So, no, a despotic state must keep both its soverignty and its right to self-defense. A form of government that we dislike is not grounds for crossing a border without a declaration of war.

On the other hand, since the United States is a democracy and has rule of law, it should not harbor terrorists…as a matter of fact, it should prosecute them as criminals, AS I MENTIONED IN MY EXAMPLE.

Now, there is an intermediate situation where a nation state harbors terrorists willingly. Such a situation could be grounds for war, assuming that enough of an attack was made on the receiving country and the support of the harboring nation is purposeful and meaningful. It is then the duty of the attacked country to either declare war on the nation harboring the terrorists or work through diplomatic means to convince, by compromise, the harboring nation to prosecute the terrorists.

(This was used successfully used in the real world to bring Libya back into the status of “non-terrorist” nation, so it is possible to do this.)

It comes down to these three simple rules:

1) Don’t attack another nation first unless they, attack you first, no matter whether you agree with them or not, even if individuals from that country have done you damage.

2) Use diplomatic means to encourage countries harboring terrorists (who did you measurable damage) to turn them over. If that fails, you can then either declare war on that nation or increase your defenses to stop another attack.

3) Under no circumstances can a soverign state’s borders be violated short of a declaration of war.

This was the policy of the United States of America prior to 1986. We got along just fine with the rest of the world, without any terrorist attacks in our nation whatsoever. It was after the pre-emptive and retaliatory doctrine was promoted that terrorist attacks on our soil began.

I think we disagree on more than details.

In any case, we do fundamentally agree – neither of us thinks the US has any basis for doing what it pleases without restriction. Neither of us thinks the US is an “exceptional” nation. It’s the two of us who disagree on details, not me and Bush. (I suspect that if we had a more detailed discussion, the two of us would disagree in other fundamental ways unrelated to this particular issue, but that’s a conversation for another day.)

Why did this occur? It lasted so long that it seems outside human nature, especially since there was no overwatch authority like the League of Nations or the United Nations to do peacekeeping duties.

The answer lies in the diplomats who participated in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Von Metternich and the others understood the necessity of there being a “balance of power” between nation-states. Without such a balance, one nation, seeking its own aggrandizement, will invariably move into imperialism and therefore cause coalitions to appear against it and forment warfare. They redrew the map of Europe in such a way as to insure such a balance and created a continent where people could live in peace.

When this broke down in 1914, due to the error of the participating nations in signing interlocking “security documents” requiring them to go to war even if their interests were not at stake, a balance was not restored until 1945. Warfare between the Soviet Bloc and NATO was not directly possible due to the equality of armaments–therefore the atomic arsenals rusted in their silos while their colonies fought each other with varying results.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has not been a balance of power in the world. The United States during the “end of history” emerged without peer as far as economic, military, and political power. I read the above blog article with its endorsement of the “ideals” (but not the details) of the Bush Doctrine in horror, not understanding how someone of the liberal bent could be defending pre-emptive war–the anathema of international law.

It hit me then…those of grad school age or under have not experienced a world where the United States was not allowed to do as it pleases, running roughshod over the other nations of the world. The intervention in a soverign nation, especially if that nation is unwilling to permit it, is a tactic of the darkest of historical despotism and a hallmark of a nation that believes, in its hubris, to be the “World-Spanning Empire.”

We need to end this attitude and return to the “Reverse Golden-Rule” doctrine we used before…”If you wouldn’t want it to happen to your country, don’t do it to others.”

Let me give you an example, so you can understand this on a gut level. Let’s suppose that the Soviet Union did not fall and that the United States got bogged down in such a way as to be impotent militarily. In this world, there’s a group of anti-Castro revolutionaries in Florida who are threatening to assassinate Castro and supporting other groups who caused property damage in the USSR.

How would the United States feel if the Soviets used their technology to launch a strike against targets in Miami against individuals, even ones declared criminals by the United States? We would consider this to be no less than an act of war and respond accordingly.

It is only the lack of a balancing opposing nation that has allowed the United States to go down this path to empire. It should be the duty of the newly-elected President of the United States to reject this doctrine and take other, more reasonable steps to protect our soverignty, keeping in mind that we had few problems with the Moslem world until we supported the Shah’s brutal dictatorship and placed American troops in Beirut.

It’s time for a sane foreign policy. Let’s return to being the world’s shining example, rather than its schoolyard bully.