I want to get into the nitty gritty of strategy, but I do think there's a couple of points about human nature I should make first.
There does seem to be a universal (or almost entirely) universal desire for respect. Fairness. Decency. We can train ourselves out of it, teach ourselves that 'the world is not fair' and that 'this is just the way it is', but it's something that we lose because of life experiences and the choices we make. It's not something natural.
Which is why universal human rights are so powerful. It's not so much that the ideal matches reality, as that so long as reality fails at this...we are likely to see unrest and instability. Sure, 9/10 people will put their heads down and get on with life, no matter what. And yet there will always be that tenth troublemaker, that young person who hasn't had reality beat into them yet, or an old person who is too tired to care.
We can argue about what should and shouldn't be considered a human right, about where these ideas came from, and more. Later. What I wanted to focus on the most, here, is that living up to these ideals says something powerful, too. It says that you can lead a nation without arresting everyone who disagrees with you, or makes fun of you, or makes you the butt of a joke. That you can successfully impose law and order without resorting to torture. That such things are actually unnecessary to ruling, at all.
Which has certain implications - namely, that all the states who do engage in such behavior aren't doing it for reasons of state. The state can survive without it. Rather, all the rulers engaging in such behavior are doing it because they've confused their own self interest with the needs of the state.
What that also means is that every time we fail to live up to our ideals, we show that we don't truly believe that we can succeed while staying true to our ideals. That we don't think we can win without torture, or manipulating elections, or arresting those who disagree with us. (Kind of reminds me of an ex-boyfriend of mine, discussing 'Buy America' and Toyota. What he basically said was that he would buy the best car, whoever made it. And if that car wasn't American than we need to get our act together and start making the best car instead. Win not by pulling down the competition, but by pushing ourselves to be better. This, btw, is the exact opposite of what Donald Trump is doing. He's not going to "Make America Great Again" by creating an environment where we have the best manufacturers. Instead, he's going to do it by trying to make it harder for the competition to sell to us. Granted, you can say other countries have been manipulating the system in their favor already. This is another topic too long and complicated to get into right now, but I want to point out that we need challenged to be better and do better, to rise to the challenge. Not to whine about what other countries are doing.)
During the Cold War that I've been writing about, you could argue that a lot of our actions were taken because we didn't truly believe in capitalism. After all, if capitalism was the right path all we had to do was wait. Other countries will figure it out, eventually. Even if the very worst happened, if communism had swept the globe and capitalism had fallen by the wayside, if the beliefs were correct wouldn't they eventually have been resurrected?
The fear of communism, then, actually shows how little faith we have in our own system. Just as the justifications for 'enhanced interrogation methods' reveal how little we actually believe in rights such as "no cruel and unusual punishment". Sure, this was not applied to US citizens...but if we truly believe this is a right, then we should be practicing it 100%. Not deciding it's wrong for US citizens and acceptable for terrorists.
Ideals aren't something we're supposed to give up just because things get tough.
There does seem to be a universal (or almost entirely) universal desire for respect. Fairness. Decency. We can train ourselves out of it, teach ourselves that 'the world is not fair' and that 'this is just the way it is', but it's something that we lose because of life experiences and the choices we make. It's not something natural.
Which is why universal human rights are so powerful. It's not so much that the ideal matches reality, as that so long as reality fails at this...we are likely to see unrest and instability. Sure, 9/10 people will put their heads down and get on with life, no matter what. And yet there will always be that tenth troublemaker, that young person who hasn't had reality beat into them yet, or an old person who is too tired to care.
We can argue about what should and shouldn't be considered a human right, about where these ideas came from, and more. Later. What I wanted to focus on the most, here, is that living up to these ideals says something powerful, too. It says that you can lead a nation without arresting everyone who disagrees with you, or makes fun of you, or makes you the butt of a joke. That you can successfully impose law and order without resorting to torture. That such things are actually unnecessary to ruling, at all.
Which has certain implications - namely, that all the states who do engage in such behavior aren't doing it for reasons of state. The state can survive without it. Rather, all the rulers engaging in such behavior are doing it because they've confused their own self interest with the needs of the state.
What that also means is that every time we fail to live up to our ideals, we show that we don't truly believe that we can succeed while staying true to our ideals. That we don't think we can win without torture, or manipulating elections, or arresting those who disagree with us. (Kind of reminds me of an ex-boyfriend of mine, discussing 'Buy America' and Toyota. What he basically said was that he would buy the best car, whoever made it. And if that car wasn't American than we need to get our act together and start making the best car instead. Win not by pulling down the competition, but by pushing ourselves to be better. This, btw, is the exact opposite of what Donald Trump is doing. He's not going to "Make America Great Again" by creating an environment where we have the best manufacturers. Instead, he's going to do it by trying to make it harder for the competition to sell to us. Granted, you can say other countries have been manipulating the system in their favor already. This is another topic too long and complicated to get into right now, but I want to point out that we need challenged to be better and do better, to rise to the challenge. Not to whine about what other countries are doing.)
During the Cold War that I've been writing about, you could argue that a lot of our actions were taken because we didn't truly believe in capitalism. After all, if capitalism was the right path all we had to do was wait. Other countries will figure it out, eventually. Even if the very worst happened, if communism had swept the globe and capitalism had fallen by the wayside, if the beliefs were correct wouldn't they eventually have been resurrected?
The fear of communism, then, actually shows how little faith we have in our own system. Just as the justifications for 'enhanced interrogation methods' reveal how little we actually believe in rights such as "no cruel and unusual punishment". Sure, this was not applied to US citizens...but if we truly believe this is a right, then we should be practicing it 100%. Not deciding it's wrong for US citizens and acceptable for terrorists.
Ideals aren't something we're supposed to give up just because things get tough.
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