4 ms·

The rules based order is mostly a fabrication of recent history. Perhaps between the fall of the Soviet Union, China becoming more open, and the general peace a

by YZF 9mo ago

The rules based order is mostly a fabrication of recent history. Perhaps between the fall of the Soviet Union, China becoming more open, and the general peace and prosperity it seemed like it existed. Politics between countries has always been around interests. Countries have no interest in giving up their sovereignty. They may pretend to respect these "rules" when it suits them and then ignore them when it doesn't. Everyone is focused on how "bad" the US is but a) the US has always more or less done whatever it wants b) Russia and China (and many others) have never even pretended to play or accept these "rules". Canada's Carney whines about "international order" when just a few years ago China simply abducted Canadians in response to the supposed "orderly" arrest of the Huawei CFO to be extradited to the US. So Canada basically abducts the CFO of a major Chinese company and China abducts Canadians in retaliation and that's a rules based order to who exactly? And we can put together an endless list of an endless number of countries. So when exactly was there ever a rules based order except as a tool for countries to bully each other and for the poorer dictator led countries to try and get a seat at the table because they can vote in the UN general assembly.

cjfd 9mo ago
Incorrect. The rules based order was first attempted after the first world war and then created after the second one. These are lessen that have been bought with blood. Lots of blood. Megaliters of it. The incredible stupidity of throwing that away is absolutely disgusting.
- YZF 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order "The nature of the LIO, as well as its very existence, has been debated by scholars." Nobody is throwing anything away and that thing you think they're throwing away didn't really exist.
  - cjfd 9mo ago
    Whether or not a 'LIO' exists is not that interesting to me. What is interesting is what actually exists and what has happened in history. What actually exists is an enormous shock after, for instance, world war one where the question arose how it is possible that basically an entire generation of young men was slaughtered. E.g., every small village in France has a memorial of the fallen soldiers during world war one. For many decades after the war commemoration were/are still being held. It used to be that competing for territory was just the normal thing countries did. Then, it became clear that this has a potentially enormous cost in human lives. The obvious conclusion for people who are not sleepwalking through life and through history, is that any political leader who advocates for a change in country borders and does so much as hint to violent means of doing so is totally deranged and immoral. A similar shock has gone through the world after world war two, which, for instance, lead to the creation of the declaration of universal human rights. Among the decent public, it is also concluded that a violation of human rights is deranged in immoral.
    - YZF 9mo ago
      I'm not sure how this relates to the discussion. I agree most countries, certainly western countries, have realized that waging the kind of wars like WW-I and WW-II is not a good idea. But there have been a lot of war and killing anyways since the world wars and there have been a lot of new borders redrawn and countries formed. In more recent times we have Putin invading Ukraine and the general instability of the post cold war Eastern Europe. So the calculus has changed for many reasons. But "new order" is not one of them. The so called new order was a result of the calculus changing, not the other way around. Countries fight for power in other ways and other societal changes also influence their decisions. I.e. you are confusing cause and effect. Now we have different dynamics, not a collapse of world order, things have shifted very slightly. "The end of the world as we know it" gets a lot of clicks on social media but it's not like we're suddenly having WW-I all over again and it's not like that order you thought was absolute really was. It's just that's how the alignment of interests landed.
- farss 9mo ago
  The "rules-based international order" was a fiction popularized by US policy makers who wanted to quietly substitute it for international law, so they could violate said laws, while still vaguely gesturing at moral authority.
  - YZF 9mo ago
    International law was and is also a fiction. We have various conventions and agreements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law "In the 1940s through the 1970s, the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and decolonisation across the world resulted in the establishment of scores of newly independent states.[67] As these former colonies became their own states, they adopted European views of international law.[68] A flurry of institutions, ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) to the World Health Organization furthered the development of a multilateralist approach as states chose to compromise on sovereignty to benefit from international cooperation.[69] Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing focus on the phenomenon of globalisation and on protecting human rights on the global scale, particularly when minorities or indigenous communities are involved, as concerns are raised that globalisation may be increasing inequality in the international legal system.[70]"
    - tpm 9mo ago
      > In the 1940s through the 1970s, the dissolution of the Soviet bloc There was no dissolution of Soviet bloc during that time.
    - camgunz 9mo ago
      Laws aren't fictitious just because people/countries break them. No one writes a law thinking "that settles that, no more embezzling." Laws simply tell you how that system works: you embezzle, FBI arrests you, you get tried, etc. Also the US always made a big deal about not joining various treaties, with their reasoning explicitly being "we actually plan to do a lot of things that would violate that treaty." In that sense, that shows the US actually had respect for those institutions. Also, the west benefited from this arrangement. Most western countries could benefit from the rules based order, and when they needed a little pump, the US broke some rules and brought home a treat for the home team. You might argue this undermines the whole enterprise, but my counterargument is this is the longest period of relative peace and prosperity humankind has ever experienced, so although it wasn't perfect, it was a huge improvement.
- JPLeRouzic 9mo ago
  I acknowledge that the 20th century was marked by much bloodshed, but this wasn't limited to the world wars and it continues violently into the 21st century. If the world is governed by rules, why does the United States maintain a considerable number of military bases around the world, far exceeding the total number of military bases of all other countries combined? Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries?
  - Propelloni 9mo ago
    > If the world is governed by rules, why does the United States maintain a considerable number of military bases around the world, far exceeding the total number of military bases of all other countries combined? It's the other way around. Rules are tools of peace. No peace, no rules. But if you want peace then you have to be ready to wage war. It's called deterrence and the EU is learning this just now, again. That's also one reason why the USA has been called the world police... because it was true.* If nobody enforces the rules any more, things break down and we close in on violence. It is plain to see on the global scale, e.g. Russia's war against Ukraine, and also the domestic scale, e.g. ICE's violence against their own citizens in the USA. > Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries? The US military budget is about three times that of the EU or China's, or about a third of all military spending on the globe. Obviously, this is much higher than any single entity, but not all other countries combined. * Frankly, being the world police has had a lot of benefits for the USA. Why they are abdicating this position to run a protection racket instead is for wiser people than me to answer.
    - YZF 9mo ago
      You're confusing rules with treaties, agreements, and balance of power. Yes- When there is one super power in the world and it says if you don't behave a certain way we're gonna bomb the heck out of you, or boycott you, you get a certain behavior. Even then you might get some actors (like North Korea, or Iran, Yemen, Russia, China and more) that have no problem openly defying and challenging the super power to some extent. When the balance shifts and you have other blocks with more power that feel comfortable in defying that super power (like China or Russia today) then you see that changing. There are no "absolute" rules. There are power dynamics, countries, interests, politics. Rules can exist only within a structure that can enforce them, like a country.
tpm 9mo ago
> Russia and China (and many others) have never even pretended to play or accept these "rules". This false. They have pretended to play by the rules, and when breaking them, to at least manufacture some pretext, or to deny it was a state activity at all. One example I can give you is that when invading Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet Union convinced a few Czechoslovak politicians to write a letter inviting the forces for "brotherly help", thus manufacturing a case that it's not really an invasion. They didn't have to do it, the force differential was overwhelming, but they did it because they could point at the letter on international stage. All this may seem a bit pointless but binding them in international structures brought interesting fruit in the wake of Helsinki conference on human rights. After that they were forced to at least somewhat follow the signed documents which lead to significantly better conditions to dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. And there are many examples like this, when pointing at international rules actually made things better. So let's not throw that away.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Russia fabricated an attack on Russia by Ukraine before invading Ukraine. So this is still occurring.
  - temp8830 9mo ago
    And you just fabricated this whole thing. By the way, if that was an attack by Ukraine on Russia, then you just accepted that Donbass is part of Russia, and has been for some time.
  - tpm 9mo ago
    Possibly, though that was perhaps more for internal reasons, as at the time it was afaik illegal to start an attacking war per Russian law.
- panarky 9mo ago
  >> Canada's Carney whines about "international order" when just a few years ago ... > They have pretended to play by the rules @YZF is unwittingly agreeing with Carney. The rules-based order is partially a fiction. Relevant snips from Carney's Davos speech. "The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source." "For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection." "We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false ..." "This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes." When the US invaded Iraq, it at least pretended it was following the rules. It appealed to the UN for approval, it justified the invasion in the name of freedom and democracy. It was all bullshit, but at least the US sustained the myth of a system of rules and a moral order. But the US no longer pretends. It invades Venezuela and publicly states it was all about oil. So even the pretense is gone now, and the benefits that came from pretending are gone. That's the "rupture" Carney is talking about, that sustaining the myths is not longer useful, so it's time to stop pretending.

by YZF 9mo ago

cjfd 9mo ago

Incorrect. The rules based order was first attempted after the first world war and then created after the second one. These are lessen that have been bought with blood. Lots of blood. Megaliters of it. The incredible stupidity of throwing that away is absolutely disgusting.

YZF 9mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order "The nature of the LIO, as well as its very existence, has been debated by scholars." Nobody is throwing anything away and that thing you think they're throwing away didn't really exist.
- cjfd 9mo ago
  Whether or not a 'LIO' exists is not that interesting to me. What is interesting is what actually exists and what has happened in history. What actually exists is an enormous shock after, for instance, world war one where the question arose how it is possible that basically an entire generation of young men was slaughtered. E.g., every small village in France has a memorial of the fallen soldiers during world war one. For many decades after the war commemoration were/are still being held. It used to be that competing for territory was just the normal thing countries did. Then, it became clear that this has a potentially enormous cost in human lives. The obvious conclusion for people who are not sleepwalking through life and through history, is that any political leader who advocates for a change in country borders and does so much as hint to violent means of doing so is totally deranged and immoral. A similar shock has gone through the world after world war two, which, for instance, lead to the creation of the declaration of universal human rights. Among the decent public, it is also concluded that a violation of human rights is deranged in immoral.
  - YZF 9mo ago
    I'm not sure how this relates to the discussion. I agree most countries, certainly western countries, have realized that waging the kind of wars like WW-I and WW-II is not a good idea. But there have been a lot of war and killing anyways since the world wars and there have been a lot of new borders redrawn and countries formed. In more recent times we have Putin invading Ukraine and the general instability of the post cold war Eastern Europe. So the calculus has changed for many reasons. But "new order" is not one of them. The so called new order was a result of the calculus changing, not the other way around. Countries fight for power in other ways and other societal changes also influence their decisions. I.e. you are confusing cause and effect. Now we have different dynamics, not a collapse of world order, things have shifted very slightly. "The end of the world as we know it" gets a lot of clicks on social media but it's not like we're suddenly having WW-I all over again and it's not like that order you thought was absolute really was. It's just that's how the alignment of interests landed.
farss 9mo ago
The "rules-based international order" was a fiction popularized by US policy makers who wanted to quietly substitute it for international law, so they could violate said laws, while still vaguely gesturing at moral authority.
- YZF 9mo ago
  International law was and is also a fiction. We have various conventions and agreements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law "In the 1940s through the 1970s, the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and decolonisation across the world resulted in the establishment of scores of newly independent states.[67] As these former colonies became their own states, they adopted European views of international law.[68] A flurry of institutions, ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) to the World Health Organization furthered the development of a multilateralist approach as states chose to compromise on sovereignty to benefit from international cooperation.[69] Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing focus on the phenomenon of globalisation and on protecting human rights on the global scale, particularly when minorities or indigenous communities are involved, as concerns are raised that globalisation may be increasing inequality in the international legal system.[70]"
  - tpm 9mo ago
    > In the 1940s through the 1970s, the dissolution of the Soviet bloc There was no dissolution of Soviet bloc during that time.
  - camgunz 9mo ago
    Laws aren't fictitious just because people/countries break them. No one writes a law thinking "that settles that, no more embezzling." Laws simply tell you how that system works: you embezzle, FBI arrests you, you get tried, etc. Also the US always made a big deal about not joining various treaties, with their reasoning explicitly being "we actually plan to do a lot of things that would violate that treaty." In that sense, that shows the US actually had respect for those institutions. Also, the west benefited from this arrangement. Most western countries could benefit from the rules based order, and when they needed a little pump, the US broke some rules and brought home a treat for the home team. You might argue this undermines the whole enterprise, but my counterargument is this is the longest period of relative peace and prosperity humankind has ever experienced, so although it wasn't perfect, it was a huge improvement.
JPLeRouzic 9mo ago
I acknowledge that the 20th century was marked by much bloodshed, but this wasn't limited to the world wars and it continues violently into the 21st century. If the world is governed by rules, why does the United States maintain a considerable number of military bases around the world, far exceeding the total number of military bases of all other countries combined? Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries?
- Propelloni 9mo ago
  > If the world is governed by rules, why does the United States maintain a considerable number of military bases around the world, far exceeding the total number of military bases of all other countries combined? It's the other way around. Rules are tools of peace. No peace, no rules. But if you want peace then you have to be ready to wage war. It's called deterrence and the EU is learning this just now, again. That's also one reason why the USA has been called the world police... because it was true.* If nobody enforces the rules any more, things break down and we close in on violence. It is plain to see on the global scale, e.g. Russia's war against Ukraine, and also the domestic scale, e.g. ICE's violence against their own citizens in the USA. > Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries? The US military budget is about three times that of the EU or China's, or about a third of all military spending on the globe. Obviously, this is much higher than any single entity, but not all other countries combined. * Frankly, being the world police has had a lot of benefits for the USA. Why they are abdicating this position to run a protection racket instead is for wiser people than me to answer.
  - YZF 9mo ago
    You're confusing rules with treaties, agreements, and balance of power. Yes- When there is one super power in the world and it says if you don't behave a certain way we're gonna bomb the heck out of you, or boycott you, you get a certain behavior. Even then you might get some actors (like North Korea, or Iran, Yemen, Russia, China and more) that have no problem openly defying and challenging the super power to some extent. When the balance shifts and you have other blocks with more power that feel comfortable in defying that super power (like China or Russia today) then you see that changing. There are no "absolute" rules. There are power dynamics, countries, interests, politics. Rules can exist only within a structure that can enforce them, like a country.

tpm 9mo ago

> Russia and China (and many others) have never even pretended to play or accept these "rules". This false. They have pretended to play by the rules, and when breaking them, to at least manufacture some pretext, or to deny it was a state activity at all. One example I can give you is that when invading Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet Union convinced a few Czechoslovak politicians to write a letter inviting the forces for "brotherly help", thus manufacturing a case that it's not really an invasion. They didn't have to do it, the force differential was overwhelming, but they did it because they could point at the letter on international stage. All this may seem a bit pointless but binding them in international structures brought interesting fruit in the wake of Helsinki conference on human rights. After that they were forced to at least somewhat follow the signed documents which lead to significantly better conditions to dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. And there are many examples like this, when pointing at international rules actually made things better. So let's not throw that away.

direwolf20 9mo ago
Russia fabricated an attack on Russia by Ukraine before invading Ukraine. So this is still occurring.
- temp8830 9mo ago
  And you just fabricated this whole thing. By the way, if that was an attack by Ukraine on Russia, then you just accepted that Donbass is part of Russia, and has been for some time.
- tpm 9mo ago
  Possibly, though that was perhaps more for internal reasons, as at the time it was afaik illegal to start an attacking war per Russian law.
panarky 9mo ago
>> Canada's Carney whines about "international order" when just a few years ago ... > They have pretended to play by the rules @YZF is unwittingly agreeing with Carney. The rules-based order is partially a fiction. Relevant snips from Carney's Davos speech. "The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source." "For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection." "We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false ..." "This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes." When the US invaded Iraq, it at least pretended it was following the rules. It appealed to the UN for approval, it justified the invasion in the name of freedom and democracy. It was all bullshit, but at least the US sustained the myth of a system of rules and a moral order. But the US no longer pretends. It invades Venezuela and publicly states it was all about oil. So even the pretense is gone now, and the benefits that came from pretending are gone. That's the "rupture" Carney is talking about, that sustaining the myths is not longer useful, so it's time to stop pretending.