Oppenheimer

An artificial sun rose on an otherwise dark night when the nuclear-bomb test named Trinity ushered in the era wherein our species’ aggressive instinct could render homo sapiens extinct. Given the salience of that instinctual urge—for we are related to the chimpanzee species—the wise (i.e., sapiens) species can be its own undoing. For it took a lot of intelligence in sub-atomic physics to invent the nuclear bomb, yet very little smarts went into deciding to use it against Japan, an enemy that would have lost anyway, in order to save American lives from having to invade the mainland (as if conventional bombs could not have reduced the casualties). Even less thought was put into the need to contain the proliferation of nuclear bombs. Expediency without heeding long-term risk is not a virtue. Kant wrote that even if our species were to institute a world federation, presumably having nation-states that would be semi-sovereign as a check against global totalitarianism, peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. This does not speak well of human nature, and this in turn renders the Trinity test something less than redeeming. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” In the film, Oppenheimer (2023), Robert Oppenheimer reads from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as a woman is on top of him in sexual intercourse. The irony of him being an instrument of mass destruction as director of the Manhattan Project and yet being engaged in potentially reproducing life with a woman is doubtlessly the point of that scene. Hindus who leap to the conclusion that Nolan is insulting their religion miss this point. Had the director included a scene in which Oppenheimer is praying, for example for the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time, a quote from the film, Gettysburg (1993) would have been similarly fitting. In that film, Col. Chamberlain of the Union army remarks, “What a piece of work is man . . . in action how like an angel!” Sgt. Kilrain replies, “Well, if he’s an angel, all right then . . . But he damn well must be a killer angel.” In the nuclear age, killer angel takes on added significance. The question is perhaps whether we have left angel behind as our species’ intelligence has outdone itself, whether in terms of developing nuclear weapons or heedlessly emitting so much carbon that the Earth could someday be unsuitable for us. Or, can we catch up by inventing antidotes? 

The full essay is at "Oppenheimer."

Applying Justice to Nazi Jurists in the Context of the Cold War

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. 

The full essay is at "Judgment at Nuremberg."

Turkey’s President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues

The European Union is not a military alliance, like NATO or the ancient Spartan League. Nor is the E.U. merely a free-trade agreement like NAFTA. In terms of the history of federalism, the E.U. instantiates “modern federalism,” wherein governmental sovereignty is split between federal and state levels, rather than confederalism, wherein all such sovereignty is retained by the states. Both the U.S. and E.U. instantiate modern federal systems, although ironically the U.S. was originally a confederal system of sovereign states. In likening the E.U. to NATA in 2023, President Erdogan of Turkey unwittingly committed a category mistake. This in turn weakened his attempt to leverage his power in approving Sweden as a country in NATO with his demand that the E.U. admit Turkey as a state.

Just prior to the NATO meeting in June, 2023, Erdogan stated at a news conference, “First, let’s clear Turkey’s way in the European Union, then let’s clear the way for Sweden, just as we paved the way for Finland.”[1] Becoming a state in a political union, whether it is the U.S. or E.U., is qualitatively different than joining a military alliance. Joining the latter does not involve a transfer of some governmental sovereignty to a federal executive branch (e.g., the E.U. Commission), legislative branch (e.g., the Council of the E.U. and the E.U. Parliament), and judicial branch (e.g., the European Court of Justice). A state in such a federal system is qualitatively different than a country being in a military alliance because an alliance itself has no governmental institutions and sovereignty.

To characterize a state in a union and a country in a military alliance both as “member states” is misleading. In fact, efforts to do so may stem from an ideological “state’s rights” (or Euroskeptic) effort to deny that the E.U. is in fact an instance of modern federalism rather than confederalism. In remarking that “almost all NATO member countries are European member countries,” Erdogan unwittingly fell into the trap of the ideologues who refuse to recognize that the E.U. and U.S. fall within the same genre of unions of states (i.e., modern federalism rather than confederalism).[2] Because the term country implies full sovereignty, both E.U. and U.S. members are states in the sense of being semi-sovereign political units in a federal system. The U.S. states are members of the U.S., because they joined the U.S. from being formerly sovereign countries (or assumed to have been of such status) and the members of the U.S. Senate, which is based on international rather than national law. The Council of the E.U. is also founded on international principles, wherein political units rather than citizens are the members.

It follows that the countries that are members of UNESCO, the UN, and other international organizations are not states thereof, and should not be referred to as member states. To do so in an attempt to imply that the E.U., unlike the U.S., is also an international organization flies in the face of the very existence of the E.U. Commission, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. International organizations do not have legislatures and high courts and executive branches to implement law and federal judicial rulings. That the Euroskeptic ideology denies this just shows the downside of ideology in general as being intellectually dishonest as regards empirical facts. To want to remake things as they presently are is one thing; to claim or insinuate that things are already different than they are is quite another. I contend that the Turkish president fell into the trap laid by the intellectually dishonest ideologues in Europe.

1. Hande A. Alam and Christian Edwards, “Erdogan Links Sweden’s NATO Bid to Turkey Joining the EU,” CNN.com, July 10, 2023.
2. Ibid.

Putin's Fear: Autocratic War Triggering a Russian Revolution

Having watched Oliver Stone's lengthy interviews of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, which had been taped several years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I noticed something very different about the autocrat's demeanor in a video made after a year of the war: his shifty eyes.[1] It was not difficult to infer that the former KGB spy's trained suspiciousness of people had intensified. At the very least, the man looked pensive or nervous. A few weeks earlier, an anti-Putin Russian group may have been responsible for flying a drone over the Kremlin to blow up the dome, and even more recently such a group may have attacked militarily on Russian soil elsewhere. Putin may have been afraid of being assassinated. It is even possible that he had realized that a full-blown revolution could happen. 

Days after an anxious Putin had sat down with the head of Russia's constitutional court, the head of the mercenary military Wagner group, which fights for Russia, warned that if Russia continued to suffer more casualties, "all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917."[2] It is highly improbable that Vladimir Putin would release power as easily as the weak Russian emperor Peter III did after just six months of his reign when Russian troops loyal to Catherine enacted a coup even though she was German and the Russians had been fighting a war against Fredrick's Prussia. 

Whereas the Russian revolution in 1917 was in line with Russia's autocratic-state historical culture, a revolution against Putin could be in democratic direction because Putin had squandered the opening for democracy in the 1990's by incrementally tightening his reigns until it could be said that he had become a dictator. Russians were being locked up during the war just or calling the conflict a war; protests against the war were firmly put down by police wielding clubs. Police initiating violence against non-violent people, as if they were disobedient dogs, naturally triggers the impulse for democratic accountability rather than for tightened autocracy. While this impulse was up against a formidable cultural headwind when absolute monarchy was the norm in the world, the world in 2023 provided the prospective Russian revolutionaries with enough functioning democratic republics abroad for there to be a tailwind in moving in a democratic direction. 

Of course, I am biased in that I was born and raised in a democratic system in which the ideology was instilled in me even when I was a child. Even so, I have not read of a country in which its dictatorship has been held accountable from within the system of government. Furthermore, Rousseau had a good argument against dictatorships in claiming that we are born free but live our lives in chains. The liberty is innate whereas the chains are artificial, hence, I submit, a natural right can be derived. 

1. "Putin's Latest Move Includes a Map of the 17th Century," CNN, May 23, 2023 (accessed May 24, 2023)

2. Rob Picheta and Mariya Knight, "Wagner Chief Warns Russians Could Revolt If Invasion Continues," May 24, 2023. (accessed same day)

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.

---

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.