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

To: Ilaine who wrote (54043)	10/22/2002 10:29:39 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "A peace treaty, in contrast, imposes the will of the victor on the vanquished. ..." It's pretty clear that peace treaties are made to be broken. There is a clear historical record to this effect. Re: "What you seem to be arguing is that if one crosses one's fingers then no deal is a deal." No, what I'm saying is that once you're out of range, the guy with the gun can no longer tell you how to live your life. This concept of "a deal is a deal" is a moral statement. I do not deal with morality, I deal with practicality. Once the duress is gone, the deal is no longer a deal. This is obvious when it applies to individuals. That it is obvious when it applies to nations should be obvious to you, but since you're only combing history for examples where the other side broke the treaty you can't see the issue clearly. Go back through history and carefully examine the deals that, for example, Nazi Germany made small nations sign at the point of a gun. Do you still apply your silly aphorism "a deal is a deal" to the Sudetenland? How about Alsace Lorraine? What about the peace treaty that South Vietnam signed where they agreed to have elections and unite with North Vietnam (but reneged)? How about the Algerian electorate who voted in the Islamic party, don't you think that they were crying "a deal is a deal"? The morality of your position is completely and totally existent only in the eyes of the beholder, and a few of their close friends. Your pretended morality is self contradictory. Or, at the very least, it requires that "CobaltBlue" be there to decide which of the "peace treaties" that were signed at the point of a gun come under the "deal is a deal" rule, LOL. I'm sure that you're going to come up with some moralistic differentiation that somehow classifies "peace treaties" as either "deals" or somehow not "deals" depending on your perceived morality of the party who has the advantage in the deal. You're not trying to support a system of international laws that treat nations as equals. What you want is a setup where the West gets to break deals that it makes under duress, but the "other" doesn't get to break their deals. This would be a wonderful "deal" for the West, but there is no reason to think that such a perversion will somehow make the "other" agree to keep their deals with us, LOL. What your logic basically says is that "a deal is a deal" only applies to the less moral side of the "deal", LOL. What you're supporting is not some "rule of law", but instead a "rule of CobaltBlue", LOL. Go explain your illogical position to another lawyer and see what they say about it, LOL. Your logic on this is incompatible with history, and is impractical as a rule for "deals" between nations. It's useless, except as a technique for making me spill coffee on my keyboard. -- Carl