I am very intrigued by the study of public authority and the control of violence. As such, it is both frustrating and refreshing to study it a new in this class.
When I was in college, one of my teachers for a class on the religious elements of the Arab/Israeli Conflict had all his students stand in a line and marked each end of the line as the end of a spectrum. One end was for those who thought violence was a necessary evil and the other was for those who though violence was never a necessary evil. Two things have stuck with me since that exercise: (1) it was never a debate that violence was evil - this was a point that everybody agreed upon unanimously. (2) Most people, including myself, stood in the middle of the spectrum.
As I perused the readings for this week, listened to the lectures and engaged in our class discussion I noticed that all the conversations focused on finding a balance for the necessary evil of violence in our world, it never focused on the ideal of eliminating violence. While I admit that it is nearly impracticable to eliminate violence in our world, I think most everybody would agree that it would be ideal. However, the controversy would lie in the status quo of a world without violence. i.e. Who has what powers, territories, control and/or wealth.
Moving forward, it is important to highlight the difference between countries with power and countries with high quality of life. Which is more desirable? Which is something we should pursue more ambitiously? One can argue that countries such as Norway & Sweden do not have much power/influence in global affairs but they also maintain a very high quality of life for their citizens. Countries such as the US have both power/influence in global affairs as well as a high quality of life but they also have a significant amount of the world's population, unlike Sweden or Norway. Russia is an example of a country with power/influence but a low quality of life for its citizens and Afghanistan would be an example of a country with neither.
While the security dilemma and cold wars hold many countries fixed on the idea of maintaining power through the development of large military forces, I think international law should be more focused on altering the perspective of sovereign states that quality of life is more important than power. Along with this perspective would come with the pursuit of the elimination of violence as an end goal not simply lessening the amount of violence necessary or controlling it.
As long as we believe that violence is a necessary evil - it will be a ubiquitous evil. As long as we desire power over quality of life in global affairs, they will be mutually exclusive among actors involved. We have models in our world of sovereign states that do not engage in violence either domestically or abroad and maintain a high quality of life. I would challenge us to make them a more prominent guide in our discussions or public authority and the control of violence.
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ReplyDeleteHi Katherine,
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points in your post and I agree with you that international law should focus more on quality of life and the elimination of violence than power. The world is already facing so many problems that can have negative impacts on the quality of life, including the increasing amount of natural disasters, climate change, hunger etc. I always wonder, who cares how much power states have when sooner or later natural disasters will destroy many parts of the world?
However, I think that as long as there are states like North Korea, for example, that do not want to cooperate and play by the rules, the focus, unfortunately, will be on power.
Christine, yes, sadly that is exactly the case. When you have countries like North Korea that refuse to communicate outside their borders, the desire for power might seem like a much more crucial indicator than the quality of life for those over whom you have power.
ReplyDeleteKatherine,
ReplyDeleteI love this post :) It's so interesting to me how much we take war and power-focused IR as a given, rather than as a current state of affairs which can change. In our class, sometimes it seems like as much as we discuss many different points of view, the underlying truth is the realist perspective. I'm sure it's a combination of nature and nurture in that this has been such a dominant school of IR thought for so long, but I wonder about what options we aren't exploring because a positive outcome seems so unlikely. The Norther European states you mentioned, and their neighbors, do seem to have charted a new path for themselves, focusing on quality of life as a major goal of the state. This influences domestic and foreign policy. The Swedish Foreign Ministry announced the world's first feminist foreign policy a couple of years ago, and committed to all IR decisions being made through a gender lens. That's a totally different perspective than decision making through a power focused lens.
I think there's hope, but it's an uphill battle!
Erica - yes, I think you hit it on the head when its a matter of 'the opinions we aren't exploring because positive outcomes seems so unlikely'. Frequently I also find myself thinking that our conversation in class is very heavy on American's perspectives (as I think the majority of our classmates are Americans) and therefore its content and conclusions would differ significantly if a more diverse collection of nationalities were present.
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