[ExI] putin and the three pirates problem

[Aleksei Riikonen]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 3:53 AM, Brian Manning Delaney
<listsb at infinitefaculty.org> wrote:
> El 2014-03-04 19:53, Aleksei Riikonen escribió:
>
>> (Also, I personally *want* NATO to break-up, since we could
>> then have a German-led military alliance in Europe  [...].
>
> Germany's track record with its use of appreciable military
> power isn't exactly enviable.

There's no sense in arguing that that'd have anything to do with the
Germany of today, just like Americans aren't necessarily particularly
prone to supporting race-based slavery because their Founding Fathers
practiced it.


>> I see the US as being on the somewhat inevitable road of
>> becoming a very nasty plutocratic police state
>
> All industrially developed countries are on that same path. It's just more
> obvious in the case of the US, because the US is a superpower.

The plutocracy part is pretty universal, but the nastiness thing can
only really happen with large and strong countries, and not with e.g.
Iceland, since small democracies necessarily have only small power
apparatuses that can't easily get very far removed from the people.

I also think there's a specific thing here about "empires in decline".
The US is about to become an empire in decline, and such is a
circumstance particularly prone to inducing nastiness when the empire
tries to hold on to as much of its power as it can.


>> they don't really care about human rights or anything,
>
> The US, compared to other superpowers that have existed throughout history
> (no other comparison matters), has perhaps the greatest concern for human
> rights. Doesn't say much, since superpowers per definition don't NEED to
> care about others much. But still.

It is true that the US at least *had* more concern for human rights
than any other superpower has had, but I don't see how this'd be very
interesting in the present situation. Mostly this just has to do with
the US being the most recent Western superpower, anyway, and if some
other country ends up becoming the next Western superpower, they very
well might have significantly more concern for human rights, just
because of the trend of increasing respect for them that has existed
in the West at least up to now.

So there's no American exceptionalism here, just the thing that some
Western superpowers are more recent than others.


>> what with the spying on everyone and senior figures saying they'd
>> like to assassinate Snowden and so on.)
>
> All countries spy on as many people as they can. The difference with the US?
> There is a healthy skepticism towards centralized power, which makes
> critical journalism and whistle-blowing more likely. Where's the UK Snowden?
> The German Snowden?

The US has the biggest Western spy organizations, so other things
being equal, it was likely that the first Snowden happened to be an
American.

Also, I do think the Germans of today actually are much more wary of
these kinds of things than many others. They really aren't fans of the
things that were going on on their turf some decades ago, and have
semi-fresh memories of Stasi, among other things. Americans have no
such unpleasant memories of living in a surveillance state, and so are
*much* more prone to saying and feeling things like "What does
surveillance matter if you're not doing anything wrong?"


> God help us if Germany or the EU replaces the US as the world's superpower
> -- though I do think the US is on the wrong track, but so is everyone,
> ESPECIALLY Europe:
>
> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/russia-vladimir-putin-the-west-104134.html
>
> "Europe is really run by an elite with the morality of the hedge fund: Make
> money at all costs and move it offshore."

Yes, that linked article is very good actually. I've been spreading it
around as well.

I wish in no way to defend the EU, and am confident it will
disintegrate in a few decades at the latest. It is already very weak
actually, so no worries about it becoming a superpower.

I am looking forward to what we can have in Europe after the EU breaks
up, however, and don't really see any particular problems with Germany
leading the way, also as the key member in a new defense alliance that
I hope will eventually form to replace NATO in continental Europe.

-- 
Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei