Non paywalled version https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e
(Thanks to @AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world )
Non paywalled version https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e
(Thanks to @AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world )
Let’s appreciate what this means for the global order.
Russia has proactively attacked Ukraine. Now the US has attacked Venezuela. If China ever needed a permissive international environment to attack Taiwan, this attack was a major step in this direction.
We are quickly sliding back to a world of great powers, where might makes right and hence smaller countries will be bullied into submission without any concerted opposition by what remains of the ‘international community’.
If the US gets away with this, the same is going to happen to Panama in the not too distant futute and to Greenland soon after.
Unless Russia is burned out after the Uktain war, they might try their hand at the Baltics.
Should Russia collapse, China might integrate some of the Siberian regions.
And so on.
I wonder how this all will end.
It will end like it always does. Like the Roman and Byzantine empires ended, like the USSR ended, like Alexander the great’s empire ended, like England’s empire ended.
At some point great powers become too great to be stable, so they fracture into provinces that become separate countries and the cycle starts over.
Only this time there are nuclear weapons involved, so we’ll see how that goes
Personally, I’m quite ready for an independent New England. We only get back 80% of what we contribute in taxes and manufacturing.
yes because everything will remain the same in this scenario…
honestly it’s this level of analysis that got the usa to elect a pedophile for president
Oh so sorry. I guess I’ll just sit quietly in front of my propaganda box and not try to leave the fascist hellscape my country has turned into.
All political movements start with local activism. If I want New England to be free, it starts with me at the town level.
Have fun doing nothing. I’m sure that engenders a real feeling of hope deep down in your jibblies.
i’m not telling *ou not to act… I’m telling you to give in an ounce of thought before you act
ah yes, the famous opening line of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I wonder if AI and it’s possibilities for mass surveillance and mass manipulation will make a difference and allow empires to sustain themselves and control it’s people.
Maybe wait for anyone to develop something even remotely AI before wondering about that?
Mass surveillance is happening right now, by companies and goverments. The data this generates can be analyzed using AI tools to find anything out of the ordinary, anyone trying to resist the empire. LLMs can be used to generate content to manipulate people, en masse or by microtargeting based on the surveillance data. This is not distant future, this is the near future, if not present.
You have identified what I also see as the only “use” for LLMs. Still doesn’t make it “AI” though, which is what my jab was directed at. However, maybe I should have pointed out that I do not dispute it can be used to mass-manipulate people :/ Sadly, that is entirely realistic.
Countries with nukes and power will eat all other countries, up to the point that one of the countries with nukes is confident that they can attack another country with nukes while preventing a retaliatory strike to happen. Shit will probably slide sideways when that decision happens.
Sliding back? When did it stop?
Westerners don’t have a clear perception of this since they have lived in either the great power (US) or one of its vassal states (NATO) for the last 30 years.
They’re not used to a world of multiple great powers / poles, even though that has been the case for most of human history.
This is ridiculous. The USSR was a thing not long ago.
Most adult voters are too young to remember it firsthand, hence the perception. Basically anyone under the age of 50 likely won’t have a clear picture. For a better understanding:
If you were born in 1980, you would’ve witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall when you were 9 years old.
There are tens of millions of westerners who are 50 and up. So “Westerners don’t have a clear perception of this” is false. That’s all I’m saying.
Might make right has always and will always be the de facto. It takes those with. Might choosing to not have it make right for anything else to exist.
That’s the reality of history and anyone who has even a grade school understanding of the history of humanity knows it.
We can all want better, and we all know the cost of the fall out of might makes right. But that doesn’t change reality, it only makes it more painful to watch history repeat.
Yes and no.
As a last resort, the threat of violence (or enforced consequences more generally) is ultimately behind the authority of any institution.
But legal and institutional frameworks can persist if power to inflict consequences is distributed and governed by rules, the incompliance with which is again sanctioned, and so on. The system is then kept stable by preventing consolidation of power with few actors and not tolerating arbitrariness in how it is welded. The fact that any authority is ultimately rooted in the threat of violence does not mean that we as social and reasonable animals cannot find reasonable and stable arrangement that should prevent us from actually having to resort to violence all too often.
And we have absolutely slipped up in this regard. Relying on one party (the USA) as the primary locus is power in NATO and the world to keep peace. Allowing big social media platforms to consolidate and grow beyond any reason. Turning a blind eye to violations of international law
This is what Putin wants. Putin’s puppet is doing exactly what it’s master commands. A world where great powers disregard everyone’s sovereignty.
I’m sorry but if you think this wasn’t already the case I have a West Bank village to sell you.
Did I say that hasn’t already been happening? Please don’t assume what I think. Obviously, letting Israel get away with bombing Gaza and other Palestinian areas is part of that trend.
What I mean is:
After WW2 many agreed that something like this must never happen again. The UN security council was founded in 1945. European Convention of Human Rights 1950. Treaty of Rome which established the EEC in 1957, and so on, and so on. Despite the cold war, international affairs in the latter half of the 20s century were not a free-for-all. This was a strong era of international law and legal regimes were added and became increasingly more binding, not the other way around. When the USSR collapsed and Germany was unified 1989-1991 many started to envision an ‘end of history’ as the world would converge into a global liberal order etc. The mood in 2000 was generally one of great optimism; a new millennium for humanity, a new chance after the difficulties and horrors of the 20th century had been overcome. For the first time, the world set overarching development goals, the millennium goals, to be reached by 2015.
This general trend towards and joint vision of more international cooperation, universal free trade and a rules based order has slowly been dying since…? I’m not sure when exactly, probably 2010ish. But what has been a subtle turn for the longest time has accelerated noticeably since ca. 2020.
That was my point.
My point is that it’s not a “trend;” Israel has been committing atrocities against Palestinians since before day 1 and it didn’t affect their international recognition one iota. Then they committed more atrocities and were rewarded with international trade, investment and arms. Even after they recognized the State of Palestine they kept encroaching on its territory. There is no time in history when Israel didn’t get away with bombing Palestinians, and this trend holds elsewhere. International law has never applied to great powers in any meaningful sense; it’s always been a cudgel for beating smaller powers when they get out of line.
Clearly the US and its allies never felt the need to follow these legal regimes, if their behavior during and after the Cold War was any indication. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#1945–1991:_Cold_War. This optimism you’re talking about was nothing more than naivety that never reflected the real world, is my point. When did international law ever restrict American imperialism? Soviet? French? British? The only real difference now is that Westerners can’t ignore this stuff any more; as someone from the third world I can tell you nobody I never felt like I or anyone else were protected by international law. Iraq alone is conclusive proof that the rules based order was a farce. What you’re describing is the West losing faith in the farce they created; nobody else had any faith in this shit in the first place.
If there was ever such a thing (there wasn’t), there’s no way it can be argued to have survived the War on Terror, so it has to be before 2001.
Which is really weird give how decentralized and hard to control the world is right now. This empire strategy is a failing one for everyone involved.