8 ms·
There's only one equation in international politics, POWER. There's nothing wrong or right, there's only power.
by sidcool 13y ago
There's only one equation in international politics, POWER. There's nothing wrong or right, there's only power.
- milfot 13y agothat doesn't make it right..
- sidcool 13y agoYou are right, that doesn't. But history won't remember that. History will consider the powerful and the victorious as right. There's no Karma checker.
- milfot 13y agoHistory may now be being written by different people than in previous eras. In oz, 100 years or so of pro British army brainwashing was undone with one line in one movie.. shoot straight, ya bastards. its not about karma. what is right resonates.
- flyinRyan 13y agoWhat movie was this? I'd like to hear more about this.
- shabble 13y agoAt a guess, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_Morant_%28film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_Morant_%28film%29
- sidcool 13y agoThanks for your response. I humbly disagree with you though. There are many instances where heinous acts by the powerful have gone unpunished. Many of them by the US and Britain. They have had no repercussions on the perpetrators because of power.
- Dewie 13y agoThis is the Digital Age, not the age of the scribes. History will be laid out in much more excruciating, and correct, detail. People might have to do some work to find the right pieces in the sea of information, but it will be there for those that want to know the truth.
- osivertsson 13y agoCurrent US foreign policy is short-sighted. There is more to power than force. When the brightest minds of the young Latin American population in 5-10 years time ponders an international career in the US or China, things like this will nudge a few more people to China instead. This could make a huge difference in the long-term. Big leaps can be made by relatively small teams of people.
- eliasmacpherson 13y agodomestic policy too, the land of the free isn't so attractive to the potential immigrant as it once was. I don't think China is going to be filling the void though.
- tanzam75 13y agoChina does not have to win for the United States to lose. The talented person might go to Europe, or to Canada. Or he might stay home and contribute towards the economy of his native land.
- panacea 13y agoIs it even useful to talk about 'US foreign policy' anymore? I mean, I generally hold Conspiracy theorists in marginal disdain, but aren't we seeing the machinations of a shadow authority usually beyond the concrete knowledge of the electorate in operation? Either it's incompetence, or ruse, or a 'not-giving-a-fuck' if we know that the intelligence agencies are above the law and can act with near global impunity. whelp. I should shut up. Probably?
- joonix 13y agoThere is the good part of US government staffed by great people. One example is the State Department. I imagine they are furious over this. Then there is the shadow, rogue part which is the intelligence community, full of people with paranoid delusions who will skirt the law at-will because it's for "national security."
- Zigurd 13y agoWe are setting a great example for China.
- toyg 13y agoThat's a pre-WWII view, a hobbesian view of Leviathans wrestling for power and resources across the globe. Funnily enough, the US government itself pushed to overcome that view after WWII, by instituting the Nuremberg tribunal: they flat-out invented "international law" as we know it today, introducing the concept of a "law of humanity" that didn't know borders. This was done against the will of European rulers, who knew it would have come back to haunt them one day (which it did, when they were forced to dismantle their colonial empires). Today, power is just one of the various factors of international relations. The fact that subsequent US governments have been hell-bent into ignoring this, will count against them whenever the inevitable redde rationem comes, be it at the hands of crazy Middle-Easterners or fed-up Europeans. History is a harsh judge.
- arethuza 13y agoI suspect you may be thinking of the "Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT)" which was not a US only effort - it had judges from the UK, US, France and the Soviet Union, indeed the President of the Tribunal was Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, a UK judge. After the International Military Tribunal there were US-led trials at Nuremberg but there were lots of different sets of trials held by the Allies in their parts of Germany and also by countries like Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsequent_Nuremberg_Trials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsequent_Nuremberg_Trials NB The IMT was in the US zone and did benefit a lot from the material support of the US.
- toyg 13y agoOf course the IMT was a joint effort, it was unthinkable not to be; still, the initiative was mostly American (and from Soviets, to be honest, always sensitive to a bit of good propaganda). Churchill (with other "traditionalists") was much more inclined to old-school measures. It turns out that the IMT was a fantastic idea, probably a bit too successful -- it made more difficult for nation states to (ab)use their military forces, at least until the end of the Cold War.
- eshvk 13y ago
- peterjancelis 13y agoTrue, but a statesman realizes that you gather more power the less you use it.