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What I hear you saying is essentially "If nations don't react to large scale genocide, then they won't react to mere harm to economic interests" - do I understa
by PeterisP 5y ago
What I hear you saying is essentially "If nations don't react to large scale genocide, then they won't react to mere harm to economic interests" - do I understand you correctly?
Because if that's the case, then I think you are extremely mistaken, because all the history evidence shows that the major nations care much more about their geopolitical interests than humanitarian factors even to the scale of genocide. The world has repeatedly ignored genocide while at the same time violently reacting to relatively tiny economic or strategic threats! Cambodia, Rwanda, etc... Heck, the world definitely would have let Hitler get away with Holocaust if they weren't already in war with Germany.
I'm not trying to downplay anything, what I'm saying is that the scale of atrocities is irrelevant because even if China or anyone else would do public horrific torture-murder of most of their population, it would still have less likelihood of triggering an intervention than if they threatened the USA network of satellites; It's very, very plausible for a genocide not to trigger a reaction but for an economic threat to "do it". I'd rather say the opposite - genocide will get a reaction if and only if there other (strategic/economic/political) factors that make an intervention desirable; at least that's how it has always been in practice.