By the sound of it, you've been working with the Quai d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry!

Of course, these aristocratic pedophiles were never overly concerned with morality or patriotism...

Morality isn't absolute. One man's high moral ground is another man's evil.  What Israelis and the West call Evil is what the other side consider to be Gods (Allahs) will. And you can't get more moral than god, can you? Different conflicts have different causes, but most of the conflict in the Middle East is religious in origin. If you can overturn religious teaching (on both sides) you have a chance for peace. If not, I'm just hoping that the Navy's Italian 76mm guns hit with the first salvo.

Morality certainly is absolute. The essence of morality is that it is a claim to absolutism. If it is specific to a tribe it is a code of honor.

 

For all the people participating in the "Israeli Navy and X MAS"

I had a way to appreciate the fact that all the people participating on this thread have so far shown to be pretty competent observers of the international environment, and most of all, balanced mature people in their dissertations and discussions, which I have noticed it can't be said for the generality of the threads on this website.

Having noticed and very much appreciated that, I dare to hereby pose a very delicate question to everybody and I would appreciate any personal analysis/evaluations on it.

Recently I have worked for a while with some advisors of my county foreign policy decision makers. So far I always had an historical approach to the international environment and surprisingly, by working with these people, I have been discovering a complete new different world about the daily bread and butter of international relations in the trenches. I am not sure I like what I?ve learnt.

Here below some bullet points I?ve perceived by working with these junkies &O1514;

? nobody is worried very much about moral values (which count a lot in biasing public opinion though) in pursuing national interest, because there is no judge as long as you don't lose a war. This appears to sound like good, but it?s actually bad because?no judge, no certainty of the law. Foreign ministries have to struggle with this concept all the time.

? Armed conflicts are so much the supreme magistrate, that entire hierarchies in the international community are created by them. (I?ve heard some of these war to be called ?constituent wars?).

? The major task of one or more constituent war winners (global or regional) is to create a post war order that gives security and stability even to the losers. The more the winners manage to do so, the longer and the more stable the ?constituted order? will be. Someone was teaching me about the difference between the stability ? in terms collective security and the duration of it ? between the Roman Empire and the Versailles orders as an example of two extremes.

? The more the order is imperfect in terms of losers satisfaction, the more there will be future objectors to the orders and probability of new wars, or at least of violent opposition.

? A rogue state is not ?a component of the axis of evil? as I naively thought, but just an objector to the order. The same can be said for non state organization who object the settlement of a given order.

? Objectors very rarely object abut ideas or ideologies (like they like to claim to augment their followers among the masses), more often they object about practical orders settlement (economics, revenue distribution, balance of power). This fact becomes manifest in certain instances, like for example Stalin resorting to Russian nationalism and ?the holy mother Russia? immediately after the 22 of June 1941.

Guys, I must admit that I am shaken. This is just a microscopic resume of all the model paraphernalia these guys use, but I have an hard time to interiorize this approach. Despite thatI must admit that it explains many things if we look at it without any prejudice. Also such an approach would shut off many nasty uneducated and unmannered behaviours on this very website.

Any illumination and teaching from you guys is appreciated.

Respectfully
Luigi.delta

Several things might be remembered. One is that just because someone thinks he is smarter doesn't mean he is. Another is that when one talks in such a way one must separate the "should be" from the "is". Just because rulers are amoral doesn't mean they should be. Nor for the matter does it mean that you should be.

 For the matter of that, I doubt that those diplomatists really believe what they say they do. If they do, make sure you never play cards with them!

 As far as "no one being worried about values" that really is a repeat of the reductionist error that habitually assumes that nations are an extention of governments and governments are computers. Neither is true. Governments are run by real people who are responsible to their constintuents and therefore must take their feelings into account. Even totalitarian ones to some degree. Constintuents are far more important then is given credit for. And observation indicates that real government does not operate in the manner claimed, constituents aside. Even Diplomacy games don't operate like that. Governments are moved by pride, anger, greed, etc, etc, as well as by cold calculations of the balance of power. And their constituants certainly are even on the French assumption that rulers and ruled are different species.

 For instance, why did the Finns refuse the Russians? The "rational" thing to do-at first glance-was to accept their demands. But of course the Finns were thinking about more then just power.

For that matter the French have to explain Israel. Why don't all Jews just move to New York and be done with it? 

But something else is at stake. The Finns were, and the Israelis are fighting for something more then security or power; they fight for self-respect and the respect of other nations; for honor, to use an old-fashioned word.

As for whether rogue nations are evil, or just,"trying to find their place in the sun" well obviously that depends on which one. And I don't really need  diplomats to tell me which one thank you very much.

But in any case it is not really true that governments only think in terms of power. Governments are made of people and it is not really true that they have their human sensibilities sucked out of them when they take office.

Or to put it in a pithy manner, there is no real reason why the Trojan War couldn't have been fought because a wayward princess commited adultery. Probably similar things explain more wars then historians give credit for.

But the French are at least right in saying that the International Order is the result of the last war. That seems fairly valid.

 

 The diplomats you talked to were in essence claiming that all nations, would-be nations and ideologies play politics in a manner similar to Stalin. But in real life only so many are that ruthless and very few are as single-minded. I have(like every other history buff) an interest in World War II. And one thing I noticed is that no matter how much other statesmen tried to act that way, only Stalin managed to be a clinical example of what those diplomats claim to be "the way the world works." That hardly means others were all that scrupulous, but that only Stalin could really do that sort of thing all that smoothly.

For instance, the Liberation of Paris could conceivably have been a Western version of the Warsaw revolt with the Communists revolting and the Allies stopping and discovering logistical problems. But the curious thing is it wasn't. The Allies could be unscrupulous at times-but they didn't have the knack for it and it often worked out ill when they stooped to knavery in a way it didn't for the Russians.

This has been a rambling post Luigi. But the point is your teachers(tempters?) were wrong because they fell into the trap of seizing an element of life and exagerrating it until it dominates it. But they are wrong. Governments are instruments in the control of men, and men are guided by their humanity, not by mathematics.