The ethics of the geopolitics, the 'geo-ethics', get very
little attention in the current climate. Statements are made
and accepted as self-evident truth, without any evidence or
even thought. For instance: "We must defend democracy". Who
is "we", and why must we do this? That is left unexamined.
Conversely, it is assumed that 'attack on the USA' is a
synonym for 'evil'. As you know President Bush believes his
nation is equivalent to 'good', in a war of good and evil.
But there are legitimate grounds to attack the United
States, and to wage war on the United States. (Some of them
are related to traditional 'just war' theory). Here are
three issues...
Firstly, there is no peaceful means of ending the United
States. Its own Constitution provides no mechanism for
dissolution by its citizens - let alone by outsiders. The
existence of the United States is not subject to any
peaceful process, of political decision-making. The simplest
example of such a process would be, to organise a global
referendum, on whether the USA should exist. I am not
proposing this, it is simply an example of a peaceful
alternative, and I give the example to show that no such
'alternative to war' exists.
Second, the United States has an official policy of
spreading democracy, without limit. Logically, this is
equivalent to implementing a pan-democratic world order.
Such a world order consists of a number of entities of
political decision-making, the 'demos' in each democracy. In
democracy, by definition, you can neither secede from, nor
combine, legitimate demoi. Nor can any non-demos be a unit
of political decision-making. That would all be
undemocratic, again by definition.
At any one time there is a fixed number of demoi considered
legitimate by democrats: these collectively constitute the
pan-democratic world order. In modern democracy, the
democratic nation state is the 'demos', so in reality this
is a world order of democratic nation states.
Therefore, in a pan-democratic world order there is no
provision for new states, certainly not states based on a
non-demos. It prohibits innovation in state formation. This
is a legitimate ground to resist a pan-democratic world
order, and to resist an attempt by any state to impose it.
In turn that implies resisting the imposing state itself -
assuming it will not abandon its attempt.
Third, there is a consequentialist argument. Not attacking
the United States, would be equivalent to a military
surrender by the rest of the world. If no State could attack
the United States, then no State could defend itself. The
United States could occupy any and all states: nonviolent
resistance is unlikely to deter such an occupation. By
definition, non-attack is the abandonment of self-defence,
since any military defence will involve some attack on US
forces. There is no purely defensive weapon, which could
stop a US invasion without harming the invading soldiers in
any way.
It does not necessarily follow from a policy of non-attack,
that the US will colonise the world. However, such a policy
would be a latent invitation to do so. It is like a man
walking around a city on Friday night shouting "I will not
defend myself if you hit me!" Very soon, someone will.
The three points illustrate, that there is no simple
equivalence between 'an attack on the United States' and 'an
evil attack' - unless you are an absolute pacifist.
Obviously the geopolitical context should be considered in
ethical assessments, including the more abstract underlying
characteristics of the present world order.
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nato.html
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Paul Treanor
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