The world is a dangerous place, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is doing his best to ensure this is correct.
THE planned deployment of US interceptor missiles in Poland could trigger a missile strike by Russia if those missiles are ever used, the Russian army’s chief of staff has warned.
The United States has outlined plans to site 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic by 2012 as part of a missile defence shield aimed at a possible missile threat from Iran, according to Washington.
A Russian opposition activist has been sent to a psychiatric hospital by authorities a day before a planned demonstration.
Artem Basyrov’s detention is the latest in a series of incidents suggesting a punitive Soviet-era practice is being revived under president Vladimir Putin.
All the more reason not to isolate ourselves in the world.
Folks like Ron Paul and his minions would have us build walls around our nation and hide, if we do not lead Russia or China will.
While some of Ron Paul’s ideals are RIGHT ON TARGET, the problem is practicality, realism.
We need a solid conservative president to take on the future Russia’s or China’s as well as the religion of Piece (Misspelling intentional)
I realize you back the R so we don’t have a D in the WH. While I disagree with you, I understand your point.
Russia is, in someways, worse than the old USSR as it will *not* concentrate on weapons,bluster and such. I doubt we will ever see shoe pounding in the UN from a Russian diplomat…
What we do see is the emergence of the first fully Organized Crime backing nuclear state. Yeah, doesn’t that sound just peachy?
And the assassinations? Typical Red Mafia work seen during the 1990’s. The real ‘brains’ are not in the Kremlin, but at the head of the major Mafia gangs, including Mogilevich who is by far the most astute, trained economics criminal the world has ever witnessed. Consider him the ‘Alan Greenspan of Organized Crime’. Simon Reubens has the capability to run hundreds of companies in his head without a major paper-trail. You can’t prosecute without evidence and he leaves very little of that as the UK and US have already found out. Mogilevich also works with Monzer al-Kassar from Syria and they have had contacts with all the major terror concerns on the planet. You name the group, they have been involved with them.
That is far, far worse than an open and above-board Communist nuclear state. And our ability to actually *deal* with that?
Zip.
Bushwack: my point now and, until things radically change, forever shall be: I’ll always tick the (R) box before I’ll ever consider the (D) box. History has proven this to me — allowed that, of course, history proves these two paths are not so divergent anymore, eh?
AJ: as you so aptly point out, not Russia but the POWER behind what APPEARS to be Russia is the most frightening. However, we may console ourselves, however briefly, that their motivation is not theological or for the eradication of an entire segment of the population because, as you and I both know, that would be so BAD for “business.”
BZ
Mr. Z – I can imagine a threat to make a city disappear without some sort of payment… not necessarily cash, but in foreing policy or some such… maybe a demo on a small town to show that it can be done.
The Red Mafia is not the Sicilian sort… it is not a ‘family’ structure. It is a brutal Russian type… no one needs to make an entire population vaporize. Just a bit at a time to get a message across. “Suitcase nukes” are really of the 55 gal drum size from the old Russian arsenal.
And we still don’t inspect every shipping container.
If done by an organized crime group just which *nation* will be held responsible?
Have I ever mentioned the concept of ‘private war’ being anathema to civilization… we really do have to get serious about this.
AJ: how correct. Private war. What an ugly concept.
BZ
“I looked the man in the eye,” he said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” George W. Bush.
How anyone could support Bush is beyound me.
Mistake after mistake after mistake, it just doesn’t stop.
Ranando: heavy sigh. Dragged kicking and screaming into a semblance of agreement.
BZ
That evil, war mongering Bush was too optimistic about Putin? huh, I thought Bush was always lookin for a war.
our immediate problem is our dependence on foreign oil, it makes us do stupid things, try to make stupid alliances. and we need to get away from is ASAP.
look for russia, Iran, Syria, and a few other arab countries to get together with the aim of destroying Israel.
Mark
I doubt the real reason will be the destruction of Israel (at least for the Russians) the real reason will be the nutering of the US with help from the inside by the likes of the Dems (Neville Chamberlin anyone). China will be a silent partner in the alliance by economically strangling us once they float the Yuan, right now the Yuan is about 8 to 1 imagine what happens when they run it to 1 to 1 and they are will still pay 800 yuan for a barrel of oil. Russia will bankrupt us by fueling another arms race.
From Vattel, Law of Nations, Book III, 1758:
Ҥ 1. Definition of war.(136)
WAR is that state in which we prosecute our right by force. We also understand, by this term, the act itself, or the manner of prosecuting our right by force: but it is more conformable to general usage, and more proper in a treatise on the law of war, to understand this term in the sense we have annexed to it.
§ 2. Public war.(136)
Public war is that which takes place between nations or sovereigns, and which is carried on in the name of the public power, and by its order. This is the war we are here to consider: — private war, or that which is carried on between private individuals, belongs to the law of nature properly so called.
§ 3. Right of making war.(136)
In treating of the right to security (Book II. Chap. IV.), we have shown that nature gives men a right to employ force, when it is necessary for their defence, and for the preservation of their rights. This principle is generally acknowledged: reason demonstrates it; and nature herself has engraved it on the heart of man. Some fanatics indeed, taking in a literal sense the moderation recommended in the gospel, have adopted the strange fancy of suffering themselves to be massacred or plundered, rather than oppose force to violence. But we need not fear that this error will make any great progress. The generality of mankind will, of themselves, guard against its contagion — happy, if they as well knew how to keep within the just bounds which nature has set to a right that is granted only through necessity! To mark those just bounds, — and, by the rules of justice, equity, and humanity, to moderate the exercise of that harsh, though too often necessary right — is the intention of this third book.
§ 4. It belongs only to the sovereign power.(137)
As nature has given men no right to employ force, unless when it becomes necessary for self defence and the preservation of their rights (Book II. § 49, &c.), the inference is manifest, that, since the establishment of political societies, a right, so dangerous in its exercise, no longer remains with private persons except in those encounters where society cannot protect or defend them. In the bosom of society, the public authority decides all the disputes of the citizens, represses violence, and checks every attempt to do ourselves justice with our own hands. If a private person intends to prosecute his right against the subject of a foreign power, he may apply to the sovereign of his adversary, or to the magistrates invested with the public authority: and if he is denied justice by them, he must have recourse to his own sovereign, who is obliged to protect him. It would be too dangerous to allow every citizen the liberty of doing himself justice against foreigners; as, in that case, there would not be a single member of the state who might not involve it in war. And how could peace be preserved between nations, if it were in the power of every private individual to disturb it? A right of so momentous a nature, — the right of judging whether the nation has real grounds of complaint, whether she is authorized to employ force, and justifiable in taking up arms, whether prudence will admit of such a step, and whether the welfare of the state requires it, — that right, I say, can belong only to the body of the nation, or to the sovereign, her representative. It is doubtless one of those rights, without which there can be no salutary government, and which are therefore called rights of majesty (Book I. § 45).
Thus the sovereign power alone is possessed of authority to make war. But, as the different rights which constitute this power, originally resident in the body of the nation, may be separated or limited according to the will of the nation (Book I. § 31 and 45), it is from the particular constitution of each state, that we are to learn where the power resides, that is authorized to make war in the name of the society at large. The kings of England, whose power is in other respects so limited, have the right of making war and peace.1 Those of Sweden have lost it. The brilliant but ruinous exploits of Charles XII. sufficiently warranted the states of that kingdom to reserve to themselves a right of such importance to their safety.
§ 5. Defensive and offensive war.
War is either defensive or offensive. He who takes up arms to repel the attack of an enemy, carries on a defensive war. He who is foremost in taking up arms, and attacks a nation that lived in peace with him, wages offensive war. The object of a defensive war is very simple; it is no other than self defence: in that of offensive war there is as great a variety as in the multifarious concerns of nations; but, in general, it relates either to the prosecution of some rights, or to safety. We attack a nation with a view either to obtain something to which we lay claim, to punish her for an injury she has done us, or to prevent one which she is preparing to do, and thus avert a danger with which she seems to threaten us. I do not here speak of the justice of war: — that shall make the subject of a particular chapter; — all I here propose is to indicate, in general, the various objects for which a nation takes up arms — objects which may furnish lawful reasons, or unjust pretences, but which are at least susceptible of a colour of right. I do not, therefore, among the objects of offensive war, set down conquest, or the desire of invading the property of others: views of that nature, destitute even of any reasonable pretext to countenance them, do not constitute the object of regular warfare, but of robbery, which we shall consider in its proper place.”
From Article I, Section 8, US Constititution, 1787:
“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;”
From Law of Nations, Book III:
Ҥ 67. It is to be distinguished from informal and unlawful war.
Legitimate and formal warfare must be carefully distinguished from those illegitimate and informal wars, or rather predatory expeditions, undertaken either without lawful authority or without apparent cause, as likewise without the usual formalities, and solely with a view to plunder. Grotius relates several instances of the latter.5 Such were the enterprises of the grandes compagnies which had assembled in France during the wars with the English, — armies of banditti, who ranged about Europe, purely for spoil and plunder: such were the cruises of the buccaneers, without commission, and in time of peace; and such in general are the depredations of pirates. To the same class belong almost all the expeditions of the Barbary corsairs: though authorized by a sovereign, they are undertaken without any apparent cause, and from no other motive than the lust of plunder. These two species of war, I say, — the lawful and the illegitimate, — are to be carefully distinguished, as the effects and the rights arising from each are very different.
§ 68. Grounds of this distinction.
In order fully to conceive the grounds of this distinction, it is necessary to recollect the nature and object of lawful war. It is only as the last remedy against obstinate injustice that the law of nature allows of war. Hence arise the rights which it gives, as we shall explain in the sequel: hence, likewise, the rules to be observed in it. Since it is equally possible that either of the parties may have right on his side, — and since, in consequence of the independence of nations, that point is not to be decided by others (§ 40), — the condition of the two enemies is the same, while the war lasts. Thus, when a nation, or a sovereign, has declared war against another sovereign on account of a difference arisen between them, their war is what among nations is called a lawful and formal war; and its effects are, by the voluntary law of nations, the same on both sides, independently of the justice of the cause, as we shall more fully show in the sequel.6 Nothing of this kind is the case in an informal and illegitimate war, which is more properly called depredation. Undertaken without any right, without even an apparent cause, it can be productive of no lawful effect, nor give any right to the author of it. A nation attacked by such sort of enemies is not under any obligation to observe towards them the rules prescribed in formal warfare. She may treat them as robbers,(146a) The inhabitants of Geneva, after defeating the famous attempt to take their city by escalade,7 caused all the prisoners whom they took from the Savoyards on that occasion to be hanged up as robbers, who had come to attack them without cause and without a declaration of war. Nor were the Genevese censured for this proceeding, which would have been detested in a formal war.”
Yes, actual text on Law of Nations, compiled before the US was even born and incorporated into the Common Law of England as described by Blackstone in 1758… almost like he was working with Vattel…
Are we beginning to understand what Congress hasn’t been doing for 40 years or so in this question of Private War we call ‘terrorism’?