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David wrote:I see the South China Sea stuff as less about territorial expansion than nationalist symbolism, and I honestly think we place way too much focus on it. It's disputed territory; if the tanks roll in to Manila, that would be a very different story.
This appeared in my feed today - I don’t know much about the South China sea situation but found it interesting.
David wrote:I understand the logic. But does this mean that it's futile to work toward goals such as peaceful pluralism, cooperation and mutual disarmament? Or are we essentially locked into the MAD doctrine all the way until the asteroid comes?
Absolutely not! We (like any other country) must have both. This is the only, repeat only way to avoid war.*
* Theoretically, you could be so incredibly powerful that it doesn't matter a damn whether other countries get on with you or not. This has been tried many times, by (for example) the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and most recently by the United States. It never works. You always end up fighting an endless series of small, nasty wars, and they never end. Eventually, your national unity breaks up and your will to fight falls away and your empire falls apart, usually in a pretty nasty way.
* Or you could be so incredibly nice to everyone and so incredibly poor that no-one wants to invade you 'coz you ain't got anything at all that anybody wants. This state has been approached many times by many countries, and it has never yet worked. Conquering economically and militarily worthless countries provides dictators with easy street cred; it's Militarist Politics 101. And any country that poor is going to be having a more or less permanent civil war anyway, or at very least crime and violence and corruption so bad as to be pretty much the same thing. For a current example, close your eyes and stick a pin randomly into a map of Africa. (You might have to try twice, in case you happen to hit one of the African countries which are at war over the resources they have rather than the resources they don't have.)
Lets not forget also that in this Sth Pacific region we're the only country with any sort of defence capability.
Negotiation and cooperation tend to go more smoothly when both parties either have mutual goals or similar weapons.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
David, there's MAD and there's absurdly MAD. The objective is to move from arms race to a process of disarmament (mutually-assured pain, as Tannin mentioned somewhere above). Even if we assume and will the best, that doesn't stop things going awry. Think of it more in terms of risk management and insurance, but with the bright side of being able to talk to the other party and mutually reduce the risk and cost. With insurance policy tucked away in back pocket, the goal should then be mutually-assured benefit.
That said, I have great sympathy for the counter argument that the arms race becomes self-fulfilling because perverse incentives are merely shifted to the military-industrial complex. So, I would be keen on seeing strategies for dealing with that as part of the process.
Because we are at risk of foreign tanks rolling in. Every country is. All the time. Read some history. Or look around you.
Do you think for one instant that the Chinese troops massed on the Indian border are still sitting (mostly) on the Chinese side of the border because they like it better on that side of the hill?
They cross the border now and then and fire off a few shells just to see if India is still ready to defend itself. Taiwan, same deal. Russia, same deal. Vietnam, same deal. Spratley Islands - you've seen it for yourself. They are on the march.
Our turn next. Get ready or die like Hong Kong. Your call.
^I agree with you significantly, but would still err on the side of taking out insurance on an unlikely but not impossible disaster. I also see security as something that underwrites the stability you need to enact decent policy of the sort you want. The trick, though, is keeping defence in its place.
That said, if someone can work out how to get tax from the mining companies which control Canberra, you can have your cake and eat it too. Last time their scare campaign against being taxed for the national good was so successful they reduced the revenue to a bag of mixed lollies and somehow made national embarrassment Tony Abbott seem electable.
Speaking of Australian sovereignty, I'd prefer it if we had our own nuclear missiles and weren't beholden to the US for protection. The US government doesn't even look after its own citizens, so how can we be certain that we can count on them?
I’d feel a lot safer in a world in which aggressive denuclearisation was pursued, frankly. Us getting nukes only encourages more hostile countries around us to do the same. It’s amazing how many people don’t understand that.
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
David wrote:I’d feel a lot safer in a world in which aggressive denuclearisation was pursued, frankly. Us getting nukes only encourages more hostile countries around us to do the same. It’s amazing how many people don’t understand that.
Lots of people understand that, David. They also understand that it has to be a two way deal, otherwise one side is left defenseless. It's unfortunate that it's the state of the world but also pretty naive to think otherwise.
But are we even pursuing bilateral arms reduction initiatives? I fear that there's little appetite for it, not when so much political capital can be wrung from militarism (and literal capital from defence industry contracts).
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
