Posts Tagged ‘Henry Kissinger’
Notebook, 13 March 2011: Sovereignty vs. Intervention
For the record (hold onto your hat, MB, I’ll return to this), I’m not in favor of a no-fly zone over Libya. Not only is it a slap in the face to international norms, it’s needlessly dangerous.
One can envision the line of universal monarchs, of great empires, stretching from the Pharaohs in Egypt, through Persia, Macedonia, Rome to the Holy Roman Empire and Ottomans. Today, the notion of empire, of a universal regime, is not all that far behind us. Cpl. Frank Buckles, the last WWI veteran died just 13 days ago as I write. A man who fought in the war that brought down the last two empires left in Europe.
And of course, there’s always PNAC.
The western notion of state sovereignty has largely been endorsed by the entire world. It was not easily won. Perhaps eclipsed only by WWII and the holocaust, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was one of the worst catastrophes ever visited on Europe. Over a majority of the territory now part of Germany, one third of the population vanished. Throughout large swaths of that territory—almost half—the figure rises to 66%.
It is out of this carnage that the modern state arose, and here’s how it happened.
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A sane strategy for Pakistan…
“The only thing we learn from history is that people learn nothing from history”
— Georg Wilhelm Hegel
Inspired by post on Foreign Policy Magazine’s Passport blog.
It began in an unassuming way: the American commanding general in theater sent a memo to Washington informing his superiors that an important enemy target had been tentatively located, but that it was over the border in a neighboring country whose status in all conflicts was neutral and that the territory in question was for all intents and purposes, though inhabited, ungoverned and ungovernable by the central government.
The buzz about Hillary Clinton…
N.B.: This post was written here, but posted on The European Tribune and crossposted on DailyKos. Originally published on 18 November, 2008, I’m moving it out of draft status as a matter of housekeeping and consistency.
We’ve all heard it this week, the skillfully leaked report that Senator Hillary Clinton was being considered for Secretary of State in President-elect Obama’s administration. Then, details emerged about the Senator’s quiet trip to Chicago to confer with Obama, and neither Obama’s press office nor Clinton’s staff issuing a public correction of the basic premise that she’s been offered the post. So it is probable (provided she and Bill pass the vetting process) that she will be nominated, and if so, then she will likely be confirmed as the next Secretary of State.
