop the wholesale slaughter of civilians? > I don't object to using force to change brutal regimes. I object to a country > making unilateral decisions to do so, when its own self-interests are so tied up > in the outcome. If nothing else it complicates the worlds acceptance of its > intentions, which can be very damaging. I think it takes a world body, given > the powers to do so, to make decisions such as this. This is a logically self-consistant position, but I will remind you of the repercussions. The US had at least some basis for arguing that its actions in Iraq were allowed/covered by UN Security Council resolutions. Resonable people could differ over this, but there was at least some basis for this. There was no similar justification of the actions by NATO is the Balkins. The UN specifically insisted that the genocide be allowed to continue. The UN has given a green light to the human rights violation in Sudan. If I read you correctly, it is better to have hundreds of thousands or millions die in Sudan than to go against the wishes of the UN? Now, I admit that the US is too overtaxed to do much, and no one else has the capacity to do much, but I think it is still a valid moral question. >One of the things that > disappoints me so much about Iraq, vs say Afghanistan, is that the US seemed > to go out of its way to diminish the legitimacy of the only mechanism we have for > a concerted world approach to situations such as this. Instead of using the huge > moral advantage that Terror had given them, they snubbed their nose at the UN cos > it didn't roll over quickly enough to fit GWB's re-election plans (OK, call me a cynic > but one can see it this way). >The US under Clinton (and most Presidents since WW2) > have worked to build global institutions to handle these things. The current > US administration seems bent on destroying them, be it the UN, the World Court, > or the Kyoto Protocol. I dont agree with all theses bodies do, far from it, but > one can either work within them to change them, or snub and ignore them. I certainly don't agree with many of Bush's actions. I think that he could have accomplished more by being willing to engage in the necessary international politics. For example, he could say (like Clinton) that Kyoto was a wonderful idea, knowing full well it would never be implemented. That type of hypocracy is often called diplomacy. :-) Indeed, he could have been a lot more diplomatic. > I am sorry, but the US, big, strong and muscular as it is, is not actually > capable of running the world. It needs a global mandate to use its force. So, you think it was wrong to stop the genocide in the Balkins? That has to be the conclusion. If it agreed to that, then all that would be needed would be to convice one veto power on the Security Council that it was in their enlightened best interest. What would happen is that nothing would be done until it was in the obvious self interest of the governments of the five countries who hold veto power at the UN to do something. Then, the US would be allowed to do what is needed; with little real help from anyone. It seems to me that, if it were critical for other countries to not be totally dependant on the government of the United States, that they obtain some ability to intervene apart from the United States. Indeed, the United States encouraged its allies to do this. Instead, they decided it was easier to let the US do it. Which it, obviously was. But, it is also, tacitly, handing over the responsiblity for the use of military power to the US. > And it should be using its power to improve and legitimize international bodies > not trash them cos its all too hard. But, part of that improvement must be to set boundaries. I've thought for a long time that the key test for this, in our time, was the Balkans. I cannot see a moral, reasonable arguement against intervention. After years, there was no evidence at all that the UN would be willing to do anything. Simply going along with the UN would indicate that all it took to stop the US from intervening was convince France, China, or Russia that the intervention by the US was not in their best interests. So, the United States would need to agree to ignore its vital interest if China decided that it was in China's interest to do so. >OK, the realities of politics means that > for a while, we are going to put up with a lot of nasty stuff, but what else is new? I am troubled by how easily you dismiss the suffering and death of millions. Further, I cannot see how doing this will make the world a better place. With the nature of asymmetric warfare, it would probably make the world a much more dangerous place. The tragedy of the commons would ensure that things would only be handled when they got very bad. > There is a way forward, long, slow, complex it may be, but the end justifies > the means in my eyes. Imagine a world where we are all one nation? That arguement has justified the killing of around a hundred million people in the last century. I really don't think its a good one. Its not good for two reasons. If one says some glorious end justifies any means, there are no real constraints on means. The second is that there is no evidence that this will actually help us get to a peaceful prosperous rule, any more than Marx's vision panned out. > I just think the precedent set in Iraq was a bad one. Its ok to invade a place > that appears to have weapons of mass destruction, just cos they might use them? > I still dont get the moral basis of the invasion. What was it? > Not what is it now, not what spin is the flavour this month, but what was it? The real basis? Twofold. 1) In order to stop the alligators from biting, one needs to drain the swamp. 2) We are not seeking the best interest of the rest of the world at the expense of the people of Iraq because they will benefit in the first year after the war. From almost any accounting, fewer died in 2003, than in any other year. 3) The status quo of sanctions and low scale warfare didn't work and was starting to break down. > America has more weapons of mass destruction than any other country on earth. > And more ways to deliver them, to threaten any nation on earth, in minutes. > Does that make it OK for folks to invade America? The differences in what those countries would do with the weapons. The US used them to keep Europe from being overrun, stating that it was willing to risk New York to save Paris. I'll admit that there are days that I wonder if this were wise :-), but it was moral. > If I had to choose a nation to be the worlds policeman it would be America. > Hands down. I trust America and Americans. > But with this power goes all the more responsibility. I feel that Iraq > was a mistake because it was a betrayal of a proud history of caution > and balance by America. The US, who don't start wars, but come in to help > finish them when it is clear, absolutely clear, that there is an evil enemy > that needs to be defeated, started, of entirely their own volition, a war. > For their own ends. A war of aggression. They were not threatened in any > meaningful sense by Iraq. That I disagree with. The US was not immediately threatened, but it was threatened. I was opposed to the war because I thought that this adminstration was not ready to handle the difficult job in post war Iraq. Unfortunately, I think I have been justified in my thinking. I thought that threatening war, and thus getting France and Russia to agree to smart sanctions, would be the best policy. We could afford to delay any invasion of Iraq until after we severly downgraded AQ and showed the Arab world how we improved Afganistan. The US is threatened right now by North Korea. The chances of a nuclear attack on the US are growing. I'm upset with Bush because I think he blundered strategically in Iraq, not because I'm opposed to the concept of draining the swamp. > > >> Ohh, I got bitten by an insect ! Hey look there is a bee's nest, lets go > >>and poke a stick in it and swirl it about a bit, that will stop it happening > >>again.Sure.. great idea guys. > >Well, I've been bitten by hornets and then removed the hornets nest from my > >porch. They went away. It all depends on how you do it. :-) > > Yes, it does depend how you do it. Sadly Iraq is not going to just go away. > Short of Mike's nuke option. I would love a democratic, secular Middle East > I just find it odd that America, champion of democracy, could think that > this was the best way to achieve it. Why odd? It has worked before. One can argue technique, but it shouldn't be surprising that people might think that a previously sucessful technique should work again. I thought it was possible, but extremely difficult. I thought that, in order to suceed, we needed many more people who knew the culture and language. So, I didn't want to remove Hussein now, even though I knew I was committing at least 10s of thousands to death every year. Dan M. Dan M.
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