RES: Ugly Ugly Ugly

Alexandre Fenelon afenelon at zaz.com.br
Wed Mar 26 19:47:25 PST 2003


Which won't by itself lead to saner policy. Look at Israel.

-In the long run, decline will eventually led to saner policies.

That's absolutely true. But things are different now. We anti-interventionists who preferred alternatives to war were a tiny minority then. Now we're a majority of both the left and the policy making elite. The combination will change the agenda.

IFF we survive these guys, they will have done us a favor by finally revealing the world the evil consequences of the policy of creeping unilateralism legitimated by human rights discourse that we've been following ever since Somalia. If human rights means anything it means a framework of international law. And if international law is ever to mean anything, it requires an international law-making body with democratic legitimacy. Which we wever never had except in our imagination. But which we could.

-I don´t know. It isn´t achiavable when 2 or 3 countries have enough -weapons to estroy all the others....

No it's not. The balance of powers brought us World Wars I and II and the Cold War. We can do better than that.

-Which in turn represented a dramatic threat to capitalist order and led to -socialist revolutions and the collapse of colonial empires. As far as you -want to defeat the capitalist order, balance of power is better.

Lastly, a military balance of power is simply impossible at the moment. And a world in which it would be possible in 20 years would be a world of 20 years of unchecked arms racing, which is the last thing the world needs today, both militarily and economically.

-I´m uncertain if it is not possible. US aggressiveness will led to a -weapons race anyway, while militarism and capitalism are twin brothers, -so increased competition among imperialist powers willl no doubt led -to increased militarization of the world as a whole. It seems Rosa -Luxembourg was right. Barbarism is the only possible outcome of -capitalism.

What we need is a world in which the hegemon becomes conscious that for the first time in history, it is under no threat -- there is no conceivable military enemy that could destroy it

-Actually this is not true. Russia still has weapons enough to destroy the -USA

-- and that the simplest way to perpetuate it's privileged position is by institutionalizing peace.

-Do you think it is possible under a capitalist system whose main purpose -of the state machinery (including the army) is to defend the interests of -the ruling elite?



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