The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big inertia,
it takes them a long time to see that the World has changed and that
they need to focus on other issues than they currently are engaged with.
In some cases that can lead to escalation of a pointless conflict that
has its roots in past issues that are no longer relevant, as is the case
with the war on drugs. And that then can cause a lot of harm.
But I think the general issue is this huge inertia. So, when Gorbachov
was in power and he was ready to deal seriously with the West, it took
us a very long time to engage with him. A point on which we never
engaged with the Soviets in a constructive way was Afghanistan.
The Soviets were willing to withdraw from Afghanistan, even before
Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like leaving behind a
stable government. We never wanted to engage with the Soviets on that,
because of pur mondset that the root of all evil was communism, and the
Soviets were just talking bullshit about our allies there, the
Jihadists.
Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just ridiculous. We
knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of Afghanistan, their
communist puppet government dismantled, the Afghan population would be
able to form a democratic state. We were so sure about this that we
never critically analyzed all the hidden assumptions made here.
It later turned out that we were wrong and that the Soviets were right,
not in their general approach but about seeing the threat of Jihadism
that we helped to fuel. Also they were right about the dangers of having
failed states. Our ideology at the time was that a failed state would
quickly get itself organized into a flourishing democracy if you could
only keep the evil communists out.
Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position was
weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his nationalist opposition who
were critical of the West politically stronger. When Yeltsin took over
he had to deal with an economically weak Russia while in the background
there were forces lurking who were extremely critical of the West. In
any country you'll have the opposition that tends to question the
government's policy especially if things are not going well economically
and especially when there has been a recent radical change. In the years
after the collapse of communism that move was democratization,
liberalization of the economy etc. etc.
It's easy for us to say that the Russians who were critical at the time
were stupid, just look at the opposition in the US against a universal
health care system. Now, if we could turn back the clock and had dealt
with Afghanistan differently, then the outcome of that might not just
have prevented the rise of international Jihadism, you would also have
had the pro-Western reformists in Russia to be in a politically far
stronger position. Likely you would not have had Putin in power today,
or Putin may not have become that anti-Western (he wasn't when came into
power).
Another thing is that we would have improved the UN Security Council
System to deal with complex problems. As it currently functions, the
UNSC is a panel of prosecutors who are the World's policemen,
prosecutor, jury and judge at the same time without a requirement for
members to recuse themselves when they are involved.
The system works fine in emergency situations, like when Iraq invaded
Kuwait, just like a police can intervene effectively when there is a
bank robbery going on. But when the emergency situation is dealt with,
we all know that you need a proper justice system to deal with the
problem on the longer term. We know that what cannot work is a system
where the local police can have a caucus with other police officers
from neighboring areas to deal with that. Even if you assume that police
officers can be 100% objective, you would still not have much faith in a
system where the police officers could be the prosecutors juries,
judges, appeals judges and Supreme Court judges all at the same time.
This i.m.o. is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Iraq under Saddam
Hussein (supported by both superpowers in the 1980s) could never prove
that it had no WMD within the current system once some prosecutors
decided to throw the book at him.
Had instead the Western powers thought critically about how to improve
the international institutions instead of seeing the collapse of the
Soviet Union as a big gain in their power within the current system, the
UNSC could have been reformed. You can think of a system where the UNSC
continues to exist in its present form but that it creates a new
institution where judges rule on contentious fundings of facts. The UNSC
could then have referred difficult dossiers like the Iraq WMD case,
Iran's nuclear program etc. to such an institution where decisions are
made on the basis of real evidence instead of political rhetoric.
So, I put most of the blame of the current situation on the West's
failures to just think about the long term during the late stages of the
Cold War.
Saibal
On 30-08-2015 22:34, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/30/2015 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
- the governments know that prohibition is the main fuel of
criminality and terrorism.
So Muslims flew planes into buildings government (which one?)
prohibited something (what?).
Brent
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