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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (2629)	4/8/1999 6:55:00 PM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 17770

Thanks for the update to my list nihil. Especially the Boxer Rebellion and the Archangel operation. Id forgotten about those :) Your assessment of international relations is brutally realistic: "shoot first, sign treaties afterwards." Despite the naive legalist hoop dreams of some, this is the nature of international politics in a nutshell. In a world of limited resources and all-too quickly igniting fires, the willingness to use and project power to safeguard the national interest is the rule for prosperity. America has been, overall, very good at playing the game. I do not foresee a time in the near future where a realistic system with teeth could be implemented. It is the nature of such bodies as the UN to be both hopelessly dependent upon the power of several nations, and hopelessly powerless to resolve conflicts of interest which are not wholly political. I do not foresee a time when the citizens of the worlds nations will surrender their national authority to a world body whose political, ethical, economic, and military interests and principles may be sharply at odds with their own. I do not, for example, foresee a time when Americans would forego the Constitution in favor of a world polit dominated by, say, the totalitarian Red Chinese (one voice one vote?). Or the Iranians to American principles, for example ;) Political devices of decision making are necessarily consensual and conformist: to reach a decision requires majority consensus; once a decision is reached the whole is bound to conformity to the rule, by the terms of the system. This has been the long standing weakness of world bodies, there is no binding reason to conform to the rule when it is not in ones interest to do so.