> country’s behavior at the international level is another dimension, not much related to its internal system of governance, at least in principle
I don’t believe this is true, diplomatically or in warfare. Democracies don’t tend to go to war against each other, for example [1]. They also fight harder, and with more technological sophistication, when they wage war.
> Give me example of one single country that is not waging any war or complicit of it ?
Almost every democratic country if you hadn't changed the topic again. We were talking about waging a war, not "being complicit" or small-scale interventions like e.g. currently in Afghanistan. For instance, sending fighter jets equipped with cameras instead of bombs is not "waging a war".
I also don't think that it is fair to portray e.g. international alliances against ISIS as evil and unjust wars.
> The other point is why the world should go by force for democracy?
We shouldn't. I said that it's in the genuine interest of all Chinese people to get rid of their one-party system, get due process and fairer application of law, and have a multi-party system.
>Democracy is freedom, I don't like that democracy I am happy with dictatorship why someone should cry ? ( not pointing at you).
Because democracy is not primarily about your personal freedom, it's about maximizing freedom for everyone and also about due process and separation of powers. Being happy about dictatorship is not a consistent political position. If you benefit from a dictatorship, then it lies in the nature of dictatorships without due process that that's a mere coincidence for you. You could just as well be sent to a Gulag and tortured in besaid dictatorship. But the fact that you're personally happy with some particular dictatorship is not a valid argument for dictatorship as a form of governance. Nobody really wants dictatorship in general, if at all you might find a dictatorship from which you benefit somewhat desirable. I am not for democracy, because I personally benefit from it.
Why crying about it? Because the dictatorship you crave will invariably be bad for many other people, and normally functioning human beings are generally capable of compassion and empathy.
Lets say whole population is happy with their dictator and living a decent life,unless someone is arming rebels and inciting political turmoil by funding innocent people. Why you should interfere in their lives ?
You should not, at least not from the outside, and I have never argued for that.
However, the whole argument is fairly academic, because the vast majority of people are simply not happy with dictatorships. It's just easy for countries without due process and lots of terror and intimidation to mask this, e.g. people in surveys will not tell you the truth. In fact, the more totalitarian the country, the less critical they will appear to be of their leaders. Of course, people under Pol Pot were afraid of making critical remarks, because they did not want to be suffocated with a plastic bag.
That being said, since you were deviating again, I have not claimed that China is a dictatorship.
Democracy should come by learning by indigenous people, for indigenous it should not be "MY" desire or someone else desire.
I believe there is ample evidence, both historical and individual, that democracy is everyone's desire upon sincere reflection. Or, at least there is a historic development towards democracy that has had positive effects that are impossible to deny. That's a mere tendency, of course, you will always find naysayers. There is also a lot of disagreement about how to get there, and that's quite reasonable.
> Under what theory of international relations is it legitimate for one country to invade another because they’re upset that other countries bordering it made treaty agreements with another power?
“Might makes right”.
Though, to be fair, it's not the most popular theory of legitimacy in international relations.
> Other than China asserting themselves, what is the point?
Dictatorships aren’t rational. That’s the flaw with one-man rule. History is filled with stupid battles fought because one dude decide to go on a field trip, as well as stupid altercations which in a weaker system would have escalated out of a need to save face [1].
Like, what did Russia stand to gain in 2022 when it invaded Ukraine? (The NATO arguments are nonsense. In part because by that measure, Russia has already lost.)
> Information war combatants have certainly pursued regime change: there is reasonable suspicion that they succeeded in a few cases
I disagree with those ideas. Until now they look like made-up excuses for problems that have local origin, not external origin.
By claiming that these problems are external we do not only create a division and misunderstanding in the local politics.
We also create a non-existing virtual enemy that will cost a lot of resources. And this might be the actual goal of this article: to get military funding for these projects.
On the other hand there are companies and political organisations directly working to promote a certain idea, and to attack opposing ideas. This is independent of origin of country. These groups can be easily identified as they try to even forbid those ideas, and avoid reasonable public discussions. Discussions that can actually settle the disputes or even give better understanding of the underlying problems.
Certain big companies do not want that. Because their funding and income are directly related to how much products or shit they can sell the public. Criticism of those organisations is usually stopped by buying out media, even science media. And by paying expert to come up with certain conclusions.
The political organisations, or even political agencies try to implement a certain policy. Those are actually two different groups, but the agencies often like to support certain political organisation.
They want to create an "enemy" from everyone that does not support their political idea. This does not matter on what side of politics you are. From: "They are gonna take our guns and freedom" to "all white men are racists".
The general idea is to create an enemy based on fear. The article also does it a bit similar. It is something that I rather step away from, because it does not really identify the problem.
The political groups that create "enemies" to promote certain ideas, just need to talk with each other. Putting internet barriers between them does not help. Both sides are humans. Opposing people talking with each other, in a friendly way, can even create friendships.
Then we have the last group. Agencies that want to support certain political groups to push certain political policies. There are a lot of them, even within a country. The oil-companies want to downplay climate problems. The military wants to push for more wars, maybe for strategic reasons. The CIA wants to push for regime changes, maybe to install their puppet. The Israelis want to stop discussions about Palestine. The Russians want to keep Crimea. But there are much more agencies. Even Billionaires that do their own little policies, like Soros publicly sponsoring immigration.
Each of these agencies have their own goals, and we like to defend against them. Is each agency really working for our interest or for their own? In a democracy we like to choose and have full information.
So the problem is not separated by state. Blockage of information will even prevent us from seeing what is really going on. It will even allow for increased corruption.
If you look what is really going into the problems that are reported, it is unfair politics, and the lack of good unbiased information.
> Modern economic powers like the UK do not use their militaries for self-defense.
Modern economic powers have militaries and alliances that make attacking them unattractive. They have sufficient teeth to dissuade conflict.
If you are fortunate enough to live in a Western democracy your safety and security is preserved by the actions of those who you call morally compromised.
> As much as diplomacy tends to be derided (and I'm certainly among those detractors), I also want to believe diplomacy still fucking means something for the sake of a civilized world.
I don't understand what benefit for diplomacy is this insistence that a war without a declaration isn't a war.
> Stop invading countries trying to bring democracy
Please drop this pretense. Nobody invades anything to bring democracy. You can't force democracy on people even if you wanted to. Democracy is so much more than just the elections.
You invade countries because you have geopolitical interests in the area, and want to gain political or economical influence.
It used to be the case that you invaded countries because the territory itself was valuable, but when was the last time you heard invaded people become citizens of the invaders' nation state? These days the cost is calculated and operations carried out are means to an end.
> When a country is attacked, does its leadership typically first consult with its economists to determine if resistance is cost effective vs. just letting the enemy take territory or kill citizens with little opposition?
Yes, countries very often let the enemy take territory or kill citizens because resistance wouldn't be cost effective. All countries of course try to project the image that they wouldn't, that their territory and the lives of their citizens are priceless. But border skirmishes happen all the time and the vast majority of them don't lead to war.
> People fight wars so they can align voting with location.
This is a needless digression, and it's clear you won't change your mind. But FWIW, this is 100% backwards. Wars are over "location" because by definition it's not possible to fight a war to win voting share or opinions[1]. War can win territory, period. That's all it does. So we've traditionally aligned our political boundaries with whatever lines were drawn up by the last conqueror to come through the region.
That's a bug! Democracy is the fix for this disaster. You're claiming the disaster is a feature!
[1] It is possible, however, to use the tools of war to affect demographic distributions. We call that "genocide", and I really don't think you want to be aligning your logic in this direction.
> Most wars are between neighboring countries and are started by leaders that have other reasons than not having visited the other country for doing so.
My reasoning on travel being good for peace has little to do with leaders.
I don’t believe this is true, diplomatically or in warfare. Democracies don’t tend to go to war against each other, for example [1]. They also fight harder, and with more technological sophistication, when they wage war.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick-Mello/publicati...
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