On May 10, 2005, at 2:26 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
But, in fact, whether or not our forces were stretched thin, other countries won't really be helping much, because they don't have the military capacity to engage in a wholesale intervention.
Or, apparently, the desire, for whatever political reasons might be expedient at any given time in a given situation.
The complete collapse of deployable European/Japanese military capacity since the end of WW2 has been one of the untold, and most interesting, stories of international politics.
That is an interesting thing to highlight. In some ways it can be seen as good -- lots less risk of internecine warfare -- but obviously there are situations where a European military presence might be desirable. Any of this due to the old cold war era? (Japan and Germany are relics of WWII, of course; I'm thinking more of nations that maybe didn't feel a need to have a large military since their countries had US bases in them.)
Anyways, yes, getting them to intervene is good, but their intervention has been illegal and unapproved by the UN. You can be in favor of intervention to stop genocide in Rwanda/Darfur _or_ you can say that intervention on moral principles is contingent on international consensus. You _cannot_ do both. They are fundamentally inconsistent positions. The French government, which has veto power in the UN, _aided_ in the Rwandan genocide and denies that there is a genocide happening in the Sudan. As long as they do that, UN approval is impossible, therefore legal intervention is impossible. You can either stand on international law or on the necessity of humanitarian intervention. You cannot do both.
I think I see where you're leading with this, but there's a big difference between immediate pressing need -- genocide happening now -- and something considerably more vague -- oh, maybe there's nastiness afoot, we don't know, and oh by the way this guy did genocide, um, a decade ago -- which makes it difficult to support a suggested parallel between an illegal action in Rwanda and an illegal action in Iraq. There are too many extenuating circumstances to imply that supporting *one* illegal action suggests that anyone should support *all* of them or be a hypocrite.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
