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

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (95326)	4/21/2003 6:22:26 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<an absence of police for a length of time would lead to chaos. But worldwide, there is effectively a lack of any such law enforcement ready to act in a timely manner> There is something more powerful, to enforce "global community standards", than Force. It's Ghandian non-cooperation. If the civilized nations would simply refuse to have anything to do with "bad actors", they couldn't survive. Iraq is an excellent example of this. Individual people are obligately social, and so are nations. In isolation, they wither and die. Iraq makes nothing the world wants, except oil. Oil has funded everything Saddam Hussain has done: his conventional wars, his WMD program, his payments to the families of suicide bombers, his palaces, his immense intricate apparatus of Control and Coercion within Iraq. All of it was paid for with oil revenues. And we, the democratic civilized West, we bought all his oil. The USSR was, and Russia is, an oil exporter. Until very recently, China wasn't a significant importer. So, everything he has done, is because we allowed it, by buying his oil. All his crimes were permitted, could have only happened, with our knowing cooperation. All could have been avoided, with our non-cooperation. Of course, we (the civilized West), would have had to be disciplined and united, to make this non-cooperation work. Leaky embargoes = failed embargoes. Non-violent non-cooperation requires a lot of self-discipline and self-control, which have been sorely lacking. There always seems to be at least one cheater, who acts selfishly and negates the group effort, as we have seen with Iraq in the 1990s. When I said, "the EU model", I meant the internal methods, the way they enforce good behavior within the EU. The EU has a very long, detailed list of standards that each member nation must meet, and continue meeting, in order to be a member of the club. If a member (or candidate member) flagrantly violates the community standard, there is no "EU army", no "EU police force", to invade the transgressor and enforce compliance. The only threat, but it is very effective, is the threat of being kicked out of the group. For a person, the worst punishment is exile, the worst torture is solitary confinement, and the same applies to nations. Non-cooperation, carried out in a thorough and disciplined manner, is extremely effective, and as coercive as any army.