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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 521
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WCL 521 July 2006
Other sovereign state flaws
Old-fashioned nation-state wars may be much less prevalent, but our world since the UN was set up to abolish war has had some three wars annually. Sovereign states have either been eager to assist one (or both) sides in the conflicts and have rarely done anything to halt them until they have grown nearly beyond control or are having serious economic effects that disturbed the large states. Nevertheless, the United States fought a war in Vietnam for 20 years with all the accoutrements of terror and violence that its rulers routinely deplore.
Financial corruption is endemic in many states and government often gives scope for criminal activities far greater than in other spheres. And the practice, for example, of arms-salesmen acting on behalf of governments, eg the British in Saudi Arabia, have permitted or assisted corruption while maintaining a front of the highest standards of personal morality. Thus hypocrisy is added to criminality to make a fine state-assisted brew. It is notorious that
governments of the really wealthy countries are either dominated or heavily influenced by the controllers of huge wealth.
Gambling is a regular source of income for states: in Britain where an accountant has just racked up a million pound embezzlement from online gambling the number of addicted gamblers has risen ten-fold in the past few years. The government is now planning a super-casino to be installed in its prize white elephant - the Dome. That may recoup some of the immense losses already incurred, but only at the expense of additional addicts. So individual corruptions are used to buttress the state that manages the mass corruption in its foreign policies.
One most serious form of corruption is spying. The immorality of espionage is notorious: it involves lying, cheating, theft and almost every other conceivable form of immoral behaviour - on demand of the superiors of the nation-state, for whom personal morality is of no consequence and indeed is to be avoided, since it can impede the search for national advantage in the face of other national systems. Only the immorality of alien spies is usually noticed.
The idolatry of the nation-state is seen at its worst in the 20th century fascist regimes in Germany and Japan, where the extremes of nationalism became almost religious in their fervour and in the excesses they led to. But almost all imperialisms, from the British equation of Britain with England, to the Roman deification of emperors have their own perversions. Following the pattern of empires, the nation-state is above all the locus of this sovereign state frailty but even a nation, conceived in liberty and fired by a revolutionary zeal like the United States of America, can succumb.
The worship of the American flag, the exaggerated respect even for scoundrelly presidents despite obvious corruptness and scholarly repetition, have turned a nation of freedom-loving and upright civilians into a caucus of imperialist chanters of patriotic cliches and religious nostrums. Thus a country that saw its mission to get rid of empires has collected without noticing the trappings of empire and become as nationalist as any of the rabid European states that the original colonists renounced for their narrow bigotry.
Of course, it can reasonably be argued that not all sovereign states are equally culpable. Some are not wolves in the world of power politics, nor jackals, but sheep. Small and sometimes favoured nation-states may escape conquest and tyranny and with luck, give their subject happy lives. But the larger nation-states are either themselves guilty of oppression and a host of other crimes, particularly terrorism, or connive and support others that carry out the practices. Since 1945, when the great powers carved up the new world and promised peace and progress, their rulers have joined in supervising the very opposite for innumerable poor folk and watched with equanimity the effects of their arms-sale to every part of the less developed continents.
Compared to the aptitude for terror, sovereign states may seem fairly modest in their other enormities. Nevertheless, hypocrisy ranks high among their failings. The five states legally responsible for maintaining international peace and security, by the terms of the United Nations Charter to which they committed themselves over 60 years ago, are also the leading exporters of weapons of war. Arms sales pushed more vigorously and successfully by the British governments (proportionately the largest exporters) are the drivers that ensure a growing haul of weapons to stoke t he flames of wars, unrest, terrorism and international violence.
John Roberts
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