Bob, Bob, Bob. Your position is such a jumble.

Maybe you thought to yourself, why don't we do more to oppose tyranny throughout the world? Why do we allow people to be oppressed by their own governments?

-- But, interrupted skeptical Bob, on what grounds would we oppose tyranny?

Democracy! Our values!

But then you realized this is trouble: a core democratic value is tolerance.

Which is fine, you thought, except people take it too far, allow themselves to be paralyzed by a mamby-pamby cultural relativism.

We've become like people who *say* they have religion, but don't want to convert anyone.

Well do we believe in democracy or don't we? If we do, let's act like it! Let's go convert some mofos.

-- Just because we believe? asks skeptical Bob.

Hell yeah! We believe, and if we really believe that's enough.

And if others believe something else, let them try too. Every country should act on whatever it believes, because ..., because ...

Because we can't give in ...

to relativism.

There is no 'objective' realism.

That’s your problem: you aren’t a moral realist.

For example, if the Nazis stayed in Germany (in the sense of not invading other countries), then would you say that no country should have invaded Germany to stop the Holocaust? — Bob Ross
No country did; most wouldn't even take in refugees.

You didn’t answer the question; and provided, instead, a red herring. I will ask again but with more clarity: if the Nazis stayed in Germany (in the sense of not invading other countries), then would you say that no country is justified in invading Germany to stop the Holocaust?

Who "we"?

Ideally, the Western, modern world. Now, is it feasible for everyone to band together in the name of the human good? Probably not.

You read this in history, or tea leaves? How else do you get the majority of a people to volunteer for extreme hardship and danger, for the purpose of imposing one government's will on another?

In the name of the human good, or at least what is good. Most people would understand how it would be justified to conquer the Nazis to stop the Holocaust; but, to your point, many people would be too cowardly to act.

He wasn't alone; the regime was brutal. He reported to Ferdinand II and had the use of soldiers, administrators, overseers and priests sent by the monarch. Is there any record of the common people of Spain or Portugal clamouring to bring civilization to the Americas? D you truly believe they would have voted for the conquests on moral grounds?

The way they handled the conquest of abhorrent; because they were not trying to help the people there: they were wanting world domination. Imperialism is not identical with national world domination.

What the OP is referring to by imperialism, is its simple form of a nation having a duty, under such-and-such circumstances, to conquer and impose their values onto another nation (without it being legitimate self-defense or something like that).

Again - both pre-WW2 Germany and today's North Korea have or had formidable militaries - North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Correct, but that’s despite the point. I am saying that, in principle, you would have to reject the west invading the Nazis, or North Korea, or China, even if it were easily possible to do—because you are against imperialism.

Whether or not, in practicality, it is possible to do so is irrelevant to my point right now.

Has a military intervention to protect tyrannized people ever worked?

It was in Afghanistan until the US got out. Al Qauda was eradicated and the Taliban was suppressed; but then the US left and the Taliban took power (again).

He's a question for you. Now Trump is elected one could make an argument that the US poses a treat to the health of earth's biosphere, as it is one of the biggest polluters and under Trump it also has no intention of doing something about it. Are other countries morally obliged to attack the US in order to prevent further damage to earth's biosphere? — ChatteringMonkey

How about preventing the proposed persecution of liberals, women and immigrants? Nobody's about to intervene on behalf of those threatened minorities. Nobody's even going to aid the protests that will inevitably form. The US will have to play out its own internal drama.

Besides avoiding WWII seems like another solid argument no to do it.

That’s true, but despite the point.

I don't think you have to invade them, no, if they have no intention of attacking you or your allies... there are other measures.

Really? If you could invade and conquer North Korea with no casualties nor with starting any other wars (with other countries), you would choose to let the north korean people continue to be butchered and tortured?

Now Trump is elected one could make an argument that the US poses a treat to the health of earth's biosphere, as it is one of the biggest polluters and under Trump it also has no intention of doing something about it

China is the biggest polluter; and renewable energy produces more pollution to manufacture and maintain than fossil fuels.

Are other countries morally obliged to attack the US in order to prevent further damage to earth's biosphere?

If it actually were an existential-planet-threat and other countries actually had a way to significantly reduce pollution (other than population control), then yes. I can do you one better: what if the US decided that they were going to detonate a 1,000 nukes for fun—why wouldn’t other countries try to stop them?

What point are you making? I didn't follow. Cultural relativism and hyper-tolerance are nonsense.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

You didn’t answer the question; and provided, instead, a red herring. — Bob Ross

No, a reality-check. It's the UN's mandate, not any self-appointed guardian's, to organize interventions against genocide, but those morally superior modern western nations are mighty slow to support UN initiatives.
When the morally superior western nations finally did defeat Germany, they didn't prevent the next genocide; they didn't resettle the survivors in their own countries: they took the lands of people they had recruited to their cause and plunked a European population on it, which started 77 years of sporadic carnage.
This 'duty' to fix other peoples tends to be expensive and end very badly.

to your point, many people would be too cowardly to act. — Bob Ross

Or they're too sensible to die for your assessment of The Good.

The way they handled the conquest of abhorrent; because they were not trying to help the people there: — Bob Ross

No empire conquers other peoples in order to help them.

What the OP is referring to by imperialism, is its simple form of a nation having a duty, under such-and-such circumstances, to conquer and impose their values onto another nation (without it being legitimate self-defense or something like that). — Bob Ross

I get that. You're wrong, it's illegitimate, it kills more people than it saves and it doesn't work.

For those who are upset at my rhetoric (and perhaps the lens by which I am analyzing this), I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principle—like Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc — Bob Ross

I agree with some aspects of your OP but I think it's framed in a somewhat inflammatory way. I agree with you, for example, that the European liberal tradition (in the broad sense) and its associated values are valuable and worth preserving. The Taliban and some of the other failed states are not really examples of alternative political systems, but the failure of politics altogether. But lumping China and India in with that - both of which have considerably longer histories of civilisation than does Europe - veers pretty close to out-and-out racism.

I'm with you in opposing the reflexive denigration of both liberalism and Western cultural values, but I think it could be approached in a far more nuanced way. (Also agree with the above that Trump/MAGA is a serious internal threat to liberalism.)

I've always loved this one:

The Send-Off
By Wilfred Owen

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.


――――
"like wrongs hushed-up" ― oh, he could write.

:heart: :broken:

What do you dream of, Bob? Do you dream of peace and plenty? Or do you dream of making people listen to you?

It's framed in an extremely inflammatory way. It's one thing to criticize say, the Chinese or Iranian (or Indian) government; it's a whole other thing to call their society degenerate and inferior. OP completely lost me there. The phrase to use is "repressive government" not "inferior society."

I do believe certain societies can warrant that label, but we need to be very careful.

No, a reality-check. It's the UN's mandate, not any self-appointed guardian's, to organize interventions against genocide, but those morally superior modern western nations are mighty slow to support UN initiatives. — Vera Mont

This is not really true. This is from the UN's guidelines for peacekeepers:

UN peacekeeping operations are deployed with the consent of the main parties to the conflict. This requires a commitment by the parties to a political process. Their acceptance of a peacekeeping operation provides the UN with the necessary freedom of action, both political and physical, to carry out its mandated tasks.

In the absence of such consent, a peacekeeping operation risks becoming a party to the conflict; and being drawn towards enforcement action, and away from its fundamental role of keeping the peace.

The fact that the main parties have given their consent to the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping operation does not necessarily imply or guarantee that there will also be consent at the local level, particularly if the main parties are internally divided or have weak command and control systems. Universality of consent becomes even less probable in volatile settings, characterized by the presence of armed groups not under the control of any of the parties, or by the presence of spoilers. — UN Principles of peacekeeping

But then you realized this is trouble: a core democratic value is tolerance.

Which is fine, you thought, except people take it too far, allow themselves to be paralyzed by a mamby-pamby cultural relativism. — Srap Tasmaner

There can be a troubling contradiction in extending the value of liberal tolerance to those who don't necessarily support or understand the liberal attitudes that fostered it.

Case in point is the difficulties faced by Islamic migrants and refugees coming to Western cultures. Islam doesn't recognise the separation of church and state, and in theory at least, can only support Shariah law. At the same time, refugee support groups and activists do all they can to support Islamic refugees, even despite this tension. But this can have difficult consequences when Islamic conservatism conflicts with Western libertarianism. The town of Hamtramck, Michigan, made headlines in 2023 for being the first US city with a majority Muslim council. Great joy amongst supporters of cultural diversity. But one of the first things they did was to ban displays of LGBT flags on public property on the grounds that homosexuality is forbidden in Islamic law. (I wonder how Green Left activists who are strident in defense of both refugee and LGBT rights manage to reconcile this conflict.)

Then from the right, there's considerable hostility towards liberalism on different grounds, for example Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. But it's on the far right that you also find the most virulent forms of white supremacy, which also undermines liberalism and is far from representing the best of Western culture in my opinion. The invocation of Nazi symbolism by these groups is far from coincidental in my view.

(On an old forum, far far away, there was an exceptionally annoying poster who's entire shtick was the internet meme that Beethoven was actually African or had descended from an African progenitor. By suggesting Beethoven was Black, the meme challenges the exclusivity of European high culture and disrupts the narrative that classical music is solely the legacy of white Europeans. The Green Left have many of these kinds of dubious memes.)

I suppose what excarbates all of this is the absence of any kind of common cultural ground, any sense that 'what unites us is more important than what divides us', as Obama used to say. But then, conservatives would say that this is because Western culture destroyed its own heritage by undermining Judeo Christian values, and that in the absence of any sense of revealed truth, there can only ever be a kaleidoscope of opinions.

//but then, the way Biblical religion is constituted was bound to engender fragmentation, as it was divisive from its inception. It's a real can of worms. Perhaps it is a problem with ideologies of all kinds.//

Why would you not be a Western supremacist? — Bob Ross

Think of different societies as being like plants. Some are corn plants, some are palms, and some are cacti. Each evolved to survive its own set of challenges. Governmental systems are about the survival of a society rather than about some higher good. Basically, what's healthy for a corn plant will kill a cactus.

I find myself disagreeing with a fair part of the opening post, but, anyway...

1. How do you impose democracy upon a people by force? — Srap Tasmaner

You ask everyone what they prefer, without others knowing what they said, granting everyone an equal say.
Those are some basics at least; not what I'd normally call an imposition.
If most said "I want Stalin to do as he please", then they may not get a second chance at this, thereby surrendering the principle.
There's lots more associated with democracy, but those are some basics anyway.

I hope you're enjoying your visit to Earth, but you should really check with your parents before interacting with the natives.

Where does that empower any nation that considers itself superior to the nation in which a wrong is taking place to invade and impose its own values?

You ask everyone what they prefer, without others knowing what they said, granting everyone an equal say. — jorndoe

And this is practicable in a nation of 50 million - how? I assume, first you asked each of the people in your own country whether they supported an intervention half-way around the world. Could take a while....

like Talibanian Afghanistan

Like the US and its allies did for 20 years? The US public isn't even willing to support Ukrainians, who are actually willing to fight for their freedom in large numbers and seem plenty competent enough to win if given decent support. Initial support for helping them repel an invasion fell apart as soon as it was associated with a mild rise in prices and, all things considered, a fairly mild amount of expenditures. But that's democracy.

And it's hard to imagine the public being any more bought in to defending Taiwan, let alone occupying some place that doesn't want to be occupied.

The most successful US interventions: (West) Germany, Japan, and Korea had a level of involvement and expense that the current consumption focused politics of the US (and EU) would never allow for. Other relative successes, Kosovo and Iraqi Kurdistan, could just as easily have gone the other way, like Vietnam. Simply put, democracy itself warrants against such evangelism. This isn't 1946; people's views tend to be very zero sum. Something like Eisenhower doing a massive deployment to stabilize Lebanon could never happen today.

And note: the US didn't try to push democracy on South Korea originally. It applied some pressure, but that was largely internal, as it generally has to be.

Not for nothing is Afghanistan called 'the graveyard of empires'.

Do you think that the US might one day invade the US and impose democracy, fairness and tolerance there?

I did actually watch the 2024 movie Civil War the other week. But no, I don't actually see out-and-out armed conflict in the US. I think the real threats are more likely debt defaults, banking system collapses, environmental catasrophe, that kind of thing, for which there are many plausible scenarios. But that's for another thread.

Although I did note Peter Hartcher's OP on the outcome in the US Election thread.

Sorry, I was merely being sardonic. But I agree with you. :wink:

Where does that empower any nation that considers itself superior to the nation in which a wrong is taking place to invade and impose its own values? — Vera Mont

I was pointing out that the UN does not authorize it's peacekeepers to do the kinds of things @Bob Ross proposes.

@Wayfarer As an English born Muslim I always find the ignorance and disinformation regarding Islam and Muslims atonishing,especially amongst otherwise intelligent people.
It's equivelent to the west borough baptist church or KKK being used as a general representation of Christianity.

The level of racism and western supremacist mindset in this thread is laughable.

Liberal folks claim to be "anti racist" and against police brutality in the US,but then accept this blatant imperialist racism and violence against non western nations!!!

Have you heard of Sufism wayfarer,and how many Muslims have you interacted with to draw your incorrect conclusions?

That’s true, but despite the point. — Bob Ross

Besides the point you are trying to make maybe, but I think these situational practical concerns typically are more important than any moral concern in deciding to go to war. I don't think anyone should be morally obliged to attack the US for instance, whatever it does, if only because they would loose that war horribly.

Really? If you could invade and conquer North Korea with no casualties nor with starting any other wars (with other countries), you would choose to let the north korean people continue to be butchered and tortured? — Bob Ross

I don't think you get to strip away everything that is salient about a concrete situation, and still have something usefull or applicable to say about how to act in that situation. There usually are casualities in a war and allies that join in... why would we want to ignore all that to determine the morality of an action?

China is the biggest polluter; and renewable energy produces more pollution to manufacture and maintain than fossil fuels. — Bob Ross

China is at least acknowledging the problem and trying to do something about it. It also pollutes way less per capita because it has 3 times the population, and has less historical pollution build up... The US is also the architect, protector and main driver behind this whole global system we have that is the main cause of all of this, so I really don't think there is much of a case to made for not seeing the US as the main culprit... if we had to assign blame anyway.

If it actually were an existential-planet-threat and other countries actually had a way to significantly reduce pollution (other than population control), then yes. I can do you one better: what if the US decided that they were going to detonate a 1,000 nukes for fun—why wouldn’t other countries try to stop them? — Bob Ross

Does it really need to be an existential threat? I don't think so, there's plenty of non-existential damage that could be totally unacceptable, like say the damage we are on track of doing because of climate change. And if the US was a threat to earths biosphere, or if it detonated 1000 nukes for fun, than I guess it would be justified for other countries to try to stop it because that would be a threat to the security of all those countries. So maybe my counter-example wasn't the best example for the point I was trying to make, that morality by itself seems like a poor reason to attack a country.

In western culture, it is exceedingly common to despise and oppose nationalism and imperialism — Bob Ross

And why not?

Do note that patriotism, love of your country, isn't a synonym for nationalism or jingoism, that your country is better than others.

When nationalism is defined as identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations, then it's totally logical to oppose this idea. I surely do love my country, but I won't think that my country and it's people are better than others as I've met a lot of foreigners too. I might see my countrymen as awesome, but then the Dutch too are awesome too. And societies that have many difficult problems, well, I can be just happy that my country doesn't have them.

And imperialism? Well, we see classic 19th Century imperialism in action with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even if this could be presented as an attempt Russian reconquista. Our present system of having open borders and cooperation inside the Nordic states and in the EU are a positive step from historical experience of one country trying to conquer all of Europe (be it France or Germany).

It is totally another thing to look at your nations history and see nothing but negative in it.

I submit to you, that you should accept a sense of nationalism in two respects. The first, in the sense that whatever nation you belong to you must have a vested interest in its flourishing and protection against other nations—or move to a different one (if you can). The second, in the sense that, if your country has substantially better politics than other ones, you should have a pride in it and want to expand its values to the more inferior ones (which leads to imperialism). — Bob Ross

So what's wrong with patriotism then? As I remarked, nationalism and especially jingoism have these negative sides to them, which is clear in their definitions.

Yet the last thing you mention I would be a bit critical about it. Just what do you mean by "want to expand its values to the more inferior ones"? Look, if things are good in your country, then let that example then stand out. But don't be so cocky and full of hubris that you think you have to expand your values to others. If it works well, they can copy it from their own free will. If they ask help, then you can give help, but don't force something to others they have not asked for. Your then simply arrogant.

Besides, the idea of superiority or inferiority of a country is imaginary. One bad event and your shiny image can be broken, even if all the people are still quite the same.

Besides, the idea of superiority or inferiority of a country is imaginary. One bad event and your shiny image can be broken, even if all the people are still quite the same. — ssu

I agree. And being convinced that it can't happen to us is a recipe for blindness in case it does start happening. Humility protects.

It's the UN's mandate, not any self-appointed guardian's, to organize interventions against genocide,

The UN is a joke: they don’t intervene in genocides because they lack the power to. The very countries which are doing genocide are members of the UN, and vote on the matter; which is incredible.

I think what you are trying to note here is that the UN is not self-appointed and countries are—but is that really true? I don’t think so.

Do you think members of a government, in representative republics, are self-appointed???

When the morally superior western nations finally did defeat Germany, they didn't prevent the next genocide; they didn't resettle the survivors in their own countries: they took the lands of people they had recruited to their cause and plunked a European population on it, which started 77 years of sporadic carnage.

I have never argued that the West has historically done no wrong deeds.

This 'duty' to fix other peoples tends to be expensive and end very badly.

But we are learning! Like I said, we are at the stage of Western development where we understand, by-at-large, how to proportionately and properly treat people. All I am saying is sometimes you have a duty to overtake another nation because that nation is so degenerate. You would have to argue that there either are no such degenerate nations (which is absurd), or that we shouldn’t intervene (which is immoral).

No empire conquers other peoples in order to help them.

Why not? You don’t think we should try to help oppressed people in other nations?

I get that. You're wrong, it's illegitimate, it kills more people than it saves and it doesn't work.

That’s not always true though. You are conflating a subset of scenarios with all of them.