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I think this case of denied airspace is more about showing leaders of smaller countries the price of saying no to US demands, than about threatening future whistleblowers.

If you're the leader of a sovereign country and try to make decisions that clash with wishes of USA, they will make your own life difficult.

Interesting play.

But as always the true power in a relationship is from the subordinate party, they can always say "no"; i.e. take their ball and go home. Authority comes from submission. Maybe this is why Cuba is still hounded even worse than the USSR ever was, they refused to play along.

In the end sovereign relations is little different from playground antics; pleading your case from the stance of rationality and/or fairness doesn't get you very far, only once someone is seriously hurt do things change (sometimes not ever then; Stubenville anyone?).

"as always the true power in a relationship is from the subordinate party, they can always say no"

That's the first I've heard of this line of thought. Is there research on this statement? It's pretty counter-intuitive to think that the true power in a relationship lies with the subordinate party. I don't see how slaves, military personnel, or even office workers could be considered truly powerful over their superiors. In some cases saying "no" would lead to serious inconvenience and possible misery. In other cases it could lead to death.

In the case of slavery, even subordination could lead to misery and death. What would have happened if every slave had simply stopped responding and refused to do work for even one minute? They'd be beaten and tortured but if they kept it up, their people wouldn't be enslaved anymore as doing so would just be a waste of money and time.

Obviously you couldn't get that many people to allow themselves to be tortured to death to prevent future enslavement, but the thought exercise makes it appear that the GP's assertion has merit even if it's not entirely practical.

There is the case of the Haitian Revolution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution, where that is exactly what happened.

> their people wouldn't be enslaved anymore as doing so would just be a waste of money and time.

Doesn't look like a big win to me. Native Americans were not very popular as slaves, so they were simply killed instead...

Well, it somewhat worked with religious martyrs of various denominations. I'm thinking of Christian martyrs and Islamic ones for example, where the act of resisting was in itself a way to transcend death.

I think in the end it's all a matter of how you sell it. There wasn't a unifying story for all those enslaved africans to rally behind. In the end there needs to be a narrative that pushes people into openly rebelling against the status quo.

Does a poem count as research?

There are no masters, only slaves. None command, when none obey.

"It's making itself vulnerable."

It's not vulnerable, it's more dangerous.

It's just that more people are finally see the men behind the curtains and realizing that they are just as petty and human as the rest of us, but have insane amounts of power. And are not willing to give up any of that power or even display any true global leadership or responsibility.

Realize that "these people" have absolute power. And as time goes on, don't need as much as the population around to maintain their status or luxuries. What would you do in their place if faced with a angry populous?

What would you do in their place if faced with a angry populous?

I would behave so much better than when faced with an apathetic one.

To me this is like the argument that "prostitution avoids rape", it's blackmail.

"prostitution avoids rape" isn't blackmail, it's just ignorance since rape is about power, not someone desperate for a lay.

No, this morning they just look incompetent. When was the last time you ever heard of any presidential plane ever being stopped and searched in transit through a foreign airport? Or passage through airspace being denied?

I can't remember it ever happening. Dictators can fly around the world with impunity but they'll contrive to ground the plane of a democratically elected president and search it, for some guy who published a bunch of powerpoint presentations?

And they did all this... with all the consequences it's going to have and they didn't even get Snowden!

Well put, really puts into perspective how incredibly out of proportion and punitive this measure was.

Rather than incompetent, it looks brazen to me. They don't do this unless they know they can get away with it, and that makes it scary.

Let me preface this by stating I'm not a big fan of guns personally, but let's modify that question a bit to say: "What would you do in their place if faced with an angry and ridiculously armed populous?"... well I'd probably do my best to stay off their radar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...

Sometimes I think the powers that be are poking an enormous sleeping dog with a stick just for giggles.

Personal firearms are worthless against NBC weapons. And I wouldn't be surprised to know genetic weapons are being developed...

Yes, but that's assuming there are people in the government with the will to deploy those weapons against the public. At best they'd only achieve pyrrhic victory.

Not in an insurgency, low-intensity warfare sort of way. Not unless you can somehow make them very targeted.

"We had to destroy the [village] in order to save it" doesn't really apply if you consider, say, New York City.

As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 (and, of course, successful terrorist acts over the last decade) demonstrated, low tech is still Good Enough for a lot of purposes.

Exactly. It's guerilla warfare. The military would be next to useless in a situation like that. Not to mention morale issues.

It's funny that the US has twice the amount of guns per capita compared to Switzerland, when Switzerland is the country that demands that all conscpripts in their militia keep a gun at their home.

But where does this power come from? Now that other countries (and their citizens) see the "men behind the curtains", they will likely start taking steps to limit their exposure to this country and hopefully begin weakening its power.

The US gets away with much of what it does because of the enormous US market. But at some point other countries will realize that the cost of that market has gotten too high and then a large chunk of the the US' power will dissolve.

<quote>...who will likely be absolutely furious with America, but even more so europe.</quote>

France, Italy, Spain and Portugal all agreed to deny this aircraft access to their airspace. Europe may be furious with America, but they are certainly not showing it by their actions.

Europe's bark is worse than it's bite - and America will be very satisfied with that.

The leaders of these countries may have agreed, though some apparently have later reversed their position. The citizens certainly have not.

> And you know what... that's great. Because you know what it does? It reinforces a sense that at the heart of the American government there's an intelligence community that's turned into a feral beast. A beast that seemingly can't be controlled by anyone we elect and it's wandering around the world pissing off people indiscriminately in its wild attempts to get Snowden back.

Unfortunately, I doubt that. I think that anything the US does in its search/example-making of Snowden will be accepted by the majority of Americans as reasonable and even virtuous.

A beast that seemingly can't be controlled by anyone we elect

They're in total control of the beast. They want the beast. They could end the beast at any time.

You think that Bush's and Obama's massive expansions of government weren't all about amassing and maintaining political power? Those guys both believe that more government power/money solves all woes.

Where are all the big government apologists in this thread? Let's hear a defense for the inevitable abuse of power that unchecked government growth leads to.

Ah, there's nothing quite like trying to hijack an issue for your preconceived partisan hobby horse.

Tell us more about how those of us who believe in investing in public education and transit infrastructure while cutting the military/security budget are really the ones in favor of this military/security program.

Don't forget to include how the Tea Party are the heroes here. You can cite all the redstate.com contributors calling Snowden a traitor as evidence. (http://www.redstate.com/2013/07/01/tech-at-night-snowdens-on...) Or you could go to David Brooks or basically every conservative except for Rand Paul.

Or maybe, just maybe, you should drop the tribal BS and recognize that this issue cuts across party lines.

I read that more as a "statist (which both republicans and democrats are) vs non-statist (libertarians, anarchists, etc)" shading. The parent mentioned both Bush and Obama, so he's clearly suggesting that BOTH democrats and republicans like bigger government. Both parties have little pet "get the government out" issues but nothing serious.

Man, and here I am, just an almost-true-scotsman.

Could you help me out here? I'm not trying to be purposefully dense but I can't really figure out what you're trying to say.

I understand the "almost true scotsman" as a reference to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman but I'm not really sure how it's applicable.

> You think that Bush's and Obama's massive expansions of government weren't all about amassing and maintaining political power? Those guys both believe that more government power/money solves all woes.

This is clearly bipartisan. He's attacking both democrats and republicans and suggesting that on many issues there's little difference. I don't believe it's possible to argue that it's partisan. It attacks both sides.

It might be tribal, but on an axis orthogonal to the traditional left/right political spectrum.

Definitely about making Snowden an example. It's in the gov't's interest to make the cost of leaking high to discourage future leakers.

Ironically, what they're actually doing is showing that leaking can cause them to make disastrous decisions. How many more Snowdens will it take before the US irreparably damages itself? From the looks of things, not that many more.

Obama saying on national TV "we only target foreign entities [without a warrant]" is enough irreparable damage to the US internet industry.

No non-US entity is ever going to give high-value confidential data to Google, GMail users, Android phones, AWS, companies hosted on AWS, Apple, iPhones, or Skype ever again.

Even if NSA swears up and down that they've stopped spying, how could we ever know if they're lying? (We already know they're more than willing to lie under oath.)

Yea, and this was just one Snowden. Imagine if another popped up with some other program we don't know about. They'd likely get even more frantic and take an even bigger gauge shotgun to their feet. I have to imagine that inspires whistleblowers at least as much as it scares them.