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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (36649)	8/9/2002 10:10:24 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

<<...The situation now is that even a jury of our best friends tells us not to attack...>> I totally agree with you....Unfortunately, common sense is NOT always common practice...=)

To: Bilow who wrote (36649)	8/9/2002 10:58:02 AM
From: BlackDog777	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

The world is again becoming a very dangerous place and how history has once again recycled itself. Winston Churchill, they only politician who wanted to squash the illegal rearmament & territorial claims of Germany from '32 to 39 because of the innate evil of that dictatorship, was constantly ostracized by his pacifist colleagues as a warmongering buffoon. He stood alone amongst Britain, France, & the US in this opinion during the time where Germany could have been "nipped at the bud" with relative ease. We all know the cost of that idleness. The Western democracies are once again soft and comfortable...which breeds pacifism and the golden opportunity for rogue leaders, despots, dictators, & charismatics to stake their claim in the world scene with little regard to overall civilization. December 16, 1939 Winston S. Churchill "The final tribunal is our own conscience. We are fighting to re-establish the reign of law to protect the liberties of small countries. Our defeat would mean an age of barbaric violence, and would be fatal, not only to ourselves, but to the independent life of every small country in Europe. Acting in the name of the Covenant, and as virtual mandatories of the League and all it stands for, we have a right, and indeed are bound in duty, to abrogate for a space some of the conventions of the very laws we seek to consolidate and reaffirm. Small nations must not tie our hands when we are fighting for their rights & freedom. The letter of the law must not in supreme emergency obstruct those who are charged with its protection and enforcement. It would not be right or rational that the aggressor Power should gain one set of advantages by tearing up all laws, and another set by sheltering behind the innate respect for law of its opponents. Humanity, rather than legality, must be our guide. Of all this history must be the judge. We now face events."

To: Bilow who wrote (36649)	8/9/2002 11:06:39 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The historical fact is that Stalin had nuclear weapons, but did not "extend his power from behind that nuclear shield". That's just not correct Carl.. The Korean conflict was a direct result of Stalin "blessing" an attack upon the south. And considering that Stalin died in 1953, he spent most of the post WWII era developing nuclear weapons, and consolidating the TREMENDOUS territorial gains Russia had gained control over after the war (Poland, Czechoslovakia, 1/2 of Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Baltic states, Azerbijian.. hmmm... did I forget any??) He was only supposed to "occupy" those states temporarily until elections and stability could be restored. But once he had that "nuclear shield" in 1949 (after stealing it from us), there was no way he was going to give up those "buffer states" between the west and "mother russia". And his reign of terror continued upon his death as communist insurgencies were pursued around the world, each eventually failing and/or leaving nothing but shattered economies and devastated lives. Hawk

To: Bilow who wrote (36649)	8/9/2002 11:44:34 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

one caveat to your analysis, that follows up on my Haiti-related post from last night: we're not the only country whose views are affected by our power position, which complicates matters. Just as our unprecedented global power position can be said to underwrite arrogance and hubris, allowing us to seriously consider doing things that would previously be unthinkable, so the reverse is true as well. The other countries you mention--Europe, but particularly the smaller countries in the Gulf region--almost certainly have their views and intentions sharply constrained by their relative weakness. Asking them whether they would support a war against Saddam is sort of like going to a schoolyard and asking the little bespectacled nerdy kid whether he wants to join you in fighting the local bully, who's watching the conversation with interest. What I know about the Saudis and lots of other Gulfies, for example, leads me to believe that they would indeed like to see Saddam gone, but they have little confidence in our willingness to do the job properly and thus are unwilling to get out in front on the issue, especially in public, for fear of being stuck with the consequences should we not, in fact, go forward. That is, they're quite rationally appeasing the bully because they're not strong enough to fight him successfully. If they were more powerful--if they were us, in other words--they might well feel differently. The upshot of this is not that we can simply disregard everything everybody else says and proceed blithely on our own. But it does mean that we, as the world's dominant power, have a unique set of obligations and responsibilities as well as perks. One of those responsibilities is to provide "public goods" that the normal day-to-day operations of lots of small, self-interested countries would not provide on their own. The toppling of Saddam might well be just such a "public good," one that only we are able to seriously think of providing. I say "might" because while I believe what I just wrote, I also know that it would be easy to abuse this kind of thinking and use it as a cover for our own willful self-aggrandizement. All depends on the spirit and skill with which the analysis is conducted and the policy implemented; as I've said often, I could come down either way and regularly do. tb@noblesseoblige.com