<What do you consider to be sufficient grounds to justify the invasion of one nation by another?>
When I look at the replies you've gotten to this question, and various other justifications of war I've read, it strikes me how flexibly we use words. Certain words are so elastic, that clever people can stretch them to mean anything. Words like "defense", "threat", "attack". Once you start making any such list of "just causes for just wars", you are on a slippery slope. And lots of very smart people make a career out of applying more grease to that Slope. So, any list you make, has to have no vagueness, no wiggle room, no "elastic" phrases, or the exercise is meaningless.
As the world becomes smaller, I become more dependant on the good behavior of distant people. There is an accelerating trend, for everyone on Earth (and especially the wealthy fraction) to be dependant on ideas, capital, raw materials, labor, that comes from every corner of the planet. If I was a typical peasant in AD 1000 in China or Europe, it is unlikely I would consume anything that wasn't produced within a few miles of where I was born, lived, and died. I wouldn't have to make up any rules about how to deal with anything outside that narrow circle; as long as it left me alone, I could ignore it. Today, the parts and raw materials for my Subaru probably come from 30 different nations. The fresh fruit and vegetables I eat come from several continents; so I am affected by what happens in all those countries, and I have to make "rules of engagement". And, the smaller the world gets, the more important it is to have rules, and (more to the point) to have an Enforcer for the rules.
From Game Theory, the best "rules of engagement" for dealing with an Uncontrolled Other Player, is: Strict Reciprocity, with Intermittent Forgiveness. That is, do back to them exactly what they've done to you. This can reinforce and reward good behavior; it can also evolve into endless cycles of revenge, which is where the intermittent forgiveness comes in. Playing the Game this way, creates the most good for the most players. This is true, even if some of the players are monsters, and most of the rest are fools.
So, my simple answer to your question is: invade only if you have been invaded. Attack only if you have been attacked. Strict Reciprocity.
OK, I'll make it a bit less simple: many nations are too small to credibly be able to defend themselves, so mutual defence alliances make sense. A nation such as Holland or Belgium can only protect itself from invasion, by being wedded to a France, or better yet, a U.S.A. An Israel can only survive, if it finds a patron such as the U.S.
The problem with mutual defence alliances is, they tend to be a mask for an Empire. That is, they have one aggressive dominant member, and everyone else does as they are told. One member pays most of the bills, has all the power, assembles and maintains the alliance. The Heart of the Empire, its conquering soul, has achieved success by dominating other nations, and there is an inevitable tendency to generalise that Will To Control, until it comes to a bad end in places like Stalingrad and Dien Bien Phu.
It's hard to come up with any historical examples of mutual defense alliances, that weren't really Empires. Both the Warsaw Pact and NATO are examples of Empires. There was nothing really consensual about the formation or running of either alliance. In both cases, there was one overwhelmingly dominant member, who nobody else could oppose on any crucial issue. As they both recede into history, they are going to look like the identical twins they were. So, when I propose mutual defense alliances, I'm afraid I'm drifting into Utopianism.
The EU (NATO minus the U.S.) looks the closest to the Real Thing. It expands without conquest; it has no Sparta at its center; intra-alliance conflict is settled nonviolently. But even here, we see that France wants to play the role in the EU that the U.S. played in NATO. That's what Chirac's recent scolding of E. Europe was about. Looking at this, it seems hopelessly Utopian, to think that relations between nations will ever be based on anything but Force and the Threat of Force. Which requires no justification for invasions, other than for propaganda purposes.
What President Bush proposed, in his recent Preaching To The
Choir at the American Enterprise Institute, is yet another Empire, and the most ambitious one yet in the world's history. His solution, for how to handle international conflict, is to make the planet into one big NATO. The U.S. will make the rules and enforce them. Unilaterally. The U.S. will decide what is the minimally acceptable standards for behavior, among the world's 200 nations, and then do "regime change" on whoever steps over the line. And, in order to make the "fix" more lasting, we'll do "nation-building" afterward. Just like we did in Japan and Germany.
This answers your question with: "sufficient grounds are whatever the U.S. President says they are, and you just have to trust him."
This might be a workable solution, except that the U.S. is only 5% of the world's population. Yes, that gives us about the same ratio as Spartan warriors had to their helots. But it's just too big a job, and we don't really want to be like that.
Which leaves me with my simple Strict Reciprocity. And Intermittent Forgiveness. |
