The point of the UN is that it shouldn’t be that way any longer. Of course it’s difficult to get a consensus there, but it can happen, and already prevented bad things such as in Bosnia.
Other than the Balkans, Europe currently enjoys one of the longest peaceful periods in its history, and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon - shouldn’t the world aspire to something similar?
Letting go of the Sudetenland is a small price to pay for that.
Alessan, do you really think it would be preferable not to have the UN, and duke it out with Iran all by yourselves?
Except that there is no such thing as “above the fray”. You can be sure that the very first order of business of any world sovereign would be to guarantee the continued power of the world sovereign. Everybody has a self-interest. And to suppose that some authority could somehow be above that is Utopian in the mocking sense of the word.
The UN isn’t only located in Europe, and is not really responsible for lenghty European peace since WW2. It could be pointed out that Europe enjoyed a similar lengthy period of peace in the 19th century, sans UN, following the Napoleonic/Revolutionary Wars, and that the great powers were similarly interested in the 19th century to prevent, mitigate or contain Balkan violence (ultimately, of course, unsuccessfully - in the 20th century).
The various organs of inter-state cooperation in matters of war and peace such as the UN Security Council are, at best, a formalization of the sort of great power concert that has existed in one form or another since there were great powers. The issues that interest them are the same - to avoid clashes that are not in the interests of the powers, particularly those between smaller client states that have the potential to drag the powers in to battles they don’t want.
How is that different from the domestic national sphere? The first order of business of the state is to stay the state. Yet, in democratic countries at least, the state has legitimacy. Few think of the cops as being nothing more than the oppressive organs of the state to keep itself alive (although in a sense they are).
What is needed for a true world sovreign is for an international force to have that sort of widely acknowledged legitimacy - of the same type as that generally enjoyed by domestic forces of a democratic nation.
We are nowhere near that yet, and of course it does no good to pretend we are. But I do not regard it as impossibly utopian any more than I regard Western-style democracy as “impossibly utopian”.
Sorry, I’m just too cynical. Whenever there are human beings there will be tribes, and whenever there are tribes there will be bloodshed. So it ever was, so it ever shall be.
You’re not cynical, just blinkered. Many, many counterexamples exist, several of which have been pointed out to you in detail in this and previous threads.
The reason Vietnam and Taiwan are different is that both sides considered them part of the same country (although that is starting to fade out in young Taiwanese today). The disagreement was only in which government should be in charge.
A true world sovereign would have to replace the sovereign nation-states that exist today. Today’s democracies are either former monarchies or dictatorships that reformed, or federal governments like the United States or Switzerland where formerly independent states agreed to cede at least some of their sovereignty and band together in the face of overwhelming external threat. A world government would have to emulate how the monarchies of sixteenth-century Europe abolished feudalism, bringing the local dukes to heel and making sure they knew who was boss. I’m not saying the legitimacy you speak of couldn’t somehow arise, although I don’t envision how.
Well, you choose two bad examples. Texas and the rest were more or less bought or seceded by the will of their occupants. California never considered itself part of Mexico, and Mexico’s soverienity over AZ, NM and such was limited and even of doubtful legality. In those cases, the population of actual Mexicans in those areas was around 20%. A good case can be brought that some of those areas seceded by the will of the inhabitants, and the rest was bought- at the point of a gun, yes, but Mexico was on the point of both bankruptcy and dissolution from within. There might not be a Mexico today if the USA hadn’t bailed the struggling government out with a large infusion of hard cash.
Hawaii also overthrew it’s Monarch by the will of the citizens, who did not accept that the Monarch had the right to unilaterally abrogate the lawful Constitution. Yes, many of the citizens who took part in the revolt were white, but they had legitimately established their citizenship- many by being born there. Dole, for instance had been born in Honolulu. Does the fact he was white mean he had no right to citizenship or to participate in a government? So was Thurston, in fact I think his parents had been born there. The Queens “new Constitution” would have made her a near absolute monarch, and stripped white people of the right to vote.
Hawaii was not in any way conquered by force, as in outside force. Rather, the Queen attempted a coup, and the government tossed her out.
Assuming this is a question of morality, rather than mere pragmatism (which can be twisted in any number of directions), I would say that a group of people defined by ethnicity/culture has the right to demand reparations/redress of some sort if that group is still suffering from those events. So, it’s not so much a certain timeframe (although more recent events would no doubt be more likely to qualify) than it is the persistence of the effects of those events.
Generally, military conquest results in misery for the conquered, even after the war. In theory, if country A seizes country B, and then proceeds to treat the citizens of B equally and provide them due representation, there isn’t much of a moral claim to redress. But that never happens, of course.
NZ’s history is full of inter-tribal wars, though- especially from the 19th century onwards, when some of the tribes acquired firearms from the Europeans and proceeded to put them to extremely effective use against their enemies.
The EU didn’t form because of an internal threat, there was NATO to take care of that. The EU was formed to prevent internal wars. And regardless how far the integration goes, it already is sufficient to prevent that.
WAS being the operative word, nowadays there is a very significant porportion of Maori that no longer identify by tribe, but rather by race. THis would have been unthinkable in the 1800s. The Maori were a very warlike culture, and did have both a lot of inter-tribal wars (and conversly, intertribal trade) with quite defined "tribal borders’
Indeed the founding document of New Zealand specifically recognises this by the fact that it did a tour of the country to be signed by all of the various chieftans (I know the number well exceeds 100, but I would have to google to find the exact number)
There is also a good amount of the population that identifies themselves by their nationality, totally eschewing race as a valid descriptor for who they are.
Which is what I was (trying to) indicate, just because in the past there was a lot of inter-whatever conflict, doesn not mean that its going to be that way forever, or needs to be that way forever. I would hazard a guess that New Zealand would stand as a really good example where previously warring groups have now buried thier differences. Of course it has taken around a century or so, but still, it can be done.
But despite that, NZ is still part of the world. New Zealanders still fought in WW2, and there’s always a chance that they might be dragged into some other global conflict far from home. No nation is ncompletely isolated, no matter how much it might want to be.
Besides, NZ might be a stable country right now, but who knows what the future may bring? Everything falls apart, eventually. Enthropy and chaos always wins in the end.
Yes, NZ fully took part in both WW, in WWI, our per capita casulties were very very high, we even lost some brave soldiers in the Boer war. SO? What does that mean, other than New Zealanders took responsibility for what they (as a nation) thought was right?
As to the future? Things are suddenly going to start going backwards?
The point to be made, is that tribes that had extreme amounts of enmity for each other, and then the “white man” who hated them and who every tribe was hated in return came to make things worse.
These have all now been overcome. They all live in harmony (no it’s not Nirvana, but “race crimes” between Maori / Caucasian are very rare - except for uber skinhead type groups). If this can happen, why is it that one day Isreali / Palestinian can’t share a country? What makes them so unique that they can’t ever live together?