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This feels wrong, but disarmement works when all parties willfully participate in it. All you need is one foul player for this path to fail. Before WWII, Germa
by Juliate 6y ago
This feels wrong, but disarmement works when all parties willfully participate in it. All you need is one foul player for this path to fail.
Before WWII, Germany was forbidden from remaking an army. It still did. Where Europe & US could have played deterrence by forcing Germany to stop, they preferred to appease things. We all know what happened.
When you're in front of a bully, you might talk first and ask them once to turn it down. If that tactic doesn't work, disarmament is obedience.
- runarberg 6y ago> When you're in front of a bully... I think it is a mistake to anthropomorphize nation states this way. Explaining international relations in terms of personal relations is misleading at best. A bully does not control a nuclear arsenal, nation states do.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoGiven that Russia continues to behave as a bully (Georgia and Ukraine, at a minimum), I see exactly nothing wrong with calling them a bully.
- runarberg 6y agoThat is fine, but problems arise when you start talking policy in an anthropomorphized context. Sure Russia is behaving like a bully, but that doesn’t mean the UK and other NATO members should call it’s parents and have Russia suspended from school.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoObviously. But when people call Russia a bully, I rather doubt that they're anthropomorphizing them to that degree. And calling them a bully gives a convenient shorthand for both describing their behavior and stating that it's problematic.