Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House
A great power always tries to dictate terms, its allies usually go along with it in public rhetoric, competing regional powers offer qualified, troubled etc. opposition in public rhetoric, states that are under pressure from the power for whatever reason (bad rogue states when we're the power, good freedom-fighting states when we're not) make loud displays of opposition in their public rhetoric -- so far, all of this is chalk and none of this matters. 98% of the time the "international crisis" is deliberately manufactured for somebody's domestic consumption: sometimes the power's, sometimes the Geopolitical Competitor or the Tinpot Dictator or the Principled Neutral or the Brave Little Nation or whatever the trappings are.
When there is an actual risk of conflict, the handful of people in the world who own important things get concerned. Then the diplomatic channels are where real information is transmitted about how far everybody's actually willing to go. There's still the tactics of negotiation but it's the difference between discussions between private parties (which can be successful) and tub-thumping for the cameras (which almost always ends in a race to the bottom of the gene pool and violence).
The system usually works: deals are cut, a few ladies drop their pearls in horror that we didn't go to the wall for "honor," and then the next crisis is upon us. Actual explosions are failures of information: either communication is poor or information is incomplete or one side just does the math wrong.
Sort of. There's always a huge gap between what we say in public versus what we say in private. Plenty of grand, sweeping rhetoric (by all sides, in all countries) is for the nightly news. The private diplomatic lines are where real intentions are communicated.Isn't that sort of necessary to even have the oil embargo discussions that brought up this idle threat? Oil's fungible, after all.
A great power always tries to dictate terms, its allies usually go along with it in public rhetoric, competing regional powers offer qualified, troubled etc. opposition in public rhetoric, states that are under pressure from the power for whatever reason (bad rogue states when we're the power, good freedom-fighting states when we're not) make loud displays of opposition in their public rhetoric -- so far, all of this is chalk and none of this matters. 98% of the time the "international crisis" is deliberately manufactured for somebody's domestic consumption: sometimes the power's, sometimes the Geopolitical Competitor or the Tinpot Dictator or the Principled Neutral or the Brave Little Nation or whatever the trappings are.
When there is an actual risk of conflict, the handful of people in the world who own important things get concerned. Then the diplomatic channels are where real information is transmitted about how far everybody's actually willing to go. There's still the tactics of negotiation but it's the difference between discussions between private parties (which can be successful) and tub-thumping for the cameras (which almost always ends in a race to the bottom of the gene pool and violence).
The system usually works: deals are cut, a few ladies drop their pearls in horror that we didn't go to the wall for "honor," and then the next crisis is upon us. Actual explosions are failures of information: either communication is poor or information is incomplete or one side just does the math wrong.