{"id":930,"date":"2006-04-30T08:25:36","date_gmt":"2006-04-30T13:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/because-they-can\/"},"modified":"2006-04-30T08:25:36","modified_gmt":"2006-04-30T13:25:36","slug":"because-they-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/because-they-can","title":{"rendered":"Because they can"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Kagan has a longish column at the Washington Post today about why Russia & China support other dictatorships<\/a> (instead of supporting liberal reform the way U.S. & Europe sorta do):<\/p>\n

An irony that Europeans should appreciate is that China and Russia are faithfully upholding one cardinal principle of the international liberal order — insisting that all international actions be authorized by the U.N. Security Council — in order to undermine the other principal aim of international liberalism, which is to advance the individual rights of all human beings, sometimes against the governments that oppress them. So while Americans and Europeans have labored over the past two decades to establish new liberal “norms” to permit interventions in places such as Kosovo, Rwanda and Sudan, Russia and China have used their veto power to prevent such an “evolution” of norms. The future is likely to hold more such conflicts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read all about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Kagan has a longish column at the Washington Post today about why Russia & China support other dictatorships (instead of supporting liberal reform the way U.S. & Europe sorta do): An irony that Europeans should appreciate is that China and Russia are faithfully upholding one cardinal principle of the international liberal order — insisting … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Because they can”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit","category-sudan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-f0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":397,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/freedoms-front-line","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":0},"title":"“Freedom’s Front Line”","author":"Gil","date":"November 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Timothy Garton Ash--who wrote a pretty neat book about the East German surveillance file that was kept on him--has a great piece in the Guardian about the voter revolution in the Ukraine:Yet until Tuesday, many west Europeans probably did not even know that there was a presidential election going on\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":294,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-genocide-for-oil-you-french-motherfers","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":1},"title":"No Genocide for Oil, you French Motherf***ers!","author":"Gil","date":"July 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in May, I wrote my Representative about the Congressional resolution on the Sudanese genocide. He wrote back this weekend (see below). There've been some developments, but no serious results yet. Several Congressmen are calling for the U.S. to label this a genocide, which would automatically trigger intervention by a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":274,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sudan-again","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":2},"title":"Sudan Again","author":"Gil","date":"June 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Added a Sudan crisis link to the blogroll. And here's an article from the Financial Times calling for EU action to stop the genocide:The Security Council should in addition authorise all measures short of force to be used against Sudan and warn Khartoum of international military intervention if it does\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":939,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/clooless","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":3},"title":"Clooless","author":"Gil","date":"May 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I think Nina Shea gives George Clooney a little too much, um, credibility in this essay about his cluelessness re:Darfur, but I'm with her on the idea that maybe it's not Bush's fault. I've been pretty quiet about Darfur lately, mainly because I'm beaten down by the idea that it's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":263,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/by-any-other-name","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":4},"title":"By any other name","author":"Gil","date":"June 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Marc Lacey at the Times interviewed Colin Powell about Sudan recently. Here's a snippet:MR. LACEY: Okay. Now, some have used the term \"ethnic cleansing\" to describe this situation and others outside of the government are even using the term \"genocide.\" Now, the Government of Sudan calls these terms inflammatory, inaccurate.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":265,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/and-boy-are-my-arms-tired","url_meta":{"origin":930,"position":5},"title":"And, boy, are my arms tired!","author":"Gil","date":"June 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm back from California. I'll ramble extensively about it tonight. Until then, here's an e-mail response I received from Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), regarding the Sudan query I sent him last month:Dear Gil:Thank you for expressing your concerns about Sudan.I appreciate your concerns regarding the civil war ongoing in Sudan,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}