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Are you sure about this? The US' current policy is that if you cross boundaries in a war of conquest, invade other nations, bomb their hospitals and murder their children the US won't just go out of their way to make it easy for you, they'll make boycotting you illegal and declare criticism of your actions a public health crisis while supplying you with vast quantities of money and advanced weaponry. If you actually want to send that message, would you be fine with declaring Israel a rogue state and applying the same sanctions on them until they return to the 1948 borders?
I think if we're all being honest there is an actual difference between wars of aggression by a major world power and in Europe than elsewhere in the world. Wars of aggression by smaller players is one thing but major players is another. I think it's in everyone's benefit that the major powers stop it, right?
And yes, before you say it, I wish other countries had thrown more of a fit about Iraq, though still more defensible: forcibly exporting democracy was a loser idea, WMDs were a lie, but Hussein was also legitimately an evil psychopath guy in a way Ukrainian presidents just... weren't, and the US didn't even get all that much out of it. Before anyone goes "it was about oil" Iraq actually exported less oil even after the invasion and has only gone down since. It doesn't fit the expansionist mold, and expansionist wars by major powers are the most dangerous kind, the kind we want to discourage. Comparatively, who cares about minor wars in far-flung underdeveloped countries?
I don't think that. What, exactly, makes the lives of people outside of Europe worth less than those of Europeans? Why would it be more acceptable for China to invade my nation than it would be for Russia to invade Poland?
Ok, so what about Israel? They are explicitly waging expansionist wars with the backing of the US, a major power. Why didn't you address the core point of my comment and instead go onto a tangent about Iraq? I mean, I agree that the Iraq war was a terrible idea, but what does that actually have to do with the west's full-throated and enthusiastic support of expansionist wars by heavily militarised ethnostates?
First of all I didn't take your comment seriously because Israel was attacked both times it took territory, in response, and also because Israel comments often feel more like bait than legitimate attempts at discussion. Sure, they took a little more land from Syria recently, but that's whatever, they didn't even fight over it. Lest you think I'm an Israel stan however, I really dislike their provocative settlement stuff. I think they're borderline apartheid, certainly guilty of the lesser sin of racially-delineated callousness at least. But their behavior falls far short of "expansionist wars" by most measures (I guess they've invaded Lebanon a time and a half? Is that what you're referring to?). If they bomb Iran or something (I want us to strongly discourage this) then we can talk and maybe re-assess. Overall though if you think the US is constantly making a habit of funding expansionist wars I guess we just disagree on the facts.
Anyways, this has nothing to do with the value of lives and everything to do with the balance of world power + avoiding mega-wars. Honestly, I consider war a semi-normal state of affairs, especially for those between smaller states. It sucks, but is also human nature. We can do things to discourage it, sometimes respond on a case to case basis, but we can't solve everything. I care more about big state actions because they tend to domino around the globe more than localized conflicts. Even if I were to say "oh Israel is bloodthirsty invader" that's still not something that has a major knock-on effect elsewhere. China invades Taiwan? That affects not only chips, but global shipping routes, and more. Not the same.
I don't think we have some kind of moral duty to police everyone, though I do think we can do some smaller things to help keep stuff stable. You're free to take another tack, and I don't think on that philosophical stance there is one objective superior truth. So do I hold big states to a different standard than small states? You bet I do. I think most people who claim they don't often end up twisting themselves into pretzels trying to have some kind of defining all-applicable global principles. I don't think such a world-view is possible, not with total consistency.
Bait? I'm being completely earnest here, and it seemed to me like you just ignored the Israel question and went on a tangent because it completely destroys your main argument.
See, you don't actually care about these norms at all. "Yeah we come down really harshly on gaining new territory via conquest but Israel doesn't have to abide by those rules because... umm, they just don't, okay!" is not a norm that anyone will give a single shit about. Why should Russia or China care in the slightest about this supposed norm against wars of conquest when your moral condemnation passes silently over Israel and gives them a pass to exterminate an unwelcome ethnicity because of their stated desire for more lebensraum? Why can't Russia, China or 1930s Germany simply claim the same "that's whatever" exemption Israel does? And if you want to say that Israel didn't even fight over it, do you want me to go get some evidence of Israel's frequent military interventions in Syria before the fall of the Assad regime?
Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. If you don't think that what happened to Palestine counts, then Russia and China can simply adopt the same strategy and conquer new territory in the same fashion.
Asia's population is almost 7 times larger than Europe's - a total war that impacted the entirety of Europe would barely even be a regional conflict by Asian standards. China alone is a far larger player in the real global economy than Europe is - the TSMC fabrication plants getting destroyed and Japanese shipping getting interdicted due to conflict seems to me like it would have a far larger knock-on effect than anything Russia or the US would do to Europe. It seems like you agree with that, but I got the opposite impression when you claimed(seemingly, my apologies if I misunderstood) earlier that "in Europe" rendered a conflict more serious than elsewhere in the world.
The US is currently aiding and abetting Israel's aggression, and actively working to prevent peace in the region. You're right that there's no moral duty to police everyone, but there is a moral duty to police those who you shower with mountains of blood and treasure. As for keeping stuff stable, I have good news - with Trump and Elon Musk demolishing both USAID and the NED, a lot of places around the world are going to be substantially more stable (especially Latin America).
So it's fine to be an aggressive, expansionist power, you just can't get too big. Would you be fine with Russia's invasion of Ukraine if they instead simply loaned all their troops and equipment to the Donbass Republic? After all, you can't hold small states to the same standard as large ones like Russia.
I oppose wars of aggression and conquest no matter the size of the states in question - I am an advocate for peace and believe that peaceful co-existence is not just possible but an ideal worth striving for. Total consistency with no pretzels needed! Of course, actually adjudicating whether or not a given war is a war of aggression can be tough in some circumstances, but you get that issue with just about any world-view.
I honestly don't understand if this is a disagreement or tough words because you think I'm hypocritical. Please distinguish. There's no agenda posting here, I'm legitimately trying to give a complete picture. I think big powers and small powers differ, and I think not all parts of the world are of equal importance to foreign politics (I should note that certain areas of Asia as you correctly note are also of high importance in a way yet another civil war in Sudan is not). That's not to assign less value exactly, it's just the reality of foreign affairs where you can't afford to be entirely dogmatic and you can't be entirely pragmatic either. I lean towards pragmatism, but that doesn't mean 'heartless pragmatism', I allow for space to do individually non-optimal things out of a moral stand every once in a while, or in order to gain a wider and broader benefit. I will argue equally with anyone that this kind of ideological-dogmatist-pragmatist balance is the ideal. "I oppose wars of aggression and conquest" is not a coherent foreign policy (to the extent that coherency even matters of course) and perhaps more importantly if implemented it wouldn't work. "Total consistency" is not the benchmark to grade a foreign policy approach even remotely. It's not just naive, it's counter-productive.
For every problem, it's also important to ask how much of the problem is zero-sum, and how much of it is variable? That's the other question in addition to "how much should I care?" which involves, yes, realism about the size and scale of the matter.
Israel is a problem, but it's not a problem on the scale of Russia, China, Germany, or the like. Does the US prop them up and implicitly allow them to get away with a ton of shit? Yes, and I often wish we wouldn't. Do they oppress people and commit borderline-genocidal atrocities? Yes, that too. But they also are a potential anchor in the region, a trade partner, and at least modestly democratic and egalitarian with potential for positive change. I can see "both sides" if we call Israelis and Palestinians "sides" and it's just a shit sandwich all over. My long-preferred solution is for everyone to stop being forever at cross-purposes and just accept that all of Israel needs to fully integrate somehow, and work on doing that and all of its mess well. Two-state solution is the stupidest pipe dream I've ever heard of, and Israel is a democracy right there, so like hey, just go do your messy democracy stuff directly! Palestinians and Israelis both have had some unfair shit go on historically and at some point grievances can't go on forever. Nothing the US does is going to magically fix anything one way or the other. Honestly, I didn't dislike the vaguely Trump-shaped plan of "well if they just have some economic boom it will lift all boats and restore regional diplomatic ties" as a step toward that end.
Back to the point. It's somewhat natural for states, including big ones, to want influence over their neighbors. But despite being a much-maligned word, "norms" actually do work on big states in a way that they do not on small states, since they are more stable, long-term actors. Thus, in my view, it's perfectly rational to apply different standards to them, even beyond the typical dogmatic-pragmatist balance. Russia arming Donbas separatists is worrisome and annoying, funding opposition parties also bad, cyberattacks it depends (haven't figured out the norms for that yet) but it doesn't cross a line in the way that Russia's further actions did. Examples include deliberate grey-zone warfare tactics, deploying their own "little green men" troops directly, hell, even the airliner that was shot down was done so we believe more or less directly by actual Russian military members.
Both - my apologies if I came off too hostile. I've recently been somewhat sleep deprived and that may have made my words a bit harsher than would be ideal.
As someone who doesn't live in Europe, I got the mistaken impression you were ignoring the relevance of the far larger region of the world which I actually live in. Mea culpa.
I agree with you here - foreign policy should be tailored to a specific situation and total consistency isn't always the best way to go about it. But that's very much not the case when it comes to proposed norms.
I agree with you here too - I'm on record as supporting a single state solution with full franchise and democracy. I disagree with the idea that they're a good anchor or ally, but I think that's a bit beyond the scope of this discussion.
I even agree with you that a norm against wars of aggression and conquest are a good thing, but your proposed norms just aren't fit for purpose. If Israel can do what they do with the full support of the US without violating these norms then they're just completely worthless. All Russia would have to do to comply with your norms is put on a figleaf and announce that they're donating materiel, training and expertise to the Donbass republic. Absolutely nothing would change on the ground and the war would still be taking place, but your norm would be satisfied due to the loophole that you're leaving in to allow the US to continue to aggressively wage war. China would still be able to reconquer Taiwan, they'd just have to announce they're supporting the faction of Taiwanese who want reunification - and your norm would be satisfied despite the war it was meant to prevent taking place.
Foreign policy does not have to be totally consistent - but that is absolutely not the case for proposed norms. If the US says that wars of conquest are bad and then proceeds to fund, support and profit from a war of conquest then you aren't actually proposing a norm, you're proposing a set of rules which handicap other great powers but don't prevent you from engaging in the proscribed behavior. It is explicitly bad faith negotiation, and the morally correct response for other great powers is to tell you to fuck off. "You don't get to change your borders through military force" is a perfectly fine norm - but it is universal or it does not exist.
I guess I have Israel loosely modeled as a middle player and local Palestinians as a small bit player. Israel-Iran as a conflict I view as something we should be worried about, Israel-Lebanon, not as much, Israel and mid/post-collapse Syria, also not so much. I'd model Russia-Ukraine as a big vs medium conflict so a medium vs small conflict just doesn't feel like it's in the same category. In this sense, I'm evaluating these in terms of power first, particulars second; you seem to be saying "war of conquest" is the first or maybe only filter. Medium vs small conflicts, war of conquest or not, are part of the natural course of history and of only incidental and practical concern to the big powers.
Very roughly speaking: big vs big conflicts, big vs medium, and medium vs medium conflicts all strongly benefit from a norm-based paradigm in a way that big vs small, medium vs small, and small vs small conflicts do not. A large part of this seemingly-arbitrary division is involved in "how likely is conflict to spread?" and "how devastating would a serious conflict be (to the norm-makers and bystanders)?" As a cynical but authentic example, if Russia pushes around Moldova instead of Ukraine, even militarily, although I would find that worrisome and bad, it's not a critical world threat and norms are not the be-all and end-all. Though, full disclosure: I'm still a bit on the fence about "how much should another big player care" in big vs small conflicts particularly. I guess I did invoke Georgia as an example of where Russia was maybe headed, which was certainly a big vs small kind of deal? I might be persuaded to include big-small as in the former category, but my initial feeling is to count it in the admittedly euphemistic but perhaps apt phrase "letting off steam".
I somewhat disagree. First, I think the modest but real direct Russian support tipped the scales in 2014 a bit more strongly than it otherwise would have, meaning the conflict didn't get resolved as 'authentically' and furthermore, obviously if the norm were upheld better Russia never would have directly invaded later. I called out some of their specific grey-zone tactics there as something that should fall on the 'prohibited' norm list precisely because of their effectiveness surpassing some (admittedly not bright, but nonetheless real) line. Russia's 2014 actions were not organic in any sense - rather they deliberately took advantage of norms that are usually used to allow for some plausible deniability, and cynically manipulated that grey zone in a manner completely contrary to why the grey zone even exists, stretching them to an extreme. All of these words to say that yes, if you drop the coordinated cyberattack and don't directly deploy your own troops, I think Russia's 2014 actions would have still been, well not desirable but at least vaguely within the norms up to that point. It's still possible e.g. Crimea secedes, but it's no longer guaranteed. We are in the realm of concern, not crisis. We don't have all this talk of escalation and war and direct conflict.
Similarly, China merely announcing support for a separatist Taiwanese party is not in and of itself a violation. They still have a mostly-functioning democracy, it could always backfire, and if they genuinely decide to join China it's a massive mistake but their right, I suppose. The question of economic pressure, even embargo, is a much more thorny question that current norms don't quite have a great answer to, at least not a direct one (the vibes might still matter).
More broadly... something I've been sitting on for a while and still don't quite have an answer to, is the idea of secession in general. It feels like 'we' (Western thought?) reached some kind of vague idea about when revolutions are okay-ish, but it doesn't feel like anyone (or any ideology) has a good answer to when secessionism is, and if so, what form it ought to take (or can be allowed to take). At least, not in any kind of universal way. It still feels like there should be a universal answer, though. Something for a top-level post sometime.
No, I'm disagreeing with your entire premise. Your perspective here is fatally flawed and I can sum that flaw up in two words - proxy war. To use an older example where passions have cooled and the fog of war has largely lifted, were you aware that the US was never technically a party to the Vietnam war? You can go look it up - there was no actual declaration of war by the US congress. Sure, US soldiers and conscripts were fighting and dying, using US military equipment, but technically the US wasn't involved and so there was no norm violation. This is the kind of situation I was talking about when mentioning hypothetical Russian support for the conflict - in the alternative world where they abided by your norms, they would simply use the same strategy the US did in the Vietnam war. Absolutely nothing on the ground would change, but your norm would be satisfied. This is why I make the claim that it has to be universal or not at all - because we have already seen the gigantic loophole left in there to allow the US to continue to wage war largely unrestricted.
To repeat my point, I'm talking about China arming a separatist faction and providing support in the same way they provided support to the South Vietnam government.
The answer to this question is that secession is allowed when it is in the interests of the US empire, and condemned when it is not. That's the only dividing line in the moral condemnation provided, and I challenge you to find a counterexample that isn't completely irrelevant to US interests.
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