From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Tue May 06 2003 - 22:29:54 MDT
In a message dated 5/6/2003 2:25:31 PM Central Standard Time,
weidai@weidai.com writes: There's a great book about the historical
interactions between war, military strategy, international law, and
constitutional law. It's titled The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the
Course of History by Philip Bobbitt. I recommend this book highly and it is
very relevant to the current discussion.
Weidai,
I looked up Shield of Achilles via Amazon as a result of your
recommendation. When I see a book I want to add to my list I usually look it
up on Amazon, print out Amazon's advertising blurb and put the printed sheet
into my future reading stack. I did so in this case also.
Dr. Bobbitt made an interesting observation about the epochal war Let
me see if I can connect two very tangled strands out of our recent history.
First the American Dr. Bartlett wrote in his article in the March 2003
issue of Esquire of his discovery that the set of underdeveloped countries
are the source of the strife in the world. The article is on line and I
recommend it to you.
Second, I have also been following a site that has been conducting an
on going reporting of the Second Gulf war. I read a follow up analysis of
that war from the stand point of Russian diplomacy. BTW, the site claims to
be the output of Russian intelligence.
The particular report I am referring to is at
http://www.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=4129&lang=en
And contains the following paragraph, "The epoch of national liberation
movements and revolutions, and the socialist experiments between the 1940s
and 1990s, gave rise to a vast number of states that demonstrated their
inability to provide an adequate level of development and a decent standard
of living for the majority of their people. The absence of development or
worse, widespread corruption, ineffective despotic regimes beset by
demographic and religious problems -- these are a growing threat not only for
the states themselves and their populations, but also for the rest of
mankind. It is precisely the regions where these states are clustered that
are the major sources of instability, disease and terrorism."
I added the underline to one word.
My question is this: are we also engaged in an epochal war with these
failed socialists states as their dictators strive to maintain their offices?
Rephrased are these nothing but continuations of the collapse of the USSR?
Ron h.
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