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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| It does not belong at all? We can't condemn a country or government's actions on moral grounds? |
Sure. Condemn all you like. People have been condemning Israel for decades, for example. In the meantime, what actual changes do you expect to bring about? |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Sure. Condemn all you like. People have been condemning Israel for decades, for example. In the meantime, what actual changes do you expect to bring about? |
I don't expect to bring any change.
However you said morality does not belong in discussions on international relations. Does this only apply to people without the power to change anything? Do you think governments should make decisions on moral grounds? Should governments even discuss the moral implications of their or other country's actions? After all they do discuss international relations. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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I believe that govts, esp. in their inner councils, remain focused on their national interests, at least as they perceive them, as balanced against others' interests here or there. And at the end of the day, power calculations decide everything.
But morality sounds good in speeches and on television. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 7:25 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I believe that govts, esp. in their inner councils, remain focused on their national interests, at least as they perceive them, as balanced against others' interests here or there. And at the end of the day, power calculations decide everything.
But morality sounds good in speeches and on television. |
I agree. It is firmly within any country's interests(monetary) to sell arms to whoever wants them, as long as that country is no threat to their interests.
The superpowers of the world have been operating like this for a long time. I
just wish they would drop the pretense.
I don't feel it is necessary to have the power to change, before you can call something for what it is.(morally reprehensible). Just because that is the way it is, doesn't mean it should be that way. It is despicable, what China is doing. |
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Julius
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
I didn't actually give any American examples. They were all British. |
U mentioned Jimmy Carter selling all those dangerous toys to Indonesia- at a time when they were "cleansing" East timor. Thats a very good example. And the only one I can find of a western power supplying weapons to fuel genocide while it is in process.
The rest- are cases of supplying weapons to then allies, years before killings began - an unforeseeable turn of events.
| Quote: |
| I showed alot of examples. |
You showed a lot of benign examples- like I say, selling arms to Tanzania or Ghana is hardly fuelling genocide: it is helping governments of normal, stable members of the commonwealth.
The one debatable example was Sierra Leone.
Anyway, my main point is...although the west may supply weapons to governments that only later turn into monsters, they rarely hand over arms to a madman in the act of mass murder. But China does it all the time.
Anyhow...nobody is whiter than white, point taken. But of course whenever someone commits a crime, we cannot simply excuse it by saying "Its OK, because someone else did that before as well". |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:30 am Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| The superpowers of the world have been operating like this for a long time. |
I would like to see a non-emotional, non-"merchants-of-death!" study on the international arms trade, what drives, pushes, and pulls it, and why it continues, from as far back as the evidence goes to the present day. I think the film Lord of War actually made somewhat of a decent contribution in some respects -- even though Hollywood's preachiness was evident here and there, I recall.
| JMO wrote: |
| Just because that is the way it is, doesn't mean it should be that way. |
I understand and appreciate this perspective, which more than anything else, motivates many on foreign-affairs discussions. But it is my position that as historians and other commentators, this is an unhelpful, pointless position. If you truly believed in remaking the world into a better place, then listen to Gandhi. He advised that the world does not hunger for treatises but rather action.
So it is not only you but an entire generation of issue-activism-driven advocacy students, journalists, and scholars I address. I wish they would stop dominating our discussions and the literature with their easy-to-predict "It's despicable!" conclusions and get out and do something. Meanwhile, let us return to non-emotional and dispassionate thinking and analyses.
I still would like a better explanation for China's interests here and elsewhere than Julius's "they want to kill people" or whatever that was I cannot bother to quote from page one. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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| I strongly disagree with transplanting the hostile and sensationalist, allegation-driven antiAmerican discourse, designed to dangle faults and shortcomings, shame and humiliate, etc., etc., to the Chinese govt. |
OK, Goph, let me just very earnestly try to level with you.
In academia, we have notions of the prescriptive and descriptive.
Being prescriptive would include making judgments about the actions of of a given state vis a vis whether such actions were warranted given the socio-political climate.
Being descriptive looks at the underlying motivations and subsequent actions in an effort to explain what's going on.
What you have done and still do repeatedly on this board is be prescriptive when people are being descriptive or be descriptive when others are being prescriptive.
You then take it and run with the idea that being prescriptive is flawed as some final, up-ending analysis.
In the context of the argument we have here, I can descriptively understand why China would want to send these arms to Zimbabwe. Prescriptively, I don't want them to. I think it's bad.
On the other hand, you're proving nothing by explaining why China is doing this and writing off no one by implying that ethics should be absent of such politics.
It would be wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy easier for you to just say, "I don't think China is doing anything bad considering the circumstances" than to go on about how ethics have no place in global politics. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Julius wrote: |
U mentioned Jimmy Carter selling all those dangerous toys to Indonesia- at a time when they were "cleansing" East timor. Thats a very good example.
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No I didn't.
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| The Hawk 53 was made especially for the Indonesian air force and was sold from the 70s thru the 90s |
The Hawk 53 is a british plane. You gave the Jimmy Carter example.
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| The rest- are cases of supplying weapons to then allies, years before killings began - an unforeseeable turn of events. |
lol. Thats kind of the reason countries buy arms. To facilitate later wars.
You seem to have missed the rest of the post, where i showed your original point with which I was arguing,
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| The US and Britain do not export masses of weapons to such obvious tyrants. |
and then went on to show that you were wrong in this statement.
This,
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| although the west may supply weapons to governments that only later turn into monsters |
is uncannily similar to this
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| The only difference I can see, is that China supplies weapons during the war, whilst Britain and the US do it before and act all surprised when it kicks off |
(I said on page 1)
So it seems you are coming around to my way of thinking. Good man.
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| But of course whenever someone commits a crime, we cannot simply excuse it by saying "Its OK, because someone else did that before as well". |
I agree, but never brought it up as no-one on this thread had taken that position. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I would like to see a non-emotional, non-"merchants-of-death!" study on the international arms trade, what drives, pushes, and pulls it, and why it continues, from as far back as the evidence goes to the present day.
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Its not either/or. You can make a moral judgment on something and do something like this. You haven't demonstrated that they should be separate or that a moral judgment is inappropriate.
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I understand and appreciate this perspective, which more than anything else, motivates many on foreign-affairs discussions. But it is my position that as historians and other commentators, this is an unhelpful, pointless position. |
Again. You haven't demonstrated why they should be separate. It is quite possible to figure out the reasons why an atrocity happened whilst simultaneously condemning it.
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| So it is not only you but an entire generation of issue-activism-driven advocacy students, journalists, and scholars I address |
No, you are not. Its me and a few other people reading this. To address a generation, you'll need to find a different vehicle. Be like ghandi. Go out and spread your treatise.
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| I wish they would stop dominating our discussions and the literature with their easy-to-predict "It's despicable!" conclusions and get out and do something |
You also wish about something but yet do nothing about it. Why? Be like Ghandi already.
Your argument basically boils down to
'so, what are you going to do?'
which is every bit as juvenie is
'China is bad'. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 2:09 pm Post subject: ... |
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Good god.
You're stating that ethics doesn't matter and then citing Macchiavelli?
Trust me. I don't want to invoke Hitler in this argument.
Hmm. Ethics don't matter; it's about the interests of the state.
Damn. I feel the need to invoke Hitler. I think he epitomizes the placement of human rights over government. Or rather, the opposite.
Ultimately, the use of military options to subvert democracy is wrong.
I can fully understand why Robert Mugabe seeks such support.
I can even understand why China would like such support.
Strategically, it works for China.
How do you want me to feel about that? Patriotic?
That's a sincere question.
Ethics doesn't matter in politics because it's convenient for you. that's my summation of the non-points brought up here. |
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