#Answer My thoughts are in a state of flux at the moment on the vexed question of Government or multi-Government intervention in other States, so I welcome views and opinions from others.

As a general rule, I think as a matter of respect for the peoples who have formed themselves as a sovereign State (even a State whose people are suffering widespread #HumanRights violations) it is wrong for any State or grouping of States (hello #UNforces) to intervene in the affairs between the #RogueState and its peoples.

For every general rule, there must be some proper exceptions. A possible, limited exception, would be if the #RogueState’s troubles are (as they would, typically) affecting adjoining nations, then those nations might be justified to “intervene” to the extent of protecting their peoples and their geographical boundaries. Intervention (to bring home citizens in the adjoining #RogueState) and boundary actions (securing geographic boundaries and the welfares of those peoples attached to them) would be morally justified so long as that intervention was proportionate and carried out as part of a packaged response including dialogue and isolationism.

In my view, isolationism (“taking your bat, going home, and refusing to play until the tyrant reforms or is brought to bay by his own people”) seems to me the strongest and perhaps only universally morally justifiable rule for conduct of relations between sovereign nations.

Staying out of the “stoush” between the peoples and the #RougeStates seems to me the morally right strategy. This leaves it to the peoples to sort out their own affairs of State.

1. So many #Humanitarian interventions by States and / or #UNforces tend to make matters worse, for a more prolonged period, than if the the world’s nations were simply to disengage. So I am an advocate for #Sanctions and #Expulsions against the #RogueState and #Dialogue (but not those that would cause worse #HumanRights grief for the suffering peoples) rather than (even more) foreign intervention between #RogueStates and their peoples.

2. So many #RogueStates, when you look at their troubled histories, tend to have a prolonged history of colonialisation, immiserating trade or intervention by supposed good States – and perhaps would not have gotten into trouble, fallen into brutal tyranny and #HumanRights abuses, if those supposed good States had never interfered in the relations between the peoples and the State in the first place. Such is the history of British colonial rule from the 10th to 21^st Century (from England’s colonialisation of #Ireland, #India, #SriLanka, #Burma, #Pakistan, #Afghanistan, and many other nations, up to its creation of the colonial #USA and #Canada, and the creation of #Australia and #NewZealand, and Britain’s continuing colonial possession of the #Faulklands).

Ross Ashcroft, @RenegadeEcon has produced a short ‘toon that demonstates the cause and effect relationship between foreign intervention in a State and the “Rouge-ification” of that State. The last thing that we would want to do (but the first thing that we often do, in the world of political #unSpeak is “we can’t take the effect and make it the cause” (to quote the philosophy of Jack White from the White Stripes).

https://twitter.com/#!/greenupoz/status/159996129893814272

https://www.youtube.com/user/RenegadeEconomist#p/u/9/W1FkTTGCBVw

#Vietnam and #Afghanistan are obvious candidates for the sort of #RogueState created by “Billion Dollar Bob” type foreign intervention. But how much more of the Western colonialisation, so-called aid, and ‘economic growth’ via ‘trade’ and ‘military expansion’ throughout Asia and the Pacific (including Australia) also fits within that same economic model and political history?

Most harsh dictators in #RougeStates have gained militaristic, debtocratic and / or lawyerocratic supremacy over their peoples through engaging in trade (especially in weapons and technology) with foreign governments and would not have been able to turn their nation into a #RogueState if in the first place, the tyrant’s arms, debt etc suppliers from abroad had taken the morally correct stance of not arming those tyrants against their people.

Remember what George Orwell told us in his 1984:

https://twitter.com/#!/orwellguy/status/165610362824179712

America’s founding fathers of 1776 were, in rhetoric and mostly in practice, strongly isolationist. “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli” were seen as rare exceptions rather than a global policy of military intervention. The #USA governmen in the period up to and early years of #WorldWar1 (before the #Lusitania was sunk) and pre- and early year of #WorldWar2 (before #PearlHarbor) continued to be strongly isolationist.

Perhaps the original and pre- #WorldWar USA administrations had got it right in this regard. Perhaps the world would be a better place, if the #UN and its member nations would return to that sort of policy.

#Discussion – Open for discussion. Let me hear your thoughts (tweet them quoting #1 and #JJQandA, or use your Twitter Avi to comment via WordPress comments option below)

#Question

#Answer

#Discussion