| Sunday, January 5, 2003 |
01:03 - Jar Jar Blix
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/01/Negotiations.shtml
|
(top)  |
I didn't get a chance to post this brief response to Steven Den Beste's groundwork-laying post regarding the principles of negotiations and deterrence while I was sequestered in the Land of No Blogging, but I'd been reading that post on the plane (having loaded it up while connected via AirPort in the MPLS C terminal), and couldn't keep the following observation out of my head even after a weekend of diversion.
The primary proponents of this new way of doing things are Europeans (and sympathetic academics), who believe that they have now transcended the brutal international order of the past, where all nations were armed to the teeth and where negotiations often involved the threat of war, or happened over the sound of battle. European diplomats believe that there should be an international court where nations could take their grievances for binding arbitration, and hope to institute an international system where all nations feel as if they should actually concede their grievances if arbitration goes against them. The idea is that nations would cede considerable amounts of sovereignty to some international authority, and live as "citizens of the world".
It is a worthwhile dream. It represents a better way. If it were in effect, far fewer people would suffer. Unfortunately, though I wish it could be made to happen, I don't believe it can be. It is inherently unstable; even if it could be instituted, it would fall apart.
It discounts the possibility of bad faith; it ignores both the "Prisoner's dilemma" and "the Tragedy of the Commons". If a cheater ends up in conflict with an honorable nation, the cheater may agree to arbitration. If the arbitrator rules in favor of the cheater, the honorable nation will concede and the cheater wins. But if the arbitrator rules the other way, the cheater can ignore him and continue to pursue the point. There's everything to be gained from arbitration, but nothing whatever to lose. And thus cheating is an advantage when most of the world is honorable, leading directly to the tragedy of the commons. Even if such a system could be established, there would be an incentive for at least some to break the rules, for doing so would be to their advantage.
Europe has been trying to set an example by being internationally active in diplomacy, while at the same time having no ability to project military force. And it hasn't been working at all well. As a general principle, if all you have are carrots, or only feeble and laughable sticks, then you don't have any way to make "reject" unpalatable, so the only way you can make "accept" more palatable is to pile lots more carrots on the scale than you would really like to, and in fact in some cases the Europeans have found themselves having to give away the farm in order to get an agreement.
Worse, they're finding that in some cases they have no carrots to offer, and also have no sticks, and as a result their intended negotiating partner refuses to even talk to them. (EU's Solana believes he knows how to settle the problem between the Israelis and Palestinians, but the solution he proposes involves major concessions by Israel. Solana has nothing to offer Israel which it thinks would offset that cost, so quite naturally Israel refuses to deal with him.)
When Europe has faced cases where it has no adequate carrots with which it is willing to part, and no sticks to apply, and wants an agreement anyway, the only remaining solution is whining, which has been notably unsuccessful.
It sounds to me as though the only way for the UN to achieve its goals would be for someone to build them a Grand Clone Army.
Whatever else may be true about the new Star Wars prequels, George Lucas does seem to have hit on a very realistic simulation of what would happen under a centralized, hierarchical governmental system that attempts to overarch many widely disparate cultures and political systems. The only way it possibly can work is for the governing power to actually be "world government", not just some kind of "advisory body" or a roomful of representatives who glower at each other and dicker over semantics. More particularly, they'd need real power... and not just a token army, but a power which dwarfed the individual power of any member body. Rather than the "peacekeeping forces" that the UN seems to have at its disposal today, it would have to attain absolute supremacy-- in terms of technology, ability to produce, and sheer numbers of troops-- over all member states' armies, including our own.
Because, as Den Beste illustrates, any governing power that doesn't actually have the "ultimate stick" to wield, in actuality has no power to impose its will on any member body.
As the Star Wars movies are illustrating in so timely a manner, with such pretty and chewy and spoon-fed parables, any centralized "world government" would have to be something with the power to crush organized separatism. Which means, naturally, that it would have to be something with the means and the penchant to become the Empire.
Is that what we want? Is that the only way this can go? I certainly don't see how the UN as it currently exists can keep up its charade of potency much longer, with each new week bringing another example of some nation invoking the UN with one hand as a shield against other nations' aggression, while with the other hand blatantly ignoring the rules of the selfsame UN. Right now the UN is serving only as a political Dremel tool-- adaptable to any political purpose you choose, but you can always turn it off and put it back in the drawer when you have no more use for it.
Maybe the coexistence of individual nations, as we have now, is something that can last. I don't know. But it's a question that will have to be addressed in short order, because it's likely to become the Next Big Question, in clear need of answering after all the dust has finally cleared over the War on Terror.
|
|
