Patrick O'Brian Discussion Forum

What "higher standards"?

Ernest, I'm missing something. If I understand your last paragraph, you're saying that for the last 200 years nations have agreed that there are legal obligations on sovereign nations that supersede considerations of their survival. Now, I fully agree that an individual may be right, morally, to regard his own survival as less important than ... well, than some other goal. But I'm not aware of any such legal principle, of any law that legally obliges him to set another's life (for example) above his own. I definitely don't think any such consensus exists among the nations, and I can't imagine what you could have been thinking to say it's been going on for 200 years. You must have meant something else.

[After a fourth reading:] Ok, I get it. You mean that even though humans very naturally protect their own lives, we sometimes find it appropriate to kill them anyway—for murder, for example—and that the same principle applies between nations too, that even though Iraq naturally defended herself we nevertheless feel it was right to drive her forcible from Kuwait.

But if that's what you meant (and it certainly is less silly than my first reading), you got sidetracked; Max wasn't talking about that.

On Sat Oct 31, The Last of the True French Short Bastards wrote
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>If Germany abrogates a mutual assistance treaty with Austria, then indeed Austria has no recourse. It's a bilateral treaty and not much can be done about it -- although it's still wrong. However, mutual assistance is pretty simple and bilateral treaties tend to be fragile.

>On the other hand, if a group of nations agree collectively to sign certain treaties, AND they provide no get-out clause, AND they provide for sanctions in the event of violations, then if one does break the treaty the others can impose the sanctions, which may include war. It amounts to a pact often found among men as individuals: if I break my promises to you all, you may all punish me. In such cases a nation surrenders a degree of its sovereignty.

>We don't allow individual men an absolute right to self-preservation under all circumstances whatsoever; I don't see how de Vattel concocted such a right for nations. In any case, he's 200 years out of date. His self-preservation clause strikes me as the same excuse used for tyranny and imperialist expansion throughout history. We have established higher standards since then.

Sun Nov 1

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