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2016/09/03 13:28:39
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Vaktathi wrote: If I'm not mistaken France was part of NATO, just not the NATO unified military command after DeGaulle's withdrawal until 2009.
IIRC France left NATO when deGaulle was still in power, so....
There was a secret accord between France and NATO to integrate France back into NATO in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany, and France publicly stated that any invasion of West Germany would present a clear threat to French sovereignty.
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
2016/09/03 20:56:59
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
It’s not clear the organization can effectively confront—or even survive—today’s challenges.
What if the United Nations didn’t exist? It’s a question easily answered, because for nearly all of human history, it didn’t. History “teaches us that order in international relations is the exception, rather than the rule,” Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, writes in a new report on the uncertain future of the UN. “Since the rise of the modern nation-state, both prior to and following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, disorder has been the dominant characteristic of inter-state relations.” We tend to think of the United Nations as just another part of the global furniture. But it’s actually a recent addition.
Over the last 500 years, Rudd notes, “there have been four major efforts in Europe to construct order after periods of sustained carnage”: in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ and Eighty Years’ wars; in 1815, after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; in 1919, after World War I; and in 1945, after World War II. “The first three of these ‘orders’ have had, at best, patchy records of success. The jury is still out on the fourth.”
RELATED STORY
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
That fourth attempt—the United Nations—is now in a period of transition as the race for the organization’s top job nears its end. It’s the most important election nobody’s ever heard of, and hinges on secret straw polls at the Security Council that could yield a result within the month. Rudd, whose name was once mentioned among the potential contenders to replace Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general, is not in the mix. (Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to nominate him.) But the study he released this week as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism is a guide to the global forces that will confront whoever takes the job—including the possibility that the United Nations itself, though it’s unlikely to collapse anytime soon, might gradually atrophy to the point of irrelevance.
The concept of entropy in international relations is instructive here, Rudd writes: “Under this argument, any international order, once established, is immediately subject to the natural processes of decline and decay, ultimately resulting in a return to disorder.”
There is “growing evidence of nation-states walking around the UN to solve major problems and then perhaps coming back to the UN when it’s all done as some sort of diplomatic afterthought,” Rudd told me. The United Nations continues to establish rules for how people and states should conduct themselves in the world. “The problem is, if you simply set norms and don’t do anything about the execution of those norms, as the international agency given that function back under the charter of 1945, then you start to lose complete relevance over time.”
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991.”
I asked Rudd whether the remaining secretary-general candidates were advocating the kinds of reforms he’d like implemented at the United Nations. “I ... understand that in a competitive selection process such as this, many candidates are going to choose to be publicly diplomatic about the sort of problems the UN faces,” he responded. Presumably he himself can be less diplomatic, now that he is no longer auditioning to be the world’s chief diplomat.
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991,” following the fall of the Soviet Union, Rudd told me. “Over the last 25 years, we haven’t seen anything comparable to the current state of great-power relations. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the current intensity of the globalization process. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the emergence, for example, of terrorism as a mainstream threat to many societies across the world. These are new phenomen[a]. Each age has had its own new phenomenon. But in a quarter of a century, which is a long time [for] an institution that only has a 70-year history, it’s a set of circumstances which should cause us to act.”
Rudd’s report includes numerous prescriptions for reinventing the institution, from striking a new international agreement on resettling refugees to more rigorously measuring the results of UN initiatives. The United Nations, Rudd told me, is much better at reacting to crises than anticipating and preventing them. He proposes investing in a policy-planning staff that can analyze global trends several years into the future, and in what he calls “preventive diplomacy.” As an example, he cited the UN’s appointment in 2013 of the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, as a special representative to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, which had just experienced a military coup; within roughly a year, Ramos-Horta had helped forge enough political consensus for elections to be held. Prevention could also mean, for instance, prepositioning food aid in countries at the earliest warnings of famine, or tracking unemployment patterns to predict where violent extremism could emerge.
But it’s Rudd’s diagnosis of what’s ailing the United Nations that is particularly notable. The rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, intensifying rivalries between the United States and Russia and China, and a fierce backlash against globalization are all challenging the “assumption of recent decades that the dynamics of greater global integration were somehow unstoppable,” he writes.
The United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.”
This is an urgent problem, Rudd argues in the report, because despite its many failings, the United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.” Among other things, he writes, the UN has helped avert another world war; played a role in drastically reducing the share of the global population living in extreme poverty; created a system of dispute-settlement institutions to counteract the “long and malignant history of territorial and trade disputes” sparking international conflict; staved off the “all-out proliferation of nuclear weapons” that looked so likely in the early 1960s; and provided humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations that, before the advent of the UN, were often “simply left to die.”
But recent years have brought worrying signs of weakness, according to Rudd. The UN wasn’t a participant in international talks to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, he points out, even though one of its institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was tasked with helping implement the resulting agreement. The UN has been similarly absent from efforts to address other major security challenges like the war in Ukraine and the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program. It sluggishly responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and has bungled the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. And it has failed to prevent mass atrocities and resolve chronic conflict in countries like South Sudan and Syria. The UN’s role in spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti through the unsanitary practices of its peacekeepers—a role the organization only recently acknowledged, after years of denials—has further tarnished the institution’s image.
Meanwhile, escalating tensions between the United States and China over cyberspace and territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and between the United States and Russia over NATO expansion and Russian actions in Ukraine, threaten to make the UN Security Council—where all three countries can veto resolutions as permanent members—as dysfunctional as it was during the Cold War.
Rudd adds that as terrorism spreads around the world, becoming the top security priority for many countries, the United Nations has failed to adequately respond to, or even define, the problem, which doesn’t easily fit within the UN’s state-centric view of the world. “[T]he UN has been unsuccessful in confronting the question of state-funded terrorist activity, in dealing with the political, economic, and social root causes of terrorism, and in agreeing and promulgating a global narrative on countering violent extremism,” he writes.
Most striking is Rudd’s assessment of the predicament national political leaders find themselves in, given that he was, not so long ago, one himself. These leaders, he writes, “are no longer, in substance, capable of delivering self-contained, national solutions to the problems faced by their people,” which “contributes to a related crisis of legitimacy for the international institutions nation-states have constructed.”
This crisis of legitimacy has direct bearing on the future of the United Nations. Countries, Rudd writes, are increasingly split between “globalists” and “localists,” particularly amid feeble economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis:
This, in turn, is beginning to create a fertile political space for more extreme political movements, either of the far left or the far right, driven by populist protest against the broad, globalizing consensus of the mainstream political center that has by and large prevailed over the last few decades.
Protectionist sympathies are therefore on the rise, as are xenophobic approaches to migration and, more broadly, a political impetus to “throw up the walls” against the forces of continuing globalization. This, in turn, is breeding new nationalist and mercantilist movements, which vilify not only their own governments, but also the regional and global institutions of which their governments are members and to which too much sovereignty, in their view, has already been ceded.
The net result is a fracturing and failure of national politics. We are seeing weakening national support for regional institutions such as the European Union. Global institutions such as the UN are seen as even more remote from local concerns.
On a daily basis, we hear reports of the United Nations succeeding with this or that, or failing to do this or that. But we rarely pause to consider what these successes and failures say about the relevance of the UN in the world today—and what the world would look like without it. Rudd’s report can ultimately be read as a plea for something pretty basic: to not take the United Nations for granted.
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2016/09/04 18:44:22
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
It’s not clear the organization can effectively confront—or even survive—today’s challenges.
What if the United Nations didn’t exist? It’s a question easily answered, because for nearly all of human history, it didn’t. History “teaches us that order in international relations is the exception, rather than the rule,” Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, writes in a new report on the uncertain future of the UN. “Since the rise of the modern nation-state, both prior to and following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, disorder has been the dominant characteristic of inter-state relations.” We tend to think of the United Nations as just another part of the global furniture. But it’s actually a recent addition.
Over the last 500 years, Rudd notes, “there have been four major efforts in Europe to construct order after periods of sustained carnage”: in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ and Eighty Years’ wars; in 1815, after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; in 1919, after World War I; and in 1945, after World War II. “The first three of these ‘orders’ have had, at best, patchy records of success. The jury is still out on the fourth.”
RELATED STORY
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
That fourth attempt—the United Nations—is now in a period of transition as the race for the organization’s top job nears its end. It’s the most important election nobody’s ever heard of, and hinges on secret straw polls at the Security Council that could yield a result within the month. Rudd, whose name was once mentioned among the potential contenders to replace Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general, is not in the mix. (Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to nominate him.) But the study he released this week as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism is a guide to the global forces that will confront whoever takes the job—including the possibility that the United Nations itself, though it’s unlikely to collapse anytime soon, might gradually atrophy to the point of irrelevance.
The concept of entropy in international relations is instructive here, Rudd writes: “Under this argument, any international order, once established, is immediately subject to the natural processes of decline and decay, ultimately resulting in a return to disorder.”
There is “growing evidence of nation-states walking around the UN to solve major problems and then perhaps coming back to the UN when it’s all done as some sort of diplomatic afterthought,” Rudd told me. The United Nations continues to establish rules for how people and states should conduct themselves in the world. “The problem is, if you simply set norms and don’t do anything about the execution of those norms, as the international agency given that function back under the charter of 1945, then you start to lose complete relevance over time.”
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991.”
I asked Rudd whether the remaining secretary-general candidates were advocating the kinds of reforms he’d like implemented at the United Nations. “I ... understand that in a competitive selection process such as this, many candidates are going to choose to be publicly diplomatic about the sort of problems the UN faces,” he responded. Presumably he himself can be less diplomatic, now that he is no longer auditioning to be the world’s chief diplomat.
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991,” following the fall of the Soviet Union, Rudd told me. “Over the last 25 years, we haven’t seen anything comparable to the current state of great-power relations. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the current intensity of the globalization process. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the emergence, for example, of terrorism as a mainstream threat to many societies across the world. These are new phenomen[a]. Each age has had its own new phenomenon. But in a quarter of a century, which is a long time [for] an institution that only has a 70-year history, it’s a set of circumstances which should cause us to act.”
Rudd’s report includes numerous prescriptions for reinventing the institution, from striking a new international agreement on resettling refugees to more rigorously measuring the results of UN initiatives. The United Nations, Rudd told me, is much better at reacting to crises than anticipating and preventing them. He proposes investing in a policy-planning staff that can analyze global trends several years into the future, and in what he calls “preventive diplomacy.” As an example, he cited the UN’s appointment in 2013 of the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, as a special representative to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, which had just experienced a military coup; within roughly a year, Ramos-Horta had helped forge enough political consensus for elections to be held. Prevention could also mean, for instance, prepositioning food aid in countries at the earliest warnings of famine, or tracking unemployment patterns to predict where violent extremism could emerge.
But it’s Rudd’s diagnosis of what’s ailing the United Nations that is particularly notable. The rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, intensifying rivalries between the United States and Russia and China, and a fierce backlash against globalization are all challenging the “assumption of recent decades that the dynamics of greater global integration were somehow unstoppable,” he writes.
The United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.”
This is an urgent problem, Rudd argues in the report, because despite its many failings, the United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.” Among other things, he writes, the UN has helped avert another world war; played a role in drastically reducing the share of the global population living in extreme poverty; created a system of dispute-settlement institutions to counteract the “long and malignant history of territorial and trade disputes” sparking international conflict; staved off the “all-out proliferation of nuclear weapons” that looked so likely in the early 1960s; and provided humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations that, before the advent of the UN, were often “simply left to die.”
But recent years have brought worrying signs of weakness, according to Rudd. The UN wasn’t a participant in international talks to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, he points out, even though one of its institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was tasked with helping implement the resulting agreement. The UN has been similarly absent from efforts to address other major security challenges like the war in Ukraine and the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program. It sluggishly responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and has bungled the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. And it has failed to prevent mass atrocities and resolve chronic conflict in countries like South Sudan and Syria. The UN’s role in spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti through the unsanitary practices of its peacekeepers—a role the organization only recently acknowledged, after years of denials—has further tarnished the institution’s image.
Meanwhile, escalating tensions between the United States and China over cyberspace and territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and between the United States and Russia over NATO expansion and Russian actions in Ukraine, threaten to make the UN Security Council—where all three countries can veto resolutions as permanent members—as dysfunctional as it was during the Cold War.
Rudd adds that as terrorism spreads around the world, becoming the top security priority for many countries, the United Nations has failed to adequately respond to, or even define, the problem, which doesn’t easily fit within the UN’s state-centric view of the world. “[T]he UN has been unsuccessful in confronting the question of state-funded terrorist activity, in dealing with the political, economic, and social root causes of terrorism, and in agreeing and promulgating a global narrative on countering violent extremism,” he writes.
Most striking is Rudd’s assessment of the predicament national political leaders find themselves in, given that he was, not so long ago, one himself. These leaders, he writes, “are no longer, in substance, capable of delivering self-contained, national solutions to the problems faced by their people,” which “contributes to a related crisis of legitimacy for the international institutions nation-states have constructed.”
This crisis of legitimacy has direct bearing on the future of the United Nations. Countries, Rudd writes, are increasingly split between “globalists” and “localists,” particularly amid feeble economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis:
This, in turn, is beginning to create a fertile political space for more extreme political movements, either of the far left or the far right, driven by populist protest against the broad, globalizing consensus of the mainstream political center that has by and large prevailed over the last few decades.
Protectionist sympathies are therefore on the rise, as are xenophobic approaches to migration and, more broadly, a political impetus to “throw up the walls” against the forces of continuing globalization. This, in turn, is breeding new nationalist and mercantilist movements, which vilify not only their own governments, but also the regional and global institutions of which their governments are members and to which too much sovereignty, in their view, has already been ceded.
The net result is a fracturing and failure of national politics. We are seeing weakening national support for regional institutions such as the European Union. Global institutions such as the UN are seen as even more remote from local concerns.
On a daily basis, we hear reports of the United Nations succeeding with this or that, or failing to do this or that. But we rarely pause to consider what these successes and failures say about the relevance of the UN in the world today—and what the world would look like without it. Rudd’s report can ultimately be read as a plea for something pretty basic: to not take the United Nations for granted.
The UN should be given more power. The UN is a great idea, but it is just so powerless that is doomed to fail in its most important goals of preventing war and other atrocities.
Error 404: Interesting signature not found
2016/09/04 20:10:47
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
The UN is of no consequence, it is merely high minded idealism. The great powers of the world will simply ignore it, that is those that do not dictate its agenda. The UN has failed to secure peace in the world, the tyrants and dictators know it is a toothless lion. Without NATO the Russians would have devoured the Baltic States, and likely a large chunk of Ukraine's eastern territories. The ICC is nothing but a cudgel to attack African rulers, who happen to be the only ones not strong enough to simply ignore it. China and North Korea have shown a complete disregard for any UN ruling against them, so basically the only nations who feel compelled to be bound by its rulings are the ones not likely to cause much harm anyhow. So yeah NATO is definitely needed, the UN, we could do without.
2016/09/04 20:25:05
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
thekingofkings wrote: The UN is of no consequence, it is merely high minded idealism. The great powers of the world will simply ignore it, that is those that do not dictate its agenda. The UN has failed to secure peace in the world, the tyrants and dictators know it is a toothless lion. Without NATO the Russians would have devoured the Baltic States, and likely a large chunk of Ukraine's eastern territories. The ICC is nothing but a cudgel to attack African rulers, who happen to be the only ones not strong enough to simply ignore it. China and North Korea have shown a complete disregard for any UN ruling against them, so basically the only nations who feel compelled to be bound by its rulings are the ones not likely to cause much harm anyhow. So yeah NATO is definitely needed, the UN, we could do without.
On the other hand, t the UN can be seen as a measure for which states are willing to work together and which are not is not useless. Going against the UN can be interpreted as going against the international community, and being uncooperative, and thus hurts international relations. You cooperate not because the UN has teeth, but because the UN participation and general cooperation is good PR.
The main problem with that line of thought is that anyone who wants to ignore the UN can simply cite its loaded charter, proclaim the organization biased and nothing more than an extension of western political interests. Thus the problem wouldn't be that the UN is toothless, but that the UN is too easily dismissed as showing preferential treatment.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/04 20:26:09
thekingofkings wrote: The UN is of no consequence, it is merely high minded idealism. The great powers of the world will simply ignore it, that is those that do not dictate its agenda. The UN has failed to secure peace in the world, the tyrants and dictators know it is a toothless lion. Without NATO the Russians would have devoured the Baltic States, and likely a large chunk of Ukraine's eastern territories. The ICC is nothing but a cudgel to attack African rulers, who happen to be the only ones not strong enough to simply ignore it. China and North Korea have shown a complete disregard for any UN ruling against them, so basically the only nations who feel compelled to be bound by its rulings are the ones not likely to cause much harm anyhow. So yeah NATO is definitely needed, the UN, we could do without.
So why do you think Russia would have "devoured" the Baltic States and Eastern Ukraine without NATO? From where did you get such information?
Error 404: Interesting signature not found
2016/09/04 21:13:29
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
thekingofkings wrote: The UN is of no consequence, it is merely high minded idealism. The great powers of the world will simply ignore it, that is those that do not dictate its agenda. The UN has failed to secure peace in the world, the tyrants and dictators know it is a toothless lion. Without NATO the Russians would have devoured the Baltic States, and likely a large chunk of Ukraine's eastern territories. The ICC is nothing but a cudgel to attack African rulers, who happen to be the only ones not strong enough to simply ignore it. China and North Korea have shown a complete disregard for any UN ruling against them, so basically the only nations who feel compelled to be bound by its rulings are the ones not likely to cause much harm anyhow. So yeah NATO is definitely needed, the UN, we could do without.
So why do you think Russia would have "devoured" the Baltic States and Eastern Ukraine without NATO? From where did you get such information?
Due to its long history of being rapacious towards its smaller neighbors. There is good reason for the Baltic states to fear Russia, it conquers them every chance it gets. It has not been a particularly good neighbor to Finland or Poland either.
2016/09/04 21:21:00
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
It’s not clear the organization can effectively confront—or even survive—today’s challenges.
What if the United Nations didn’t exist? It’s a question easily answered, because for nearly all of human history, it didn’t. History “teaches us that order in international relations is the exception, rather than the rule,” Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, writes in a new report on the uncertain future of the UN. “Since the rise of the modern nation-state, both prior to and following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, disorder has been the dominant characteristic of inter-state relations.” We tend to think of the United Nations as just another part of the global furniture. But it’s actually a recent addition.
Over the last 500 years, Rudd notes, “there have been four major efforts in Europe to construct order after periods of sustained carnage”: in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ and Eighty Years’ wars; in 1815, after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; in 1919, after World War I; and in 1945, after World War II. “The first three of these ‘orders’ have had, at best, patchy records of success. The jury is still out on the fourth.”
RELATED STORY
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
That fourth attempt—the United Nations—is now in a period of transition as the race for the organization’s top job nears its end. It’s the most important election nobody’s ever heard of, and hinges on secret straw polls at the Security Council that could yield a result within the month. Rudd, whose name was once mentioned among the potential contenders to replace Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general, is not in the mix. (Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to nominate him.) But the study he released this week as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism is a guide to the global forces that will confront whoever takes the job—including the possibility that the United Nations itself, though it’s unlikely to collapse anytime soon, might gradually atrophy to the point of irrelevance.
The concept of entropy in international relations is instructive here, Rudd writes: “Under this argument, any international order, once established, is immediately subject to the natural processes of decline and decay, ultimately resulting in a return to disorder.”
There is “growing evidence of nation-states walking around the UN to solve major problems and then perhaps coming back to the UN when it’s all done as some sort of diplomatic afterthought,” Rudd told me. The United Nations continues to establish rules for how people and states should conduct themselves in the world. “The problem is, if you simply set norms and don’t do anything about the execution of those norms, as the international agency given that function back under the charter of 1945, then you start to lose complete relevance over time.”
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991.”
I asked Rudd whether the remaining secretary-general candidates were advocating the kinds of reforms he’d like implemented at the United Nations. “I ... understand that in a competitive selection process such as this, many candidates are going to choose to be publicly diplomatic about the sort of problems the UN faces,” he responded. Presumably he himself can be less diplomatic, now that he is no longer auditioning to be the world’s chief diplomat.
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991,” following the fall of the Soviet Union, Rudd told me. “Over the last 25 years, we haven’t seen anything comparable to the current state of great-power relations. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the current intensity of the globalization process. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the emergence, for example, of terrorism as a mainstream threat to many societies across the world. These are new phenomen[a]. Each age has had its own new phenomenon. But in a quarter of a century, which is a long time [for] an institution that only has a 70-year history, it’s a set of circumstances which should cause us to act.”
Rudd’s report includes numerous prescriptions for reinventing the institution, from striking a new international agreement on resettling refugees to more rigorously measuring the results of UN initiatives. The United Nations, Rudd told me, is much better at reacting to crises than anticipating and preventing them. He proposes investing in a policy-planning staff that can analyze global trends several years into the future, and in what he calls “preventive diplomacy.” As an example, he cited the UN’s appointment in 2013 of the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, as a special representative to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, which had just experienced a military coup; within roughly a year, Ramos-Horta had helped forge enough political consensus for elections to be held. Prevention could also mean, for instance, prepositioning food aid in countries at the earliest warnings of famine, or tracking unemployment patterns to predict where violent extremism could emerge.
But it’s Rudd’s diagnosis of what’s ailing the United Nations that is particularly notable. The rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, intensifying rivalries between the United States and Russia and China, and a fierce backlash against globalization are all challenging the “assumption of recent decades that the dynamics of greater global integration were somehow unstoppable,” he writes.
The United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.”
This is an urgent problem, Rudd argues in the report, because despite its many failings, the United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.” Among other things, he writes, the UN has helped avert another world war; played a role in drastically reducing the share of the global population living in extreme poverty; created a system of dispute-settlement institutions to counteract the “long and malignant history of territorial and trade disputes” sparking international conflict; staved off the “all-out proliferation of nuclear weapons” that looked so likely in the early 1960s; and provided humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations that, before the advent of the UN, were often “simply left to die.”
But recent years have brought worrying signs of weakness, according to Rudd. The UN wasn’t a participant in international talks to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, he points out, even though one of its institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was tasked with helping implement the resulting agreement. The UN has been similarly absent from efforts to address other major security challenges like the war in Ukraine and the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program. It sluggishly responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and has bungled the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. And it has failed to prevent mass atrocities and resolve chronic conflict in countries like South Sudan and Syria. The UN’s role in spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti through the unsanitary practices of its peacekeepers—a role the organization only recently acknowledged, after years of denials—has further tarnished the institution’s image.
Meanwhile, escalating tensions between the United States and China over cyberspace and territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and between the United States and Russia over NATO expansion and Russian actions in Ukraine, threaten to make the UN Security Council—where all three countries can veto resolutions as permanent members—as dysfunctional as it was during the Cold War.
Rudd adds that as terrorism spreads around the world, becoming the top security priority for many countries, the United Nations has failed to adequately respond to, or even define, the problem, which doesn’t easily fit within the UN’s state-centric view of the world. “[T]he UN has been unsuccessful in confronting the question of state-funded terrorist activity, in dealing with the political, economic, and social root causes of terrorism, and in agreeing and promulgating a global narrative on countering violent extremism,” he writes.
Most striking is Rudd’s assessment of the predicament national political leaders find themselves in, given that he was, not so long ago, one himself. These leaders, he writes, “are no longer, in substance, capable of delivering self-contained, national solutions to the problems faced by their people,” which “contributes to a related crisis of legitimacy for the international institutions nation-states have constructed.”
This crisis of legitimacy has direct bearing on the future of the United Nations. Countries, Rudd writes, are increasingly split between “globalists” and “localists,” particularly amid feeble economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis:
This, in turn, is beginning to create a fertile political space for more extreme political movements, either of the far left or the far right, driven by populist protest against the broad, globalizing consensus of the mainstream political center that has by and large prevailed over the last few decades.
Protectionist sympathies are therefore on the rise, as are xenophobic approaches to migration and, more broadly, a political impetus to “throw up the walls” against the forces of continuing globalization. This, in turn, is breeding new nationalist and mercantilist movements, which vilify not only their own governments, but also the regional and global institutions of which their governments are members and to which too much sovereignty, in their view, has already been ceded.
The net result is a fracturing and failure of national politics. We are seeing weakening national support for regional institutions such as the European Union. Global institutions such as the UN are seen as even more remote from local concerns.
On a daily basis, we hear reports of the United Nations succeeding with this or that, or failing to do this or that. But we rarely pause to consider what these successes and failures say about the relevance of the UN in the world today—and what the world would look like without it. Rudd’s report can ultimately be read as a plea for something pretty basic: to not take the United Nations for granted.
The UN should be given more power. The UN is a great idea, but it is just so powerless that is doomed to fail in its most important goals of preventing war and other atrocities.
There are also problems where just one country voting "no" is enough to block what everyone else wants. See: every time Russia says no when the U.S. says yes and the U.S. says no when Russia says yes, because reasons.
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
2016/09/04 21:28:08
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
It’s not clear the organization can effectively confront—or even survive—today’s challenges.
What if the United Nations didn’t exist? It’s a question easily answered, because for nearly all of human history, it didn’t. History “teaches us that order in international relations is the exception, rather than the rule,” Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, writes in a new report on the uncertain future of the UN. “Since the rise of the modern nation-state, both prior to and following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, disorder has been the dominant characteristic of inter-state relations.” We tend to think of the United Nations as just another part of the global furniture. But it’s actually a recent addition.
Over the last 500 years, Rudd notes, “there have been four major efforts in Europe to construct order after periods of sustained carnage”: in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ and Eighty Years’ wars; in 1815, after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; in 1919, after World War I; and in 1945, after World War II. “The first three of these ‘orders’ have had, at best, patchy records of success. The jury is still out on the fourth.”
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That fourth attempt—the United Nations—is now in a period of transition as the race for the organization’s top job nears its end. It’s the most important election nobody’s ever heard of, and hinges on secret straw polls at the Security Council that could yield a result within the month. Rudd, whose name was once mentioned among the potential contenders to replace Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general, is not in the mix. (Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to nominate him.) But the study he released this week as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism is a guide to the global forces that will confront whoever takes the job—including the possibility that the United Nations itself, though it’s unlikely to collapse anytime soon, might gradually atrophy to the point of irrelevance.
The concept of entropy in international relations is instructive here, Rudd writes: “Under this argument, any international order, once established, is immediately subject to the natural processes of decline and decay, ultimately resulting in a return to disorder.”
There is “growing evidence of nation-states walking around the UN to solve major problems and then perhaps coming back to the UN when it’s all done as some sort of diplomatic afterthought,” Rudd told me. The United Nations continues to establish rules for how people and states should conduct themselves in the world. “The problem is, if you simply set norms and don’t do anything about the execution of those norms, as the international agency given that function back under the charter of 1945, then you start to lose complete relevance over time.”
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991.”
I asked Rudd whether the remaining secretary-general candidates were advocating the kinds of reforms he’d like implemented at the United Nations. “I ... understand that in a competitive selection process such as this, many candidates are going to choose to be publicly diplomatic about the sort of problems the UN faces,” he responded. Presumably he himself can be less diplomatic, now that he is no longer auditioning to be the world’s chief diplomat.
“We are facing the biggest set of external changes and challenges to the global order since 1991,” following the fall of the Soviet Union, Rudd told me. “Over the last 25 years, we haven’t seen anything comparable to the current state of great-power relations. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the current intensity of the globalization process. We haven’t seen anything comparable to the emergence, for example, of terrorism as a mainstream threat to many societies across the world. These are new phenomen[a]. Each age has had its own new phenomenon. But in a quarter of a century, which is a long time [for] an institution that only has a 70-year history, it’s a set of circumstances which should cause us to act.”
Rudd’s report includes numerous prescriptions for reinventing the institution, from striking a new international agreement on resettling refugees to more rigorously measuring the results of UN initiatives. The United Nations, Rudd told me, is much better at reacting to crises than anticipating and preventing them. He proposes investing in a policy-planning staff that can analyze global trends several years into the future, and in what he calls “preventive diplomacy.” As an example, he cited the UN’s appointment in 2013 of the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, as a special representative to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, which had just experienced a military coup; within roughly a year, Ramos-Horta had helped forge enough political consensus for elections to be held. Prevention could also mean, for instance, prepositioning food aid in countries at the earliest warnings of famine, or tracking unemployment patterns to predict where violent extremism could emerge.
But it’s Rudd’s diagnosis of what’s ailing the United Nations that is particularly notable. The rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, intensifying rivalries between the United States and Russia and China, and a fierce backlash against globalization are all challenging the “assumption of recent decades that the dynamics of greater global integration were somehow unstoppable,” he writes.
The United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.”
This is an urgent problem, Rudd argues in the report, because despite its many failings, the United Nations “is the worst system of international governance except for all the others.” Among other things, he writes, the UN has helped avert another world war; played a role in drastically reducing the share of the global population living in extreme poverty; created a system of dispute-settlement institutions to counteract the “long and malignant history of territorial and trade disputes” sparking international conflict; staved off the “all-out proliferation of nuclear weapons” that looked so likely in the early 1960s; and provided humanitarian relief to vulnerable populations that, before the advent of the UN, were often “simply left to die.”
But recent years have brought worrying signs of weakness, according to Rudd. The UN wasn’t a participant in international talks to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, he points out, even though one of its institutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was tasked with helping implement the resulting agreement. The UN has been similarly absent from efforts to address other major security challenges like the war in Ukraine and the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear program. It sluggishly responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and has bungled the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. And it has failed to prevent mass atrocities and resolve chronic conflict in countries like South Sudan and Syria. The UN’s role in spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti through the unsanitary practices of its peacekeepers—a role the organization only recently acknowledged, after years of denials—has further tarnished the institution’s image.
Meanwhile, escalating tensions between the United States and China over cyberspace and territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and between the United States and Russia over NATO expansion and Russian actions in Ukraine, threaten to make the UN Security Council—where all three countries can veto resolutions as permanent members—as dysfunctional as it was during the Cold War.
Rudd adds that as terrorism spreads around the world, becoming the top security priority for many countries, the United Nations has failed to adequately respond to, or even define, the problem, which doesn’t easily fit within the UN’s state-centric view of the world. “[T]he UN has been unsuccessful in confronting the question of state-funded terrorist activity, in dealing with the political, economic, and social root causes of terrorism, and in agreeing and promulgating a global narrative on countering violent extremism,” he writes.
Most striking is Rudd’s assessment of the predicament national political leaders find themselves in, given that he was, not so long ago, one himself. These leaders, he writes, “are no longer, in substance, capable of delivering self-contained, national solutions to the problems faced by their people,” which “contributes to a related crisis of legitimacy for the international institutions nation-states have constructed.”
This crisis of legitimacy has direct bearing on the future of the United Nations. Countries, Rudd writes, are increasingly split between “globalists” and “localists,” particularly amid feeble economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis:
This, in turn, is beginning to create a fertile political space for more extreme political movements, either of the far left or the far right, driven by populist protest against the broad, globalizing consensus of the mainstream political center that has by and large prevailed over the last few decades.
Protectionist sympathies are therefore on the rise, as are xenophobic approaches to migration and, more broadly, a political impetus to “throw up the walls” against the forces of continuing globalization. This, in turn, is breeding new nationalist and mercantilist movements, which vilify not only their own governments, but also the regional and global institutions of which their governments are members and to which too much sovereignty, in their view, has already been ceded.
The net result is a fracturing and failure of national politics. We are seeing weakening national support for regional institutions such as the European Union. Global institutions such as the UN are seen as even more remote from local concerns.
On a daily basis, we hear reports of the United Nations succeeding with this or that, or failing to do this or that. But we rarely pause to consider what these successes and failures say about the relevance of the UN in the world today—and what the world would look like without it. Rudd’s report can ultimately be read as a plea for something pretty basic: to not take the United Nations for granted.
The UN should be given more power. The UN is a great idea, but it is just so powerless that is doomed to fail in its most important goals of preventing war and other atrocities.
There are also problems where just one country voting "no" is enough to block what everyone else wants. See: every time Russia says no when the U.S. says yes and the U.S. says no when Russia says yes, because reasons.
It doesn't help that only 2 of the permanent council members are actually great powers any more. Russia, France, and Britain punch way above their weight, while China and the US are about right. China being the PRC and not the ROC as originally intended basically puts two dictatorships on the permanent council, leaving the US and two lightweights to counter balance them.
2016/09/04 21:48:27
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
I've discussed the issue with Iron_Captain before with regards to threat many Russians believe NATO poses to the Motherland. From what I recall, it essentially boiled down to the fact that Russia has limited ways of exercising its influence in the world, the two primary means being energy reliance and military strength.With its energy exports flagging, and no means of force extension (aircraft carriers and suchlike) available, Russia is essentially limited to one means of influencing affairs outside of its borders.
With NATO being a massive defensive alliance, every single nation who joins NATO is effectively removed from Russia's influence, because it cannot ever hope to match the sum of the parts. With a declining birth rate and limited industry, it also cannot hope to do so in the future. This means every country which joins NATO is not only removed from Russia's influence for the immediate future, but the foreseeable future as well.
'So what?' say most Westerners. 'They shouldn't be thinking about invading people anyway! Goddamn authoritarian Russkis, the more people out from under their boot, the better!'
If you take the perspective the West are the 'Good guys' and the concept of Russia ever using military force is unacceptable (as most liberal westerners will do), this is completely true and accurate. In Russia however, neither of these assumptions often hold true.
As far as Russia is concerned, the rest of the world is out to get it. The invasion of foreign forces to support the Whites in the civil war, followed by Hitler, followed by the Cold War mean that from the perspective of many Russians, the West is not this benign morally 'good' power, but rather a two faced entity that bites chunks off of whatever other powers exist whenever it gets the chance whilst congratulating itself on how righteous it is. China has a similar perspective, as do a number of other non-western countries.
And frankly, there is something to that. We've stopped marching armies around so much, but that's only because we've found economic and diplomatic pressure more effective and less expensive.
What this means for Russia is that every country which joins NATO is a further limitation on Russia's power and ability to influence affairs around it. This in turn raises the prospect that one day, every country around Russia would be part of NATO. And that terrifies Russia. It would make Russia an economically backward state with no ability to influence anything outside of its borders whatsoever.
What's more, that kind of cohesion would present a direct security risk. Right now, NATO isn't fagged about much, but what if some day it decides to tell Russia, 'Hey, stop making so many carbon emissions/building so many nukes/insert cause of choice here, or we'll cut you off from the world'? Russia would be powerless, because to cross that entity would destroy Russia economically (and possibly militarily). You can say, Ah, we'd never do that', but Russia doesn't think that for a second.
It also looks at all the people saying, 'How dare they invade Crimea/Georgia/whatever state it is this half-decade, what evil Russians' and the sanctions that ensue and says to itself, 'Hang on a minute. You guys were just in Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya for equally gakky self-interested reasons! We didn't try and screw over YOUR economies because of that! Why are you doing it to us?!' It just confirms the view that Russia is to be singled out for special persecution, feeding into the paranoia towards the West mentioned above. And again, there's more than a hint of truth about that.
I dislike Russia's government. I disapprove of their games in Crimea. But I'm also aware that we are not necessarily always the 'good guys' either. I personally think Russia is daft for trying to play the 20th century by the 19th century handbook, and it will screw them over in the end. But at the same time, I can comprehend precisely why they're still using that handbook, and I can't say it's entirely illogical.
2016/09/04 22:17:13
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Presuming that anyone criticizing one country for something thinks there is a "good guy" seems to be a red herring that is constantly thrown out whenever this subject comes up. It's almost as pedantic as shifting the debate to argue who did what rather than addressing the basic criticism of "this is wrong." Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and there's plenty of it going around so feel free to call it out, but it citing it doesn't address the complaint being made.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/04 22:17:42
LordofHats wrote: Presuming that anyone criticizing one country for something thinks there is a "good guy" seems to be a red herring that is constantly thrown out whenever this subject comes up. It's almost as pedantic as shifting the debate to argue who did what rather than addressing the basic criticism of "this is wrong." Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and there's plenty of it going around so feel free to call it out, but it citing it doesn't address the complaint being made.
I'm not certain if this is addressed to me or not? Because if so, I'm afraid I'm failing to comprehend your point in relation to mine. My point was fairly explicitly linked to the fact that the West's general perception of themselves as the 'good guys' means that when considering the situation, they automatically assume Russia should have nothing to fear from NATO expansion, because the West being 'good' would never seek to use that power/leverage in a disadvantageous way against Russia.
The hypocrisy involved in that position is merely tangential, and simply pointed out as evidence to indicate why Russians might not perceive the West to be the 'good guys'. It's certainly not the thrust of what I'm saying.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/09/04 22:30:03
2016/09/04 22:32:39
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
The simple situation here is that Russia and the West have never been friends, we have been allies of convenience. We have fought together against arguably greater enemies. But we have never been friends. There is no reason to trust Russia, nor should the West concern ourselves with the Russians trusting us. We fought in the Crimea to secure the Ottomans (not really worthwhile) we fought the reds not simply because "why not" but because the communists were a clear and obvious enemy to civilization. It should not be a surprise that there were no countries that willingly embraced communism, they all had it imposed on them. So the cold war was worth fighting.
2016/09/04 22:53:26
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Well Chile comes to mind.. They elected a communist President and then CIA staged a coup and planted Pinochet...
Know your facts please...
You shouldn't be worried about the one bullet with your name on it, Boldric. You should be worried about the ones labelled "to whom it may concern"-from Blackadder goes Forth!
2016/09/04 22:54:00
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Ketara wrote: Because if so, I'm afraid I'm failing to comprehend your point in relation to mine. My point was fairly explicitly linked to the fact that the West's general perception of themselves as the 'good guys' means that when considering the situation, they automatically assume Russia should have nothing to fear from NATO expansion, because the West being 'good' would never seek to use that power/leverage in a disadvantageous way against Russia.
And I'm saying it doesn't really matter. I haven't seen any argument tantamount to "Russia is Russia, and Russia is bad." People are pointing out actual criticisms, like a frequency of dead opposition journalists, or the completely unveiled Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict. A common response not just in this thread but many threads has been pedantic whataboutism fused with the red herring of "stop assuming you're the good guys." While modern Russia may lack this perception and see NATO as a threat, no one is required to agree with that assessment, especially not when "if NATO is a threat to Russia, it is because Russia has made it so" is so easy to reach with regards to events of the very recent past. I.E. Talking about perspectives goes no where. It's a pointless tangent from the actual discussion at hand.
konst80hummel wrote: Well Chile comes to mind.. They elected a communist President and then CIA staged a coup and planted Pinochet...
Know your facts please...
yeah, sure they did, it was a good clean and honest election, really it was..but that dastardly CIA
Ketara wrote: Because if so, I'm afraid I'm failing to comprehend your point in relation to mine. My point was fairly explicitly linked to the fact that the West's general perception of themselves as the 'good guys' means that when considering the situation, they automatically assume Russia should have nothing to fear from NATO expansion, because the West being 'good' would never seek to use that power/leverage in a disadvantageous way against Russia.
And I'm saying it doesn't really matter. I haven't seen any argument tantamount to "Russia is Russia, and Russia is bad." People are pointing out actual criticisms, like a frequency of dead opposition journalists, or the completely unveiled Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict. A common response not just in this thread but many threads has been pedantic whataboutism fused with the red herring of "stop assuming you're the good guys." While modern Russia may lack this perception and see NATO as a threat, no one is required to agree with that assessment, especially not when "if NATO is a threat to Russia, it is because Russia has made it so" is so easy to reach with regards to events of the very recent past. I.E. Talking about perspectives goes no where. It's a pointless tangent from the actual discussion at hand.
The simple fact is that Russia invaded Ukraine, it attacked Georgia, neither of those countries attacked Russia.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/04 22:56:03
2016/09/05 00:16:53
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Ketara wrote: Because if so, I'm afraid I'm failing to comprehend your point in relation to mine. My point was fairly explicitly linked to the fact that the West's general perception of themselves as the 'good guys' means that when considering the situation, they automatically assume Russia should have nothing to fear from NATO expansion, because the West being 'good' would never seek to use that power/leverage in a disadvantageous way against Russia.
And I'm saying it doesn't really matter. I haven't seen any argument tantamount to "Russia is Russia, and Russia is bad."
Perhaps not. But there's plenty of 'NATO is essentially defensive, therefore Russia has nothing to fear and no reason/motivation for invading other countries other than the fact that their country is ruled by an evil dictator'. Which isn't quite a holistic snapshot of the situation.
While modern Russia may lack this perception and see NATO as a threat, no one is required to agree with that assessment, especially not when "if NATO is a threat to Russia, it is because Russia has made it so" is so easy to reach with regards to events of the very recent past. I.E. Talking about perspectives goes no where. It's a pointless tangent from the actual discussion at hand.
I'd be more inclined to say that claiming 'no-one is required to agree with Russia's assessment' is a very good way of shutting down all discussion. Just because one is not required to agree with it does not mean that one should not comprehend it. Discussing Russia's perspective on things is a very legitimate subject of discussion when the topic is the necessity of NATO (given that NATO was formed to be a bulwark against Soviet expansionism). The necessity of NATO is intrinsically tied into Russia's willingness to come to terms with the West.
That being a given, discussion of what impediments there might be to that end are interesting points of conversation. You are welcome to disagree, but you'll have to forgive me if I and anyone else so inclined proceed to discuss the topic anyway.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/05 00:18:00
2016/09/05 01:14:24
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
I've discussed the issue with Iron_Captain before with regards to threat many Russians believe NATO poses to the Motherland. From what I recall, it essentially boiled down to the fact that Russia has limited ways of exercising its influence in the world, the two primary means being energy reliance and military strength.With its energy exports flagging, and no means of force extension (aircraft carriers and suchlike) available, Russia is essentially limited to one means of influencing affairs outside of its borders.
With NATO being a massive defensive alliance, every single nation who joins NATO is effectively removed from Russia's influence, because it cannot ever hope to match the sum of the parts. With a declining birth rate and limited industry, it also cannot hope to do so in the future. This means every country which joins NATO is not only removed from Russia's influence for the immediate future, but the foreseeable future as well.
'So what?' say most Westerners. 'They shouldn't be thinking about invading people anyway! Goddamn authoritarian Russkis, the more people out from under their boot, the better!'
If you take the perspective the West are the 'Good guys' and the concept of Russia ever using military force is unacceptable (as most liberal westerners will do), this is completely true and accurate. In Russia however, neither of these assumptions often hold true.
As far as Russia is concerned, the rest of the world is out to get it. The invasion of foreign forces to support the Whites in the civil war, followed by Hitler, followed by the Cold War mean that from the perspective of many Russians, the West is not this benign morally 'good' power, but rather a two faced entity that bites chunks off of whatever other powers exist whenever it gets the chance whilst congratulating itself on how righteous it is. China has a similar perspective, as do a number of other non-western countries.
And frankly, there is something to that. We've stopped marching armies around so much, but that's only because we've found economic and diplomatic pressure more effective and less expensive.
What this means for Russia is that every country which joins NATO is a further limitation on Russia's power and ability to influence affairs around it. This in turn raises the prospect that one day, every country around Russia would be part of NATO. And that terrifies Russia. It would make Russia an economically backward state with no ability to influence anything outside of its borders whatsoever.
What's more, that kind of cohesion would present a direct security risk. Right now, NATO isn't fagged about much, but what if some day it decides to tell Russia, 'Hey, stop making so many carbon emissions/building so many nukes/insert cause of choice here, or we'll cut you off from the world'? Russia would be powerless, because to cross that entity would destroy Russia economically (and possibly militarily). You can say, Ah, we'd never do that', but Russia doesn't think that for a second.
It also looks at all the people saying, 'How dare they invade Crimea/Georgia/whatever state it is this half-decade, what evil Russians' and the sanctions that ensue and says to itself, 'Hang on a minute. You guys were just in Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya for equally gakky self-interested reasons! We didn't try and screw over YOUR economies because of that! Why are you doing it to us?!' It just confirms the view that Russia is to be singled out for special persecution, feeding into the paranoia towards the West mentioned above. And again, there's more than a hint of truth about that.
I dislike Russia's government. I disapprove of their games in Crimea. But I'm also aware that we are not necessarily always the 'good guys' either. I personally think Russia is daft for trying to play the 20th century by the 19th century handbook, and it will screw them over in the end. But at the same time, I can comprehend precisely why they're still using that handbook, and I can't say it's entirely illogical.
In many ways, Russia is facing the exact same problem the US is facing: political inertia. Your line near the end "Russia is daft for trying to play the 20th century by the 19th century handbook," is particularly apt, because we're actually in the 21st century now. Russia has the capacity to become a truly great power again by reinventing itself (I'm not saying that would be easy: it would be hard, take time, and a lot of work, but it can be done), but it's stuck with leaders acting like it's still the 1980s, with no real eye to the future other than preserving their own immediate self interests. It's the same reason why the US is slowly sliding down the drain, because our own leaders are refusing to adapt to the modern world.
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
2016/09/05 01:14:50
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
konst80hummel wrote: Well Chile comes to mind.. They elected a communist President and then CIA staged a coup and planted Pinochet... Know your facts please...
Guatemala, or at least that is what the CIA claimed when they orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz and install their new ruler. Of course the benefit derived by the United Fruit Company was completely unrelated.
On the other hand, if it weren't for this action, a doctor called Ernesto Guevara may not have met a Cuban exile called Fidel Castro. So it would seem that history had the last laugh rather than the CIA.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/05 01:15:08
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
2016/09/05 01:34:26
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Ketara wrote: I'd be more inclined to say that claiming 'no-one is required to agree with Russia's assessment' is a very good way of shutting down all discussion. Just because one is not required to agree with it does not mean that one should not comprehend it.
Listen to anything the Russian government has ever said about NATO, and it's kind of obvious what they think. The Russia outlook isn't that cryptic.
I'm not talking about just talking about Russia's perspective. I'm talking about propping it up as a straw man in regards to criticism of Russian foreign policy. Waning influence is a piss poor pretext for tearing a country apart, no matter who is doing the tearing. Placing the Russian perspective in a position of primacy isn't going to make that criticism go away. It's not even going to answer it. It's interesting, and enlightening, but at the end of the day the criticism remains. I think you're assuming a lack of comprehension when its more accurate to say the perspective was found unconvincing before Ukraine, and seems self-serving afterwards.
EDIT: I would also agree with Tannhauser42's assessment.
I've discussed the issue with Iron_Captain before with regards to threat many Russians believe NATO poses to the Motherland. From what I recall, it essentially boiled down to the fact that Russia has limited ways of exercising its influence in the world, the two primary means being energy reliance and military strength.With its energy exports flagging, and no means of force extension (aircraft carriers and suchlike) available, Russia is essentially limited to one means of influencing affairs outside of its borders.
With NATO being a massive defensive alliance, every single nation who joins NATO is effectively removed from Russia's influence, because it cannot ever hope to match the sum of the parts. With a declining birth rate and limited industry, it also cannot hope to do so in the future. This means every country which joins NATO is not only removed from Russia's influence for the immediate future, but the foreseeable future as well.
'So what?' say most Westerners. 'They shouldn't be thinking about invading people anyway! Goddamn authoritarian Russkis, the more people out from under their boot, the better!'
If you take the perspective the West are the 'Good guys' and the concept of Russia ever using military force is unacceptable (as most liberal westerners will do), this is completely true and accurate. In Russia however, neither of these assumptions often hold true.
As far as Russia is concerned, the rest of the world is out to get it. The invasion of foreign forces to support the Whites in the civil war, followed by Hitler, followed by the Cold War mean that from the perspective of many Russians, the West is not this benign morally 'good' power, but rather a two faced entity that bites chunks off of whatever other powers exist whenever it gets the chance whilst congratulating itself on how righteous it is. China has a similar perspective, as do a number of other non-western countries.
And frankly, there is something to that. We've stopped marching armies around so much, but that's only because we've found economic and diplomatic pressure more effective and less expensive.
What this means for Russia is that every country which joins NATO is a further limitation on Russia's power and ability to influence affairs around it. This in turn raises the prospect that one day, every country around Russia would be part of NATO. And that terrifies Russia. It would make Russia an economically backward state with no ability to influence anything outside of its borders whatsoever.
What's more, that kind of cohesion would present a direct security risk. Right now, NATO isn't fagged about much, but what if some day it decides to tell Russia, 'Hey, stop making so many carbon emissions/building so many nukes/insert cause of choice here, or we'll cut you off from the world'? Russia would be powerless, because to cross that entity would destroy Russia economically (and possibly militarily). You can say, Ah, we'd never do that', but Russia doesn't think that for a second.
It also looks at all the people saying, 'How dare they invade Crimea/Georgia/whatever state it is this half-decade, what evil Russians' and the sanctions that ensue and says to itself, 'Hang on a minute. You guys were just in Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya for equally gakky self-interested reasons! We didn't try and screw over YOUR economies because of that! Why are you doing it to us?!' It just confirms the view that Russia is to be singled out for special persecution, feeding into the paranoia towards the West mentioned above. And again, there's more than a hint of truth about that.
I dislike Russia's government. I disapprove of their games in Crimea. But I'm also aware that we are not necessarily always the 'good guys' either. I personally think Russia is daft for trying to play the 20th century by the 19th century handbook, and it will screw them over in the end. But at the same time, I can comprehend precisely why they're still using that handbook, and I can't say it's entirely illogical.
That is a very accurate assessment. You have a way with words that I totally lack, Ketara. Also, would you please be so kind as to send the Kremlin a copy of that 20th century handbook? Russia seems to have missed the update
If only Russia could look into other ways of staying relevant apart from military power. Russian science, literature and music are famous across the entire world. If Russia would turn itself around, that could form an excellent basis to develop the soft power needed to compete with the West. But alas, the military-industrial complex holds the entire nation in its stranglehold. Russia is a militaristic nation, and as long as it does not get rid of that mentality it will be powerless to turn itself around in a world where soldiers and militarism just aren't that relevant anymore. It is a vicious cycle really.
Ketara wrote: I'd be more inclined to say that claiming 'no-one is required to agree with Russia's assessment' is a very good way of shutting down all discussion. Just because one is not required to agree with it does not mean that one should not comprehend it.
Listen to anything the Russian government has ever said about NATO, and it's kind of obvious what they think. The Russia outlook isn't that cryptic.
I'm not talking about just talking about Russia's perspective. I'm talking about propping it up as a straw man in regards to criticism of Russian foreign policy. Waning influence is a piss poor pretext for tearing a country apart, no matter who is doing the tearing. Placing the Russian perspective in a position of primacy isn't going to make that criticism go away. It's not even going to answer it. It's interesting, and enlightening, but at the end of the day the criticism remains. I think you're assuming a lack of comprehension when its more accurate to say the perspective was found unconvincing before Ukraine, and seems self-serving afterwards.
And what good would continueing criticism do? Russia is already well-aware of Western criticisms. It serves only to drive an ever wider wig between our two worlds.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/07 14:17:11
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2016/09/07 16:07:49
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
"Russian science, literature and music are famous across the entire world."
Russian Literature? War and Peace set back Russia's relationship with the west by decades. Many have died of boredom trying to read war and peace
Maybe that's always been the Russian plan?
Credit where credit's due, that Russian company that makes WW2 miniatures that can be used in Flames of War games is pretty good
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
2016/09/07 17:16:25
Subject: Re:Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Also Albino Raven, they're another Russian outfit that makes some truly excellent mini's
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
2016/09/08 00:14:43
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
And what good would continueing criticism do? Russia is already well-aware of Western criticisms. It serves only to drive an ever wider wig between our two worlds.
"Don't criticize me or we'll only grow further apart" may be the worst defense against criticism ever conceived.
Listen to anything the Russian government has ever said about NATO, and it's kind of obvious what they think. The Russia outlook isn't that cryptic.
I'm not talking about just talking about Russia's perspective. I'm talking about propping it up as a straw man in regards to criticism of Russian foreign policy. Waning influence is a piss poor pretext for tearing a country apart, no matter who is doing the tearing. Placing the Russian perspective in a position of primacy isn't going to make that criticism go away. It's not even going to answer it. It's interesting, and enlightening, but at the end of the day the criticism remains. I think you're assuming a lack of comprehension when its more accurate to say the perspective was found unconvincing before Ukraine, and seems self-serving afterwards.
Frankly, judging by some of the posts in this very thread, comprehension of why Russia behaves the way it does isn't quite as widespread as you think. It takes a certain re-adjustment of world view and thought; whilst you may have done so, not everybody has done. For many people, it is still as simple as 'Russia are the bad guys because they invade people, and they invade people because they're the bad guys'.
Since this is a discussion thread on a toy soldier wargaming forum, placing any kind of perspective in any kind of position won't make anything go away. We're just a bunch of nerds in an OT forum.
That being said, as this is a discussion thread, once all angles are examined, we can sit here and pass our geeky judgement on what we think would help to rectify the situation, because clearly things aren't working out for the best as things stand.
Tannhauser42 wrote:
In many ways, Russia is facing the exact same problem the US is facing: political inertia. Your line near the end "Russia is daft for trying to play the 20th century by the 19th century handbook," is particularly apt, because we're actually in the 21st century now. Russia has the capacity to become a truly great power again by reinventing itself (I'm not saying that would be easy: it would be hard, take time, and a lot of work, but it can be done), but it's stuck with leaders acting like it's still the 1980s, with no real eye to the future other than preserving their own immediate self interests. It's the same reason why the US is slowly sliding down the drain, because our own leaders are refusing to adapt to the modern world.
That was a typo on my part, but very well spotted, and you're right, it is quite ironic.
If the 19th century's handbook (from a Euro-centric perspective) was colonialism, the promotion and primacy of national interests above all others, and gunboat diplomacy, what was the 20th century's handbook? It would appear to be the breaking down of sex, race and class barriers, a greater view of the social responsibilities of the state, the rise of financial colonialism, the exertion of soft power instead of military force when possible, an inclination towards promoting greater trade as a tool for economic prosperity, and the coming into existence of a scientifically minded culture which accepts advances and the scientific method of research as its creed.
From what little we've seen so far, the 21st century has seen the true rise of globalism in the West, with capitalism becoming more voracious than ever before in tandem. Economics has become the primary motivator of political priority (ideologies are regarded as last century for the most part), consumer culture has become vast, and the internet has opened up the connection of people, trade, finances and ideas in a way never before seen. We've also seen the rise in the West of limited warfare as a political popularity tool, whilst it wasn't entirely unheard of last century, the 'drive by bombings for ratings' our leaders so casually undertake are to a large extent a new feature. The new flows of information have also resulted in mass migration, as people with nothing realise how much people in other parts of the world have, and decide they'd like a bit of it themselves.
Iron_Captain wrote:
That is a very accurate assessment. You have a way with words that I totally lack, Ketara. Also, would you please be so kind as to send the Kremlin a copy of that 20th century handbook? Russia seems to have missed the update
If only Russia could look into other ways of staying relevant apart from military power. Russian science, literature and music are famous across the entire world. If Russia would turn itself around, that could form an excellent basis to develop the soft power needed to compete with the West.
But alas, the military-industrial complex holds the entire nation in its stranglehold. Russia is a militaristic nation, and as long as it does not get rid of that mentality it will be powerless to turn itself around in a world where soldiers and militarism just aren't that relevant anymore. It is a vicious cycle really.
In all seriousness, if anyone is capable of holding out the world, it's probably Russia. Why? Because in order to be able to run a state completely independently without severe hardship (like North Koreas food shortages), you only require two things: Military power and economic self-sufficiency. Tick those boxes, and nobody will dare violate your borders, and all material needs can be met internally.
Russia has such vast amounts of land and raw resources that for the most part, it actually doesn't need to bother with the outside world. We've applied more or less the worst sanctions we can, and what was the result? A downturn in the Russian economy, yes, but nothing capable of driving change or even severely affecting the lives of the majority of people there. We've cut them off because we disapprove of their actions, but all that's done is forced them to domestically redevelop the sectors that had begun to link into the global market somewhat (so in cheese imports, for example). Now? That's it. It's not going to get any worse in Russia as a result of our actions. Frankly, the Russian economy rebounded slightly after a period and then stablised. It's not as good as it was pre-sanction, but it's not really that much worse off in terms of living standards or material shortages.
The fact the world has become globalised in fact, has simply meant that for many goods, Russia just swapped to buying in India, China, and other places. The West is no longer the sole place to buy manufactured goods or move capital around abroad. Globalism has nullified Western sanctions, to a large extent, because the extent of Western economic primacy has eroded with it.
Putin took Crimea because it was an easy gain, and a key military asset that Russia was at risk of losing. Right here and now, Russia is a danger to anyone on their border not in NATO, because there is nothing left that the West can do beyond declare war. The links formed under Yeltsin and Putin's early years with the West have dissolved. So the question is, what can the West do? Should NATO actively push to recruit more countries, hem Russia in and then ignore it forthwith? Or should it try and re-establish those soft power links?
It's genuinely hard to say. The former effectively just isolates Russia indefinitely and leaves it to do as it will, the latter to try and rehabilitate/re-integrate it back.
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2016/09/10 17:33:45
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
konst80hummel wrote: Well Chile comes to mind.. They elected a communist President and then CIA staged a coup and planted Pinochet...
Know your facts please...
Guatemala, or at least that is what the CIA claimed when they orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz and install their new ruler. Of course the benefit derived by the United Fruit Company was completely unrelated.
On the other hand, if it weren't for this action, a doctor called Ernesto Guevara may not have met a Cuban exile called Fidel Castro. So it would seem that history had the last laugh rather than the CIA.
Colombia and Peru also spring to mind, as well as the CIA backed attempted assassination of Chavez and re-ignition of the Venezuela-Colombia war that got aborted when the police nabbed the assassins.
Russia though is not exactly innocent in South America though, being one of the major backers of FARC over the years, as an example. Russia does not deal with terrorists indeed!
Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
2016/09/10 19:53:53
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
konst80hummel wrote: Well Chile comes to mind.. They elected a communist President and then CIA staged a coup and planted Pinochet... Know your facts please...
Guatemala, or at least that is what the CIA claimed when they orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz and install their new ruler. Of course the benefit derived by the United Fruit Company was completely unrelated.
On the other hand, if it weren't for this action, a doctor called Ernesto Guevara may not have met a Cuban exile called Fidel Castro. So it would seem that history had the last laugh rather than the CIA.
Colombia and Peru also spring to mind, as well as the CIA backed attempted assassination of Chavez and re-ignition of the Venezuela-Colombia war that got aborted when the police nabbed the assassins.
Russia though is not exactly innocent in South America though, being one of the major backers of FARC over the years, as an example. Russia does not deal with terrorists indeed!
Hey, FARC ain't terrorists, they are freedom fighters fighting against the corrupt, bourgeois Columbian regime and American imperialists on behalf of the poor and opressed farmers of Columbia! ¡Viva la Revolución!
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2016/09/11 13:45:24
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Hey, FARC ain't terrorists, they are freedom fighters fighting against the corrupt, bourgeois Colombian regime and American imperialists on behalf of the poor and oppressed farmers of Columbia! ¡Viva la Revolución!
Once upon a time, yes. But that time ended about 5 years into a 50-60 year civil war. After that they embraced keeping those farmers as slaves, working as enforces for the cartels, and murder. It's how a lot of revolutions die.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/11 13:45:40
Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
2016/09/12 11:36:47
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
Hey, FARC ain't terrorists, they are freedom fighters fighting against the corrupt, bourgeois Colombian regime and American imperialists on behalf of the poor and oppressed farmers of Columbia! ¡Viva la Revolución!
Once upon a time, yes. But that time ended about 5 years into a 50-60 year civil war. After that they embraced keeping those farmers as slaves, working as enforces for the cartels, and murder. It's how a lot of revolutions die.
On the plus side, the end to that particular conflict is in sight. So yay for progress
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
2016/09/12 22:55:45
Subject: Dakka debate: Is NATO still needed in the 21st Century?
I`d say, that NATO exsitsts ATM to make a profit for itself. It won`t go anywhere, and noone could bring it down, not the voters, if they desided to take it down, not any army, if it would try to stand against it.
Like everything big it`s here for the money, that comes out of wins/losses in major political games: wage a war here, make sure you place the right politicians there, have good economical deals someother place, get taxes to fight terrorism.
Is it needed in the 21st century? It is, for itself.
I have s trong belief, that we live in a world, where *rseholes run the whole show. And everyone tries to be a bigger *rsehole to their counterpart.
You can say - Russia is a threat, and Nato defends people from the " rabid bear". And the funny thing is the same thing is told in the other camp - " Nato is a threat and we must secure our borders from their bases, that circle us". Are both right or wrong?
Doesn`t matter, because "people", that want us to believe that load of gack make money.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/09/12 22:56:50
