The Tyranny of the Veto: Eviscerating the U.N.

Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on October 4, 2011, effectively tossing a life preserver, according to the New York Times, to Syria’s president. The toothless proposal would have condemned the Syrian government for its violent crackdown of popular protests in which more than 2,700 had been killed. The proposal’s language had been softened from targeted financial sanctions; the council would merely have been charged with considering unspecified measures after a 30-day period. Two reasons can be cited for the two vetoes: commercial ties and a vested interest in forestalling any more threats to the doctrine of national sovereignty.

The veto-provision itself of the Security Council can be questioned here, as it allows allies to protect even a government that has, in the words of Gérard Araund of the E.U., lost its legitimacy in the world. The New York Times reports that the arms contracts that Russia had with the Syrian government at the time of the vetoes were valued at $4 billion. “Beyond jet fighters and tanks, Russia has varied interests in Syria, like oil and gas and cement.” Russia is Syria’s fifth largest trading partner. Accordingly, Russia’s foreign minister issued a statement condemning extremists in Syria who were engaging in “open terror” through violence. Russia was betting on Assad. Aleksandr Shumilin, director of the Center for the Analysis of Middle East Conflicts, told the media that as “soon as it seems that the opposition has become comparable to [Assad] in strength and there appears a possibility they will win, Russia will change its behavior.” One could add that such a change would occur if and only if Russia’s commercial interests with Syria are threatened. This approach is known as realism in international relations. States pursue their own strategic interests internationally, taking for granted rather than challenging the system of sovereign nation-states that permits realism to be the driver even though it does not take into account the broader public good.

The continued hegemony of the nation-state system and the impact of realism are both evident from the fact that even such a weak proposal could successfully be blocked against a government that had killed over 2,700 unarmed protesters. The message being sent by the U.N. is that a government can use its claim to legitimate force pretty much any way it wants. Put another way, an implication from realism in a nation-state system is that the U.N. is merely a conference, or discussion, without much attention to the broader (i.e., international) system of governance, at least in so far as the Security Council is concerned. We are thus left in a Bodinian/Hobbesian world wherein every government is looking out for its own narrow interests, which allow for governments to turn against their people.

To be sure, opponents of the resolution did have a leg to stand on. They claimed that the no-fly-zone resolution on Libya had been abused by NATO bombing pro-Gadhafi positions even when no civilians were in danger. There was a sense in both Moscow and Beijing that the West had been using economic sanctions and military actions under U.N. auspices to further Western-friendly regime change. According to the New York Times, there “is a sense in both capitals that the West in general, and the United States in particular, is feeding the protest movements in the Arab world to further its own interests.” Both Russia and China are “determined to reassert their long opposition to anything that smacks of domestic meddling by outside powers.” Lest it be thought that this is for the protection of other governments or for national sovereignty as a virtue or ideal, Russia faced outside pressure concerning Chechnya and China has Tibet. In other words, the national sovereignty doctrine is a manifestation of realism, wherein international consensus is the result of narrow national interests rather than a view of the good of the whole.

In defending Assad with the doctrine that ultimately protects them, Russia and China must also deal with the inconsistency in letting Assad get away with his killing spree while Gadhafi had killed less yet been stopped. In other words, why does Gadhafi’s opposition deserve help while those against Assad are “extremists”? If abuse of the Libya resolution by NATO were really the problem, then Russia and China could have insisted that U.N. officials oversee any action to defend Syrian protesters and report regularly to the Council, wherein Russia and China could nullify the resolution by a veto if either government suspected any abuse taking place. In fact, the U.N. Secretary General could designate Russia and China as coordinating the operation. The U.N. should not have delegated the Libyan operation so much to NATO, but this does not mean that the same thing would have to be accepted in an operation against Assad.

Going beyond the strategic interests esteemed in realism, the question of international governance can be broached, particularly as there are several truly global issues (e.g., global warming). The development of communications technology means that wholesale human rights abuses occurring on the other side of the world can be instantly seen. Out of this greater awareness, a greater groundswell of opposition to unfettered national sovereignty can be expected, with implications for how international governance is structured.

Given the greater need for international governance, the U.N. should be reformed from a confederation to a modern federation such that a few friends do not have sufficient influence to block a resolution against an abusive government. The veto itself should be eliminated, though this might require that a new organization be formed in lieu of the U.N. Otherwise, we will be left with a world in which Hobbesian sovereigns are allowed to violate their citizens’ basic human right to life while friendly government officials attend to their countries’ respective financial and political interests at the expense of the system as a whole and the general good. I contend that enabling violent, abusive dictators is not in our good, so their friends ought not be allowed to prevent the international community from policing its basic standards. National sovereignty should be limited, just as international governance itself would be subject to constraints.

Sources:

Joe Lauria, “Russia, China Veto U.N.’s Syria Move,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011. 

Neil MacFarquhar, “With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend,” New York Times, October 6, 2011. 

On the Arrogance of Self-Entitlement during a Pandemic

In the midst of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, libertarians in San Francisco, California objected to wearing face masks. Other people there were simply fed up with wearing masks by late 1918. The libertarians, who objected on the basis of rights, actually prevented the Board of Health from renewing a mandate to wear masks.[1] In early 1919, another spike in influenza cases there led the board to put a mandate in place. So in March of 2020, the failure of mass transits and retail stores to enforce physical distancing and the failures a few months later to enforce mandates on wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus can be seen as recklessness (and fecklessness) that could have been prevented by looking back a hundred years. But could the willful disregard of store policies and local law both by customers and store managers have been prevented had business had heeded history? I contend that human nature, which had not changed in such a short time by evolutionary standards, played the heavy, or anchor.
The selfishness of business managers can be regarded as the obstacle to historical progress in dealing with pandemics. As against history and even “organizational learning,” the current profit-motive wins over managers. God forbid that a customer be offended by being confronted by a store employee for not wearing a mask even though mask-wearing was “required” not only by store policy, but also by local law! Of course, a store or business policy barring enforcement of a requirement nullifies it, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Also, allowing customers to break a local law is itself criminal, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Ignoring a company policy and even local law could somehow be justified by the interests of profit-seeking.  
The selfishness and inconsiderateness of customers came with a presumptiveness or sense of entitlement to break not only store policies but local law as well. The mantra by the individual that that individual is above store requirements and the law rings with a shallow arrogance. The presumptuousness of the weak of being self-justified brings with it a bad odor, Nietzsche would say. This pathology was especially prevalent in places such as Arizona in the United States.
According to Jeremy Brown, an expert on the 2020 pandemic, it showed how strident selfishness can be. Such selfishness, joined by the related lack of consideration and empathy for other people, was perhaps greater than expected among American business managers and customers. “I think that the message we’ve seen is that people are selfish to a remarkable degree that I don’t think we’ve seen before,” Brown said.[2] That is, the refusal of retail managers to enforce a company requirement because doing so might turn some customers away, and thus their money, is steeped in short-sighted selfishness that recognizes no business responsibility in society. Similarly, the refusal of customers to wear masks, which put other people at risk, can show us just how much of a force selfishness can have in certain people. “The selfishness of people and their inability to have empathy for others who aren’t like themselves is one of the very, very worrying aspects that the disease has highlighted, Brown suggests. “I think this is a deeply rooted part of American society.”[3]
I submit that it is a gross overgeneralization to gloss American society, as there are many, just as many exist in Europe. In having lived in several of those in America, I was stunned in 2020 by just how much aggressive selfishness and stubborn weakness I witnessed in Arizona by how people reacted to the pandemic. Many bus drivers, for instance, refused to wear masks even though they were required by company policy and the local law. Many retail stores had policies forbidding employees from even approaching customers who were not wearing masks. Many light rail, bus passengers, and store customers went maskless with impunity. Light rail security guards were not allowed even to ask passengers to put masks on, and bus drivers rarely did even though they could have at least informed violators of the company policy mandating the wearing of masks. The local police department managers unilaterally decided not to go after organizations allowing customers or riders to break the law. Apparently some laws, especially if they are important to public health, are not worth enforcing.
In short, in some places more than others, just as the extent and depth of selfishness became more apparent with the coronavirus pandemic, so too did human weakness and the related organizational corruption. That these defects had the gall to defend themselves aggressively rather than recognize themselves are faults is perhaps another stunning realization that was made possible by the coronavirus pandemic. This can easily account for the fact that lessons learned in 1918 were so easily dismissed in 2020.

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1. Kristen Rogers, “What the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Teach Us about Coronavirus,” CNN.com, September 25, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Deforestation in Brazil: Exacerbating Climate Change

On July 17, 2020, satellite data from Brazil's space agency showed that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon was accelerating. "Nearly 3,000 square miles of tree coverage were lost in the 11 months that ended June 30 .That is a 64% increase from the year-earlier period, when 1,772 square miles of forest were destroyed."[1] The deforestation in 2020 was "likely to exceed 2019's total of 3,900 square miles by a 'wide margin," according to a senior scientist at the space agency.[2] Under normal circumstances, which the Wall Street assumed, we would consider the government's claim that not enough troops were available to patrol enough of Brazil's massive Amazon jungle to even slow the acceleration. According to Ricardo Salles, the environment minister, the government wanted to "attract foreign investors to fund sustainable economic development in the jungle."[3] That is to say, the matter boils down to (international) political economy. 

However, the circumstances were not normal. I am not referring to the coronavirus pandemic still ravaging globally, though the refusals of a significant proportion of people to wear masks indoors and on public transportation coupled with the lack of will, competence, knowledge, or ideological inclination to even to enforce the relevant laws, especially in Arizona, reflect the same mindset as that which does not take climate change seriously by electorates and governments around the world. 

Just a week earlier, the World Meteorological Organization had announced that the global temperature-increase threshold set in the Paris Accord of 1.5C (2.7F) over preindustrial levels could occur before 2024.[4]  At this level, the impact of the accelerating deforestation means less CO2 being absorbed by vegetation such as trees, and thus more of the gas being left in the atmosphere. Just as the case of governments of Florida, Texas, and Arizona lifting economic restrictions too early in May, 2020 only to have skyrocketing cases of coronavirus in June and July, governments were also failing in not only not reducing carbon emissions, but also permitting them to continue to increase such that the threshold global temperature could come sooner rather than latter. Given the priorities given the lack of political will over economic and political expediency, we could expect other, more dangerous, thresholds whether in terms of pandemics or climate. 

Perhaps it is precisely because of the mentality that heads in the opposite direction from that which leads to the species' viability that Nature's own instruments for constraining and even eliminating such a species were really beginning to kick in by 2020. Whether the Brazilian government was quietly looking the other way as illegal deforestation was occurring or that government could not supply enough military troops to protect the massive jungle is a question that pales in comparison to the observation that the deforestation itself came at the expense of reduced carbon in the atmosphere. The fact that continued deforestation rather than increasing forestation was happening--that humans living in Brazil (or the world) werte not up to the task of stopping the trend--evinces a weakness in our species that may finally render us extinct by Nature's means, which we cannot necessarily control. As with any overpopulated species, Nature's tools are disease, starvation, and war, according to Malthius. It seems that the refusal of humans to adequately protect ourselves (and societies) even in the midst of a raging pandemic and increasingly urgent climate change may have already doomed our species. It is also possible, though not probably, that the species' ineptitude in protecting itself will be countered by technological innovation. Yet even so, making things worse rather than better does not render our species particularly attractive, at least to Nature. 

1. Paulo Thevisani, "Brazil's Forest Losses Quicken," The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Associated Press, "UN Report Predicts the World Could Surpass Dangerous Warming Theshold by 2024," NY Post, July 9, 2020.

The Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Coronavirus: Equivalence and Progress in Infectious Diseases

History forgotten is history to be repeated, for evolution occurs over such vast oceans of time that for our purposes, human biological nature is fixed. Yet history kept fresh can permit progress such that the species is better equipped to combat problems such as pandemics. At the time of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, serious comparisons to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Black Death of the fourteenth century were lacking in the American media, including by public health officials and government officials even as claims of vague equivalence were made. Such claims, I submit, were erroneous. In fact, they did more harm than good by instilling excessive fear in the population.

Hearing the coronavirus being referred to as a plague on National Public Radio in the United States, I instinctively bristled at the assumed equivalence. A plague is a contagious bacterial disease with a high mortality rate. Coronavirus is a virus rather than a bacterium. The Black Death was a plague pandemic that “devastated Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE, killing an estimated 25-30 million people.”[1]  Paris buried 800 dead each day of the peak, or apex, there. “On average 30% of the population of affected areas [in Europe] was killed, although some historians prefer a figure closer to 50%, and this was probably the case in the worst affected cities.”[2] In 2020, two months after the first recorded death from the coronavirus in Europe, 97,000 people there were dead. The global mortality rate of coronavirus as of March 3, 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), was just 3.4%, which is much closer to the 1% from seasonable flu.[3] Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic was not a plague.

The coronavirus pandemic was also publically likened to the Spanish Flu, which hit the U.S. in 1918. At least both were viruses, unlike the Plague. “The Spanish flu of 1918 lasted only a few months but took an estimated 50 million to 100 million lives around the globe, including 675,000 in the U.S.”[4] Ten days short of two months since the first death from the coronavirus in the U.S., 38,917 people were dead from the disease and less than 5% of the population had been infected. Worldwide, at least 158,000 people had died.[5] Clearly, the two pandemics were not equivalent. The assumed equivalence in the comparisons in 2020 demonstrates not only ignorance, but also a lack of interest in acquiring even a bit of historical knowledge so as to make tolerable comparisons.

In spite of historical knowledge being available and there being advances in knowledge, weaknesses of our species exerts a countervailing wind on the road of progress. The Spanish flu itself may not have been more virulent, however, because medical and public-health knowledge was so significantly less in 1918 than a century later. To put the two eras in perspective, model-T cars were on the road in 1918, whereas electric (and hybrid) cars were being driven and self-driving cars were being tested by 2020.

Parades and “other large public gatherings were common, contributing to the spread” of the Spanish Flu.[6] American governments facing the coronavirus pandemic prohibited or recommended people to maintain a physical distance from each other and stay home as much as possible (e.g. shelter-in-place orders). Retail businesses either shut voluntarily or by government order. Medically, antibiotics “to treat secondary bacterial infections that often accompany the flu had yet to be discovered” by 1918.[7] In addition to antibiotics, physicians in 2020 could put patients struggling to breath on ventilators.

It cannot be assumed, however, that people in 2020 could not have improved their chances of staying healthy by learning more about the 1918 societal protocols. During the Spanish Flu, it was thought “that keeping windows open would deter the spread.”[8] Trolley cars in Cincinnati, Ohio displayed fliers encouraging the practice, “which was utilized nationwide.”[9] In contrast, bus drivers in Phoenix, Arizona kept the bus’s narrow upper windows closed during the coronavirus pandemic a century later. Missing the larger point, the bus company’s management claimed that even open slits were unsafe because passengers could throw small objects out of the buses. Even though medical knowledge was clear that the coronavirus stays airborne relatively long due to its small size among flus and could even be transmitted by normal breathing, the bus company in the desert did not bother to read up on how trolley companied had dealt with the pandemic in 1918. Nor did the passengers figure that physical distancing applied to getting on the bus (i.e., giving deboarding passengers some space). In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the managements did not have control over their own employees.

Arizona at the time had one of the worst public education systems in the U.S.; even bad judgment could be traced back to this factor. Perhaps it is too idealistic to assume that everyone can be educated enough to reason his or her way to better secure even self-interested self-preservation. Even with historical knowledge and advances thereof available, human nature presents a limit as to how much actual progress can be made against infectious diseases.

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[1] Marak Cartwright, “Black Death,” Ancient History Encyclopedia (accessed on April 18, 2020).

[2] Ibid.ev

[3] Tedros Ghebreyesus, press briefing of March 3, 2020. As Director-General, he headed the World Health Organization at the time.

[4] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,” AARP (accessed April 18, 2020).

[5] Ben Westcott et al, “Global Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 158,000,” CNN.com, April 18, 2020.

[6] Aaron Kassraie, “Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago,”

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

Climate Change: Human Failure or Divine Will?

First Reformed (2017) contains fundamental ideas concerning the human condition and wrestles with the relationship between religion and politics.  Ideas play a significant role in the film, hence it can be used in support of the thesis that film is a viable medium in which to make philosophical (and theological) ideas transparent and derive dramatic tension from clashing ideas. In this film, the ideas that clash concern the role of religion in the political issue of climate change—or is that issue primarily religious?

The full essay is at "First Reformed."