Not a moderator, but welcome to the dark side.Originally Posted by Madhu
(Moderator: Should I introduce myself to the Council? I chose not to do so because I am a regular commenter on the SWJ blog).
I don't think the general increase in peace (yes, the world is more peaceful now than it's been in recorded history, and has been for some time) is necessarily a consequence of a fundamental evolution in human nature, or a consequence of US hegemony. There are a number of more pragmatic factors involved, for example:
Nuclear weapons and mutual assured destruction raised the risks of great power conflict to a hitherto unknown level. That's why the Cold War was fought by proxy: nobody had evolved beyond fighting, the probable consequences of direct conflict had simply become unacceptable.
The dissolution of imperial spheres of trade and the emergence of relatively free trade reduced a major incentive to conflict. Emerging economic players no longer need to conquer territory to gain access to resources and markets.
Commercial interdependence has reduced (not eliminated, but reduced) the incentive to fight.
There are more, of course, but overall I don't think we've become more peaceful as a race. We've just given ourselves fewer good reasons to fight and more good reasons not to.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 11-15-2011 at 04:40 AM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Welcome aboard, Madhu.
Sadly true, that...Hopefully they'll pay some attention. They tend to self fulfilling prophesizing and a lot of group think.If Dr. Pinker's thesis is correct, this should have implications for American (and other) Foreign Policy and even for our FP elite.
Yes the Americans squandered the opportunity to do good in the world. With their Presidents Wilson and FDR leading the charge to put the boot into the Brit Empire which led to uncontrolled and often chaotic decolonization.
To their credit many Americans are aware of the fact that the end result is that the world is not a better place despite their belief that they were making it so.
Your broad brush condemnation of them is more painful than most will admit.
So you will be accused of being misinformed, misguided etc ... and it will get worse (so you will need broad shoulders).
The bottom line sadly is that unlike the Brits the Americans are not mature enough as a nation to engage in robust rebate on a subject such as this. Around here you will find they can dish it out but they can't take it (and often the moderators take sides). You need to know where you are headed.
Last edited by JMA; 11-15-2011 at 05:16 AM.
We've been through this before, but at the end of WW2 the Brit Empire was an ex-parrot. it needed no boot to push it into oblivion, nor would anything Americans could have done have held it together.
Is the world not a better place? Better than what? When was it ever better than it is now? I certainly wouldn't say it's better because of Americans or America, but that doesn't mean it isn't better. We are neither scourge nor saviour, just another bunch of generally misinformed blunderers trying to muddle through.
Only to the very isolated and very thin-skinned. We've all heard far worse.
Broad shoulders might be useful. The ability to support one's arguments might be even more so.
Bring it on. I will personally request that the moderators be permissive, which may or may not accomplish anything.
What might be a more interesting robust debate would be to get a bunch of people who think America has done everything wrong (no shortage of them around) together and let them argue over what America should have done. They all seem to have quite different and generally incompatible ideas on that score, and of course they all absolutely know that they are right and the others are wrong.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Nah. He's got some good points...
Not really, most of us knew most of our failings before you or he learned of them. We probably also know of a few neither of you might think of.I doubt he will be so accused. He may not understand a random nuance or two but at least he does not flaunt ignorance.So you will be accused of being misinformed, misguided etc ... and it will get worse (so you will need broad shoulders).Heh, you're priceless -- any Moderator that tells you that you're off base as generally have several other non-Moderator posters already in many threads is taking sides?The bottom line sadly is that unlike the Brits the Americans are not mature enough as a nation to engage in robust rebate on a subject such as this. Around here you will find they can dish it out but they can't take it (and often the moderators take sides). You need to know where you are headed.
Who is it that can't engage in robust debate?
I never buy into this.
It didn't keep away either World War (and there was a lot of commercial interdependence then already, and a huge rise in it since 1870).
Bear with him Fuchs. He makes this sort of statement all the time.
I did not suggest that the power of commercial interdependence to deter war is in any way absolute: it clearly is not. It is one factor among many. Nobody would say that nations with active trade and commercial interdependence never fight: that would be silly. It's a disincentive, not an absolute bar.
Do you not think, for example, that the potential loss of the US as an export market would be a factor in any calculation China was making that might involve armed conflict with the US? Please note that I do not suggest that this makes such a course impossible, only that it would be a factor in the calculation of cost, risk, and benefit.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Dayuhan, about the special case: I don't think that a trade relationship in which China exports more than it imports (and gets paper or bits and bytes to make of for the difference) is so indispensable for China as many people in the U.S. appear to think.
The Chinese are moving toward strengthening their domestic consumption/demand. Additionally, most of their economic growth is afaik primarily in their construction sector and other domestic investments, not in export to the U.S..
About the general issue: I've heard and read the reference to economic relations as war inhibitor very often and it looks overstated to me. It's not reliable as you write and probably not even powerful. The public perception of it appears to be overstated, and taking peace for granted is not a wise move.
We gotta work for peace continually, for there's a beast in many if not all of us (at least those with balls), it's pretty primitive and inclined to use force.
The paper, bits and bytes are extremely useful to the Chinese, despite their rather hypothetical nature: they can be passed on to folks in the Middle East and Africa in return for oil, to folks in Australia for iron, etc etc.
A large percentage of their growth at this point is in construction that's increasingly speculative in nature, which is a very big problem for them, though a different issue. While they are strengthening domestic consumption, it has a long, long way to go. They remain very reliant on exports and removal of any major export market would be a real problem for them, especially if it were removed through a conflict that threatened to disrupt trade with other markets as well.
I don't recall saying that it was powerful, reliable, or even quantifiable, only that it exists. I would certainly not advise anyone to take peace for granted.
Agreed. However, we can empirically verify that we have more peace than ever before. That would suggest that we are either working more effectively at keeping peace (though I see little evidence of that) or circumstances have evolved that are more conducive to peace. If the latter, we'd want to keep track of those various circumstances and try to help them keep evolving. Obviously there is no single circumstance that assures peace, but that doesn't mean we can't make efforts to expand and continue evolutionary trends that favor peace, no matter how peripherally, over those that do not.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
The Chinese have a trade balance surplus, thus much of the paper, bits and bites still have only an imaginary value.
The tolerance for robbing other countries has declined drastically both in most countries and in gatherings of the representatives of countries.
I think that's the cause for the rareness of inter-state conflicts.
On the other hand, there weren't that many inter-state conflicts in the 40 years prior to the First World War either. There were mostly small wars far away from home and people forgot what it's like to have a foreign army on your soil and send your sons to war.
Last edited by Fuchs; 11-15-2011 at 09:53 AM.
The capacity of countries to resist being robbed has increased, and the capacity of would-be robbers to impose their will has decreased. It's gotten to the point where if someone has something you want it's generally cheaper to buy it than it is to steal it. None of that has anything to do with what anyone's representatives say in gatherings, which has little or no influence on the actual behavior of nations.
Far away from whose home, and who exactly forgot what it was like to have an occupying army around? A whole lot of people in a whole lot of places knew exactly what it was like to have an occupying army around during that period. Maybe they weren't European people, but they were still people. Every war is right at home for somebody.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Yeah, but my context was inter-state warfare, and that was kinda hinting at Americas and Europe.
Besides; I'm pretty sure that buying was cheaper than robbing back in the first half of the 20th century in regard to Europe an Americas, too. The only short-term exceptions proved to entangle nations in a major mess every time.
To some extent yes, as the rest of the world had been largely carved up and appropriated by that point... less a matter of states robbing other states than of states robbing their own overseas possessions. Not a terribly beneficial or stable arrangement either.
To the extent that you could buy, perhaps... Given the fairly rigorous protectionist walls erected to keep possessions trading with the possessor on terms advantageous to the latter, and to keep outsiders from trading within those blocs, it wasn't always easy to source imports or to find markets for exports. That's been changing, though of course we're still a long way from anything resembling a truly free market.
Only natural, I guess, that once there was no more territory left to steal on the frontier the colonizing countries would get back to fighting each other.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 11-15-2011 at 12:29 PM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Since it's bedtime in my time zone, a summary question for the next shift:
To what extent is the current high level of global peace a consequence of mediation by the UN and similar organizations, and to what extent is it a consequence of systemic evolutions that are more conducive to peace?
Or is it all because of the beneficient influence of the USA (yeah right)?
Hope y'all come up with answers before I get up.
Personally I'd have to lean toward systemic evolutions conducive to peace as the dominant factor, as the UN and similar organizations have no capacity at all as far as I can see.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
This was hardly a factor for Europe in either World War (Mussolini's land grabs were about imperial dreams, not about economy).
We may be living in a world with a high level of global peace statistically as compared to other periods but I don’t know how that actually translates substantively. In the early ‘90s I spent a year living in Guatemala as the civil war there was winding down. As grim as the combination of the history weighing on the brains of the living and ongoing impunity were, there did seem to be a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel. It turns out that light was an oncoming train. Ditto post-apartheid South Africa and post-PRI Mexico.
My knowledge of the United Nations largely amounts to a couple of personal contacts—a group of observers I played indoor football with a few times in Guatemala (good chaps all, really) and an economist with a position as a report writer at UN Headquarters (an overpaid and overtravelled lass, really, enjoying the benefits of subsidized housing and a tax treaty, to boot). But an institution that gets representatives of the governments of the world together in the same room from time to time is a systemic evolution conducive to peace, IMHO.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
By the time Italy got into the game everything of economic value within Italy's reach had already been stolen... and a land grab based on imperial dreams is still the theft of territory.
It is interesting to note that the period of relative (and very unusual) European peace between the Franco-Prussian war and WW1 coincides with a period in which much European attention was devoted to overseas expansion, and that te resumption of European war occurred as the empires ran out of new ground to conquer. Certainly one would want to be cautious about imposing an assumption of causation on that correlation, but the correlation remains interesting.
Certainly the decline of conflict among states has not meant an end to conflict within states... but conflict within states also seems measurably in decline, though there's still plenty left to go around. Latin America and Southeast Asia haven't turned into earthly paradises of peace, but they are a whole lot more peaceful than they were during the Cold War. Progress, not perfection.
A reasonable observation. I would still question the extent of the impact of that evolution. The idea of a rules-based system is terribly appealing, but the demonstrable inability of that system to enforce the rules and the oft-demonstrated ease with which those rules are ignored suggest that the system probably is not a major contributor to the evolution of peace. I wouldn't advise discarding it, but I wouldn't assign it much credit either.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I was citing the example of Iraq.
Brits and French had a much larger empires and Soviets were no less powerful than Americans. I hate to break it to you but Soviets were more popular in the third world but they were no match for American soft power.The Poll shows nothing new. I started wandering about the world outside the US in 1947 -- we were not popular at that time due to excessive wealth and some our more base cultural proclivities. That's been a constant since with some excursions for better or worse -- the Viet Nam era being a far lower point than today. So the conclusion is not erroneous, it is actual and it is pervasive. My question is how much of that lack of trust and / or liking is due simply to the relative size, economic power, cultural influence and willingness to get involved in the affairs of others and perceptions as opposed to real knowledge?
Jews were very hesitant in joining the forces in WW1 and too less in numbers. Hence, the resentment for Jews.You and I may believe that willingness to intrude to be a part of the problem but it seems to be a function of both that 'free commerce' aspect and having the desire to eliminate threats...Why what? That's a rather erroneous reading of history; his shortsighted mistreatment of the Jews led to their being unwilling to serve in the Wehrmacht -- they weren't welcome in the SS --and that was a self created problem that did not exist in WW I when many Jews fought for Germany. Hitler's insanity with reference to the Jews caused a problem that was not in the interests of Germany, it's that simple. They're still suffering for and from that.Depends on your viewpoint, doesn't it? The French, for example might disagree on the military angle -- though they tend to discount it; no one likes to be obligated to another for assisting them with a problem they should have been able to handle themselves.
It's simple. You call animal control when a snake enters your home, but doesn't mean that animal control should set up a tent in front yard and wait for the next snake to enter.So might the Koreans, a nation where the generation that recalls the 1950-53 War is very supportive of the US and the younger generations are downright unfriendly. Way of the world...
Other concerned parties are equally responsible for the mess. As a citizen of a nation with faulty map lines, I can assure you that Nehru was equally responsible as Jinaah, Mountabatten and Mao.I merely note that a number of trouble spots in the world are a British 'lines on a map' legacy, to include Kashmir -- and much of Africa and the Middle East.
Brits never came to liberate anyone, they came to conquer. But they did some good things too which includes social reforms, educational infrastructure and railways etc. Despite being the conquers, I have yet to find to an instance where drunk British soldiers wiped out an entire village of women and children. The most atrocious incident that took place in the Indian subcontinent was Jallianwala Bagh massacre. But even they never pulled off an Abu Gharib or Mai Lai, especially at the time when there was no such thing as human rights.Aside from Dayuhan's good example, the waste that was Crimea (or the closely following Mutiny...) and the imposition of Empire trade rules among others, the British did indeed do a "far better job" with Pax Brittanica than we have with trying to do a Pax Americana * -- but that wasn't the question; that was what other nation has done more worldwide good than harm over those years...Yes it is, indeed. One of the problems with that approach is that one sometimes sees a potential threat when there is none and sometimes doesn't note one that exists and thus has to scramble and be clumsy at correcting that oversight.
Never said nor implied it.
In what world, Brits were more "evil" than the Gaznavis and Aurangzebs they replaced. The 22% you mentioned, much of it belonged to these rulers and they for certain were not Indians. For the sake of minority votes, Dr. Singh may not want to point this out but a common man wasn't living with the fear of being slaughtered under Brits or a woman wasn't supposed to be raped because she was a Hindu or Sikh.
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