With the current American/Israeli attack on Iran (I hesitate to call such a one-sided affair a war), I have a concern. In the particular case, I wholeheartedly agree with the operation and its goals (so far) of no nuclear capability, no ballistic missile capability, and regime change.
My concern is this, though: the operation is centered on "you can't have this stuff." What's the limiting principle here? What prevents any nation with the relative strength saying to any other sovereign nation with the relative weakness "you can't have this stuff" whatever that stuff might be and whatever the reason--on down to and including "we don't like you"?
Nations--or more accurately, the men and women populating nations' governments--can be moral or immoral or amoral. Even those with morals can find themselves sliding down that slippery slope absent a clear and present limiting principle stronger than just "I promise."
Eric Hines
3 comments:
I think the operation is to revenge the murdered protesters, as Trump promised to do. But the limiting principle is atomics; those are constrained because once you have them other constraints tend to fail. We won’t wage a similar war on North Korea because they already have nukes, and Seoul in easy range.
The only limiting principal is the price. The strong will do what they want and the weak will endure if they can.
But the limiting principle is atomics....
That's an aspiration, not a limit. With northern Korea, it would be straightforward enough to eliminate Baby Kim's nuclear arsenal before he could get anything armed, fueled (most of his stuff still is liquid fueled), and launched.
But that's not the thing. There are other stuffs that a nation could decide to deny to another nation for any reason or no reason at all. A nation could say to a rump Iran "you can't sell oil at all." Enforcing that would enhance oil prices, which would be good for American, South American, and African oil (and natural gas) drillers, with little beneficial effect on Russia were there a parallel effort to interdict Russia's shadow fleet.
The EU already is trying to say to us, "you can't say these things, even within the US," and "you do have to tell us these other things, even from within the US."
Raven, I think, has something closest to a current limiting principle, and the EU's moves against us are largely price-based.
Laws are harder to cross than words or aspirations, but they're still a line painted on sand.
Eric Hines
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