Comment by mytailorisrich
4 days ago
There was never any "larger organizations", only the larger, more powerful countries that enforced the "international order" that suited them.
4 days ago
There was never any "larger organizations", only the larger, more powerful countries that enforced the "international order" that suited them.
There was a time when Germany thought just like that. In the aftermath we decided that maybe it's not such a good idea, this might-makes-right thing and we strove for a world where transitions are peaceful because we realized that our power to kill had grown to proportions unseen in our history and because some of us - rightly, in my view - felt that the human race itself was now in the balance.
If you toss that out you have to at least acknowledge all possible outcomes. People - even powerful people, and powerful countries too - should be subject to the law because no single person and no single country stands above all the others.
Actually, what has happened to Germany is exactly an expression of what I described in my previous comments.
> powerful countries too - should be subject to the law
Perhaps so but that is idealistic. Again, countries are sovereign, there is no such things as "laws" in the sense that applies to individuals that apply to them, only voluntary agreements. Practically you would also need a level above countries with its own overwhelming force to enforce it, and that simply does not exist.
I am trying to discuss the world as it is, including indeed in the legal sense, not as it might be in dreams because that's pie in the sky and totally unbounded in scope.
Yes, you're pretending to be a 'realist' who is wise because of your grounded worldview, but you totally miss the forest for the trees: if we don't want to end with blowing ourselves up then we have to depart from the might is right and 'how the world is' mentality because that stops us from changing into a future where we will not blow ourselves up.
Your worldview is essentially a pessimistic one, mine an optimistic one: I think we are capable of change. We just make the stupid mistake of putting egomaniacs in positions of power all the time and then we are surprised by the outcomes.
Some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history were 'I have a dream'. Dreams are good, especially if they are dreams of a better world and we all should strive to create that world, not to declare it a pipe dream and get on with the business of raping each other.
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Germany was right about that. They were catastrophically wrong about who was the biggest kid on the playground, though.
No, at the time they were the biggest kid on the playground, their mistake was to think that the playground would be a constant. If Germany had just taken over Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland they might have gotten away with it too. The lack of consolidation and Hitler being drunk on power caused them to continue to set higher goals.
Then once the theater of the war shifted to Global and Japan brought the USA into the war things changed rapidly.