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Comment by sidcool | Hacker News Reader

There's only one equation in international politics, POWER. There's nothing wrong or right, there's only power.

That's a pre-WWII view, a hobbesian view of Leviathans wrestling for power and resources across the globe.

Funnily enough, the US government itself pushed to overcome that view after WWII, by instituting the Nuremberg tribunal: they flat-out invented "international law" as we know it today, introducing the concept of a "law of humanity" that didn't know borders. This was done against the will of European rulers, who knew it would have come back to haunt them one day (which it did, when they were forced to dismantle their colonial empires).

Today, power is just one of the various factors of international relations. The fact that subsequent US governments have been hell-bent into ignoring this, will count against them whenever the inevitable redde rationem comes, be it at the hands of crazy Middle-Easterners or fed-up Europeans. History is a harsh judge.

I suspect you may be thinking of the "Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT)" which was not a US only effort - it had judges from the UK, US, France and the Soviet Union, indeed the President of the Tribunal was Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, a UK judge.

After the International Military Tribunal there were US-led trials at Nuremberg but there were lots of different sets of trials held by the Allies in their parts of Germany and also by countries like Poland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsequent_Nuremberg_Trials

NB The IMT was in the US zone and did benefit a lot from the material support of the US.

Of course the IMT was a joint effort, it was unthinkable not to be; still, the initiative was mostly American (and from Soviets, to be honest, always sensitive to a bit of good propaganda). Churchill (with other "traditionalists") was much more inclined to old-school measures.

It turns out that the IMT was a fantastic idea, probably a bit too successful -- it made more difficult for nation states to (ab)use their military forces, at least until the end of the Cold War.

Interesting; the way non westerners thought about this was the Nuremberg trials as victors' justice. From that perspective, nothing America has been doing since then has been contradictory.

Indeed! Exactly to avoid that charge, Allied policymakers and judges went to great lengths to ground their accusations on solid and universalistic reasoning, that could be "reused" later. Without Nuremberg, international institutions like the UN would be even more powerless than they are now.

> Exactly to avoid that charge, Allied policymakers and judges went to great lengths to ground their accusations on solid and universalistic reasoning, that could be "reused" later.

I am not denying that happened. My point was that only the losing side was punished; you didn't see Roosevelt or Churchill taking the stand for the Dresden bombings? Neither did Hirohito get punished for Japan's part in the war. Realpolitik always prevailed. In fact, let us even take Iraq to this day, the UN thing that Powell did was a farce. However, did anyone get punished for that? I don't see Powell or Bush or Blair in a criminal court.

They still made sure nobody in their own countries could go after them for stepping over international law. That is an important factor, because it shows that even "imperial" power is now aware (and somewhat afraid) of the new legal framework and must take it into consideration.

Current US foreign policy is short-sighted. There is more to power than force.

When the brightest minds of the young Latin American population in 5-10 years time ponders an international career in the US or China, things like this will nudge a few more people to China instead. This could make a huge difference in the long-term. Big leaps can be made by relatively small teams of people.

domestic policy too, the land of the free isn't so attractive to the potential immigrant as it once was. I don't think China is going to be filling the void though.

China does not have to win for the United States to lose.

The talented person might go to Europe, or to Canada. Or he might stay home and contribute towards the economy of his native land.

Is it even useful to talk about 'US foreign policy' anymore? I mean, I generally hold Conspiracy theorists in marginal disdain, but aren't we seeing the machinations of a shadow authority usually beyond the concrete knowledge of the electorate in operation?

Either it's incompetence, or ruse, or a 'not-giving-a-fuck' if we know that the intelligence agencies are above the law and can act with near global impunity.

whelp. I should shut up. Probably?

There is the good part of US government staffed by great people. One example is the State Department. I imagine they are furious over this. Then there is the shadow, rogue part which is the intelligence community, full of people with paranoid delusions who will skirt the law at-will because it's for "national security."

Would that be the same State Department who sent Powell to make a fool of himself at the UN? Ok, maybe not exactly the same people, but still. The malaise is much more widespread than you think, in government and in the electorate.

Powell was the Secretary of State so I don't see how the Department itself could "send" him. He served at the pleasure of the President, who asked him to do it.

The Department provides an army of analysts and bureaucrats to support the Secretary, and its their responsibility that he doesn't make a fool of himself on the public stage by using incorrect or false data. It's well known that a lot of them did, in fact, push back on some of the absurdities contained in the initial documents provided by intelligence agencies [1], but when it became clear that most of the material was of that sort, they should have smelled a rat and should have told Powell the risk was too high. Your boss losing any credibility on the political and international stage is the worst possible scenario for any SD official.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/15/nation/na-powell15

It is policy. Large swaths of the active US electorate hold their military as a sacred institution since the late '80s. The intelligence apparatus is an offshoot of that same military and enjoys the same privileges. Until the role of the US military as a whole is put into question, nothing will change. That's a political and a cultural problem, the sort of problem that political organizations are supposed to bring up and try to fix.

that doesn't make it right..

You are right, that doesn't. But history won't remember that. History will consider the powerful and the victorious as right. There's no Karma checker.

History may now be being written by different people than in previous eras. In oz, 100 years or so of pro British army brainwashing was undone with one line in one movie.. shoot straight, ya bastards.

its not about karma. what is right resonates.

What movie was this? I'd like to hear more about this.

At a guess, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_Morant_%28film%29

Thanks for your response.

I humbly disagree with you though. There are many instances where heinous acts by the powerful have gone unpunished. Many of them by the US and Britain. They have had no repercussions on the perpetrators because of power.

This is the Digital Age, not the age of the scribes. History will be laid out in much more excruciating, and correct, detail. People might have to do some work to find the right pieces in the sea of information, but it will be there for those that want to know the truth.

We are setting a great example for China.

True, but a statesman realizes that you gather more power the less you use it.

I can think of several historical examples that would seem to definitively disprove this.

They would seem to not disprove it at all, seeing as they're "historical".

Everybody dies.

Strong organisations don't.

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