Vinod's Blog
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 - 08:25 PM Permanent link for Rooting Out Evil & WMD
Rooting Out Evil & WMD

I'm constantly amazed by the number of idiotic, self-righteous, overzealous nutcakes in the world.   (to be fair, a good % of the world believs that about the US  ;-)   A pointer to this organization -- www.rootingoutevil.org -- came across the humor alias at my office (rightfully so!).   It's a bunch of Canadians who are trying organize Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) inspections of the United States:

In the new year, Rooting Out Evil will be sending a team of volunteer weapons inspectors into that greatest of rogue nations, the United States of America.

...According to [Bush's] criteria, the most dangerous states are those run by leaders who:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties;
and 4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

The current US administration fulfills all these criteria. [thus...] Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his administration allow immediate and unfettered access to international weapons inspectors to search out their caches of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

If they refuse to comply, we will assemble as many volunteer weapons inspectors as possible at a major border crossing between the US and Canada and attempt to cross into the US on a mission of peace....

The sick & twisted part of me actually wants these guys to get enough momentum so I can see how their showdown at the border will pan out.  

I don't know how to put my objections to these morons more plainly.   The hard facts of the Hobbesian International Order we live in are:

  • All nations are NOT equal -- Like people, cultures & ideas, some nations are more prosperous, more virtuous, more intelligent, and sometimes simply better than others.   Some national ideologies are so crappy that no measure of aid or international support will bring them to some measure equality within my lifetime.  As Fukuyama beautifully argues in End of History, the pinnacle governance ideology today is the Liberal Democracy.  Nations which aren't Liberal Democracies are simply worse.
  • There are no universal laws among nations; diff nations get different treatment -- Unlike people, nations are NOT automatically granted a set of "inalienable" rights just because someone out there recognizes them as a nation.  The natural order of international affairs is the Hobbesian Jungle.   At the end of the day, the only language that ALL nations understand vis a vis other nations is physical force. 
  • WMD have fundamentally forced Liberal Democracies into an aggressive role within the International Order -- In an earlier time, Liberal Democracies like the US tended to push for isolationism with selective, mutually-beneficial, proportionate recognition of select states.  For ex., pre WWII America "recognized" Canada at a far deeper level than it "recognized" China.  In the modern world with WMD, technology allows bellicose memes to reach very far outside of their borders.   The only solution is to band together with other Liberal Democracies and necessarily impose will.  At best, Liberal Democracies vis a vis each other can create some semblance of a Rule of Law between them that elevates others to our standard.   Hitches provides a great description of this here:
    Unlike the Romans or the British, Americans are simultaneously the supposed guarantors of a system of international law and doctrine. It was on American initiative that every member nation of the United Nations was obliged to subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    Less dominant memes will sure as hell look for ways to evade this imposition. 

We've "allowed" some countries (e.g. UK, France) to nuke proliferate because we know that they share enough fundamental governance memes with us to be safe.  A few others have proliferated (e.g. Russia, China) without our "blessing" but we are still fundamentally (more) certain of their continued integrity of management of their "assets" with the goal that they will somehow transform into Liberal Democracies in the future.

These dimwits have a far easier time passing judgement on the illegitimacy of US action than they do on the illegitimacy of WMD in the hands of the Axis of Evil.   A very clear case of the "drunk in the headlights".


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