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>why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth Enlightened self interest. Those "insignificant" islands a

>why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth Enlightened self interest. Those "insignificant" islands are generally speaking countries. By showing respect for the rule of law even in situations where they could easily overwhelm with force or economic power smaller nations, the larger ones reinforce that the law matters. The larger countries use as a defense the idea that something is an "internal matter", IE it's no one else's business. If they bully their way into other smaller countries' business, then they open themselves up to the same interference. Might does not make one right. Law does.

tw04 7y ago
That's a pretty noble, if naive reason. "Rule of law" stops where economic interests begin and always has. Rule of law didn't stop the invasion of Iraq. Rule of law hasn't stopped the countless CIA backed coups in South America. Rule of law didn't stop funding/promoting the Arab spring. Larger countries constantly bully smaller ones and will continue to do so anytime it's economically convenient. The reason Grand Cayman exists is because the people with money that control global politics want it to exist. That's the beginning and end of the story. There's a reason the Panama Papers went away quietly despite the assassination of the human who exposed it...
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > Rule of law didn't stop the invasion of Iraq. Rule of law hasn't stopped the countless CIA backed coups in South America. Rule of law didn't stop funding/promoting the Arab spring. These places were all considered "rogue states" at some point, i.e. places that openly neglected the very same rule of law which protects others. Being a 'rogue' state may leave you open to being bullied, but that's hardly inconsistent with rule of law being very important.
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    "Rule of law" doesn't mean picking and choosing whom it applies to. Saddam was our best buddy when he was using mustard gas in Khuzestan against the right people. International politics is rule by power rather than rule of law. The person you're replying to got it right.
  - maximente 7y ago
    what criteria were/are used to make that consideration? because it sure as hell seems the US and Israel qualify, at least recently, for largely subjective definitions that i can come up with. alternatively if there are objective definitions, let's see them and decide for ourselves. it seems, then, the only thing stopping these rogue states are powers or coalitions of powers with the potential to dominate them (or i guess survive) via conflict, either via subterfuge or military means, and the will to do so. put more simply, reigning in Iraq or Nicaragua is a hell of a lot easier than Israel. why is that, if not for power differentials?
  - freeflight 7y ago
    > These places were all considered "rogue states" at some point, i.e. places that openly neglected the very same rule of law which protects others. That still doesn't change the reality that the US broke international laws [0] under the pretext of supposedly enforcing them. And it did so in a very calculated and premeditated way [1] that justified everything on a domestic legal basis, while completely disregarding international law and institutions like they do not matter at all. Imagine if China would pass a law declaring how their soldiers and government officials can't be held accountable by any international body, how would that be framed by US media? Yet in the US, this has been established legal reality for close to two decades and plenty of US Americans defend it like it's the most normal thing in the world due to their internalized "exceptionalism". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
- turtlesdown11 7y ago
  >There's a reason the Panama Papers went away quietly despite the assassination of the human who exposed it. The human who exposed it is still anonymous. A journalist who wrote using the Panama Papers as a source was murdered, most likely by local Maltese exposed by the journalist. There has been $1B plus in taxes recovered as a result of the publication.
  - tw04 7y ago
    >There has been $1B plus in taxes recovered as a result of the publication. How many people are in prison? How many middle class folks get by with a slap on the wrist for tax evasion?
    - rswail 7y ago
      Most people that get caught for tax avoidance get punished civilly (fines etc). Corporates can't be put in prison and piercing that veil takes a lot of work. Getting the money disgorged is a good step.
- mola 7y ago
  > funding/promoting the Arab spring. Details? By whom? What for? Is this claim based on anything?
maximente 7y ago
this doesn't pass the smell test for me. first, we're talking about powerful vs. not so let's not use area as a proxy for power; that's not appropriate. given that, history is rife with examples of powerful nations basically looking the other way when other countries not in their playpen get "bullied". these large international bodies e.g. League of Nations, UN have all failed generally when powerful entities decide they want to shake things up. individuals countries, obligated by treaty, also failed when e.g. Germany decided it wanted to chow down on "certain" parts of Europe. consider pre-WW2, Israel, what the US has done post-WW2, China/Xinjiang, etc. etc.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > these large international bodies e.g. League of Nations, UN have all failed generally when large, powerful entities decide they want to shake things up. The UNSC is actually a pretty successful institution, all things considered. It gives "shakeups" a reasonable chance of being defused, and that's good enough most of the time. Enlightened self interest has to do the rest, of course - so failures will occur, but they ought to be rare. And Nazi Germany, the PRC in Xinjang etc. aren't exactly models of the rule of law!
- mola 7y ago
  What about Israel? Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate. when a chance for peace came, it gave these lands back. Did you see a map recently? Do you grasp the size of Israel vs it's neighbors? (The Sinai desert, which Israel gave back to Egypt as part of the peace agreement is x3 larger than Israel) You can't clamp together imperialists like US Germany and China with Israel defense strategy, that's just weird. Now don't get me wrong, some israeli leaders did/do crappy things, but never at the scale of China US or Germany, or for that matter any colonial country. It's a whole different scale.
  - wahern 7y ago
    > Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate. That's not strictly true. You're forgetting the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the first part of which was effectively a civil war where there's ample evidence of Jewish militias, with premeditation, taking part in land grabs every bit as much as the Arab militias. In the West and especially in America this aspect is overlooked and even denied, as it doesn't fit the narrative of Israel as the underdog. Conversely, in the Muslim world this is pretty much the only aspect they want to discuss, for similarly self-serving reasons.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gwright 7y ago
I think it is a mistake to think that relations between sovereign nations is based on "rule of law". Yes there are legal principles involved, but mostly, sovereign nations deal with other sovereign nations via realpolitik. On the other hand, I think that within a sovereign nation the adherence to "rule of law" has a more substantial meaning and relevance.
- mola 7y ago
  Realpolitik is a sham, it got us two world wars. After these, rule of law became, for a short prosperous time, more dominant, at least in Western Europe. These things (laws, ability to peacefully cooperate, ethics) are like religion, if you believe in them, they, for all intent and purposes, exist. But we are infused with an ideology of rational distrust, because a small amount of people can't mentally grasp any alternative to power. so we dig our own graves.

tw04 7y ago

That's a pretty noble, if naive reason. "Rule of law" stops where economic interests begin and always has. Rule of law didn't stop the invasion of Iraq. Rule of law hasn't stopped the countless CIA backed coups in South America. Rule of law didn't stop funding/promoting the Arab spring. Larger countries constantly bully smaller ones and will continue to do so anytime it's economically convenient. The reason Grand Cayman exists is because the people with money that control global politics want it to exist. That's the beginning and end of the story. There's a reason the Panama Papers went away quietly despite the assassination of the human who exposed it...

zozbot234 7y ago
> Rule of law didn't stop the invasion of Iraq. Rule of law hasn't stopped the countless CIA backed coups in South America. Rule of law didn't stop funding/promoting the Arab spring. These places were all considered "rogue states" at some point, i.e. places that openly neglected the very same rule of law which protects others. Being a 'rogue' state may leave you open to being bullied, but that's hardly inconsistent with rule of law being very important.
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  "Rule of law" doesn't mean picking and choosing whom it applies to. Saddam was our best buddy when he was using mustard gas in Khuzestan against the right people. International politics is rule by power rather than rule of law. The person you're replying to got it right.
- maximente 7y ago
  what criteria were/are used to make that consideration? because it sure as hell seems the US and Israel qualify, at least recently, for largely subjective definitions that i can come up with. alternatively if there are objective definitions, let's see them and decide for ourselves. it seems, then, the only thing stopping these rogue states are powers or coalitions of powers with the potential to dominate them (or i guess survive) via conflict, either via subterfuge or military means, and the will to do so. put more simply, reigning in Iraq or Nicaragua is a hell of a lot easier than Israel. why is that, if not for power differentials?
- freeflight 7y ago
  > These places were all considered "rogue states" at some point, i.e. places that openly neglected the very same rule of law which protects others. That still doesn't change the reality that the US broke international laws [0] under the pretext of supposedly enforcing them. And it did so in a very calculated and premeditated way [1] that justified everything on a domestic legal basis, while completely disregarding international law and institutions like they do not matter at all. Imagine if China would pass a law declaring how their soldiers and government officials can't be held accountable by any international body, how would that be framed by US media? Yet in the US, this has been established legal reality for close to two decades and plenty of US Americans defend it like it's the most normal thing in the world due to their internalized "exceptionalism". [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
turtlesdown11 7y ago
>There's a reason the Panama Papers went away quietly despite the assassination of the human who exposed it. The human who exposed it is still anonymous. A journalist who wrote using the Panama Papers as a source was murdered, most likely by local Maltese exposed by the journalist. There has been $1B plus in taxes recovered as a result of the publication.
- tw04 7y ago
  >There has been $1B plus in taxes recovered as a result of the publication. How many people are in prison? How many middle class folks get by with a slap on the wrist for tax evasion?
  - rswail 7y ago
    Most people that get caught for tax avoidance get punished civilly (fines etc). Corporates can't be put in prison and piercing that veil takes a lot of work. Getting the money disgorged is a good step.
mola 7y ago
> funding/promoting the Arab spring. Details? By whom? What for? Is this claim based on anything?

maximente 7y ago

this doesn't pass the smell test for me. first, we're talking about powerful vs. not so let's not use area as a proxy for power; that's not appropriate. given that, history is rife with examples of powerful nations basically looking the other way when other countries not in their playpen get "bullied". these large international bodies e.g. League of Nations, UN have all failed generally when powerful entities decide they want to shake things up. individuals countries, obligated by treaty, also failed when e.g. Germany decided it wanted to chow down on "certain" parts of Europe. consider pre-WW2, Israel, what the US has done post-WW2, China/Xinjiang, etc. etc.

zozbot234 7y ago
> these large international bodies e.g. League of Nations, UN have all failed generally when large, powerful entities decide they want to shake things up. The UNSC is actually a pretty successful institution, all things considered. It gives "shakeups" a reasonable chance of being defused, and that's good enough most of the time. Enlightened self interest has to do the rest, of course - so failures will occur, but they ought to be rare. And Nazi Germany, the PRC in Xinjang etc. aren't exactly models of the rule of law!
mola 7y ago
What about Israel? Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate. when a chance for peace came, it gave these lands back. Did you see a map recently? Do you grasp the size of Israel vs it's neighbors? (The Sinai desert, which Israel gave back to Egypt as part of the peace agreement is x3 larger than Israel) You can't clamp together imperialists like US Germany and China with Israel defense strategy, that's just weird. Now don't get me wrong, some israeli leaders did/do crappy things, but never at the scale of China US or Germany, or for that matter any colonial country. It's a whole different scale.
- wahern 7y ago
  > Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate. That's not strictly true. You're forgetting the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the first part of which was effectively a civil war where there's ample evidence of Jewish militias, with premeditation, taking part in land grabs every bit as much as the Arab militias. In the West and especially in America this aspect is overlooked and even denied, as it doesn't fit the narrative of Israel as the underdog. Conversely, in the Muslim world this is pretty much the only aspect they want to discuss, for similarly self-serving reasons.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gwright 7y ago

I think it is a mistake to think that relations between sovereign nations is based on "rule of law". Yes there are legal principles involved, but mostly, sovereign nations deal with other sovereign nations via realpolitik. On the other hand, I think that within a sovereign nation the adherence to "rule of law" has a more substantial meaning and relevance.

mola 7y ago
Realpolitik is a sham, it got us two world wars. After these, rule of law became, for a short prosperous time, more dominant, at least in Western Europe. These things (laws, ability to peacefully cooperate, ethics) are like religion, if you believe in them, they, for all intent and purposes, exist. But we are infused with an ideology of rational distrust, because a small amount of people can't mentally grasp any alternative to power. so we dig our own graves.