INTERNATIONAL “ORDER”

It used to be, “You stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours.”

By agreement, the nations of the world have set up strong high opaque insulated fences between them that allow their rulers and the power elites that control them to exercise their power unmolested by any other nation’s intervention. The fences consist of the laws or absence of laws of each nation and between and among nations. The fences, also known as borders, have developed and are maintained by a variety of agreements, treaties, pacts, and rules of behavior between individual nations and communities of nations and by international agreements that delineate acceptable and unacceptable means and methods of intercourse among them.

The key to understanding these webs of agreements lies in examining the needs of power elites to protect their positions. The key to understanding when and why the agreements are broken lies in examining the desires of power elites to enhance their power or to protect their power from encroachment by powers outside the national borders.

Because of the variety of forms of internal governance among the nations of the world, a set of generally accepted conventions has been established and developed, and for the most part also observed, over centuries that allow for brutal dictatorships to live comfortably side by side with the most quiescent of democratic nations. The prime example is Switzerland that has in the past had Hitler’s Nazi Germany on one of its borders and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy on another, with hedonistic France on the third border and horrendous wars and holocausts exploding all around it. By international agreement, Switzerland was “neutral.” The Swiss, in peace, could milk their cows and make their cheese and chocolate, manufacture fine watches, and sell their products to all comers. This is called, “International Order.”

Other events took place by international agreement at Switzerland’s borders that were less bucolic. Turning over to the Nazis of Jewish refugees constituted abiding by such an agreement by the “neutral” Swiss. Serving as Nazi Germany’s money launderer also constituted abiding by international agreements, thus enabling that murderous regime access to needed supplies for its war machine that were not available for purchase with Reichmarks.

This cozy international arrangement is in process of Darwinian mutation. Brutality and savagery are returning to an earlier mode. Internal factions within nations are rising to power, driven by religious sectarianism, by minority ethnicities within nations rather than nationalism, by local warlord competition for control of resources valuable on world markets, and by uncontrolled political dissension within weak national structures.

These forces are changing the nature of power elites and as a result, the nature of “international order.” Computer communication is the primary tool that has enabled the new power elites to conquer fragmented nations and societies much as it has enabled individuals to obtain and control enormous wealth for beneficial outcomes. Inexpensive, wide-spread computer use has enabled nuclear proliferation, arms purchases, terrorist organization command and control structures, espionage on a grand scale, propaganda and education for deleterious purposes, and an enormous variety of legal and illegal ways by which to gain control of wealth and populations and threaten peaceful co-existence on the planet.

International Order has taken a back seat to International Control. The relations between nations rest on their relative ruling class homogeneity. The need for votes to assume power places political leadership in democratic countries at a severe disadvantage in negotiating with oligarchies and dictatorships, especially when such governments are melded with singularly powerful religious orders. The power elites of democratic countries control governments that in turn control their populace by systems of laws whereas the power elites of oligarchies control the minds of their populations by combining religion and state. As wealth has spread to the more undeveloped and less sophisticated or modern societies, control of that wealth has enabled their leaders to stand with equality to other proportionally comparable wealthy political entities. So as power in the past has been wielded under the old order at the United Nations, today, small nations under ruthless dictatorships wield an equally powerful stick. And the change in status of smaller nations continues to grow ever more powerful as those nations defy the old order by taking control of their populations, their economies, and their armies.

Also, within smaller nations, split control now rests in the hands of non-governmental entities such as the Taliban that uses religion and guns to control warrior elements, control opium production and sale, plus the substantial increased use of computers since 2003 to establish political control over segments of their country, Afghanistan. Whether under religious control or ethnic control, whether with government or in revolt against government, the wealthy in these societies, as in most of the nations in the world, join forces with all conflicting elements within the nation. Arms merchants sell to all comers. Smugglers are the family members of customs officials. The spies in government are paid by the same elements against whom they are spying. Financial kingpins sit with all parties. Ergo, no longer is there “Order.” Now there exists only “Control.”