The Lesson of World War One (That is too costly to learn twice)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the end of "the Great War." This war killed 15 to 20 million people but within a generation we had a second world war that killed 60 million. In between, the Great Depression caused so much economic misery that it gave power to communists and fascists throughout the world.

The decades after the first world war were a time of misery. The decades after the second world war were a time of peace and prosperity.

Between 1350 and 1950, there was at least one major military confrontation between European powers in every decade. What changed after 1950 is that we created international institutions.

There is a quip that nations either exchange goods or gunfire. Economic development and trade have been a boon to peace. The West also has institutions that link it together: NATO, the UN the IMF and the EU. These didn't really exist until after WWII and they do a great deal to explain why the time after the second world war was so starkly different from the time after first world war.

Just as the institutions of families, city councils, federal governments, corporations, churches and banks all deserve continual criticism and drive to improve them so that they adapt to changing realities and new possibilities, so do these post WWII institutions. They need improving. Without institutions we are like the other primates, though. We can't afford to neglect or discard them. And the West without these post-WWII institutions would be more like the world of Stalin, Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler than JFK and Reagan, Thatcher and Blair, Trudeau and Mulroney, de Gaulle and Chirac, and Kohl and Merkel.

The lesson of WWI is that without creating institutions that transcend nations we again slip into the the madness that goes by a variety of names (patriotism, nationalism, self-interest) and devolves into the worst kind of competition rather than raise us to the best kind of cooperation. It is a lesson too costly to learn twice.

Capital Punishment for Despots

It's time that the UN was given the power to assassinate world leaders.

As much as I've criticized George W. in this blog, I do agree with him about one thing: a head of state ought not to have the right to murder groups of his own citizenry. When a Hitler begins killing Jews, or Pol Pot begins to wipe out a quarter of Cambodia's population, or a Saddam begins killing Kurds, or when Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe begins to kill and imprison opposition party members, there ought to be a way for the world community to quickly intervene.

It seems like the two other options for dealing with this situation are simply immoral. The world community could bemoan the loss of life and do nothing. That's certainly an option we've chosen most often. Or the world community could launch an invasion, overthrow the government of the offending leader, perhaps even try and execute the leader. As we know too well, that, too, can create complications and can result in tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of innocent war casualties.

And perhaps it is just the eighth-grader in me coming out, but how hard could it be for the UN to use some combination of laser-guided bombs, hit squads, or poisoned quail eggs to execute an abusive leader? It has to be easier than either letting him commit genocide or sending in an army to topple his regime.

And if the rules were clear - if these world leaders who would imprison opposition leaders or would kill particular groups of their people know that there was a simple and clear consequence for such abuses - they might restrain themselves even when they’ve seized absolute power.

I realize that there are numerous complications that would come from such a policy. How does the UN decide? What happens when the next leader is just as bad or worse? These are just a couple of the questions raised by such a policy, but, again, it seems to me that these questions are less troublesome than the questions raised by passively witnessing abuse or actively occupying foreign countries.

It's not clear that such a power could rest with a single country like the US or Russia, or even a small group of countries like the G-8. Although it would make approval an administrative quagmire, it seems like the moral authority for assassinating a world leader could only come from an international body like the United Nations.

If we are serious about human rights as a global right and if we're practical about our inability to invade and occupy every despotic regime, it seems like we have no other choice.

Three Cheers for John Bolton's Exit

One of the biggest illusions any individual can have is that he can just focus on building a good life while ignoring the community he’s a part of.

If the community deteriorates, it'll provide crime that threatens life instead of vaccines that save it, theft that takes goods instead of prosperity that provides them. It is hard to stay happy in the midst of those chronically sad and hard to stay sad in the midst of those who are chronically happy; even our emotional life depends on the state of those around us.

This ought to impact what an individual does. It should also impact what a country does. There are a variety of reasons to formulate policy that deals with the whole world rather than just our country. One of the biggest reasons is that globalization has made it official - we are one humanity with one shared planet and our fate is bound up. Even the simple and ubiquitous yellow number two pencil depends on trade between three continents. We can’t create a good life on a world gone mad.

Patriotism that pretends that the rest of the world doesn't matter, that we don't need to kowtow to international organizations like the UN, that we can fight childhood obesity without caring about starving children abroad - this is not just immoral. It is, ultimately, dangerous. No matter how strong the individual, his safety is a function of whether or not he lives in a safe neighborhood.

For this reason alone, Americans ought to cheer the fact that John Bolton lost his position as US Ambassador to the UN. He embodied the disrespect for international institutions and foreign people that seems to have characterized what is most repugnant about this Bush administration. His leaving offers hope that the US may again join the world community as a participant rather than dictator.