A country like the US can invade any country they want. International law is irrelevant. But they can pressure a country like Switzerland without needing to resort to military action, which would be crazy anyway in the case of Switzerland.
Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, et al. make it easy to set up shell companies. Multiple layers of corporate veils make it easier to evade taxation, if the business is so inclined. But it's also easier to legally avoid taxation, which is the goal of the next-generation tax haven.
The deal is that you pay some taxes to Delaware, as the unavoidable ones, and then use its business-friendly jurisdiction to set up a network of sub-companies that can more easily slide through all the loopholes in all the rest of the world's tax laws. So the Delaware company owns the Irish company, and the Dutch company, and the Bermuda company, and the Singapore company, and the Cyprus company, and it can optimize the on-paper accounting so the money generates the least tax possible whenever it moves in the direction of the owners. If someone goes after a mook company, it can be cut loose and replaced, but if someone goes after the mastermind company, they have to do it in Delaware's courts.
The tax haven version 1.0 relied on banking secrecy to hide financial information from taxation authorities, so they wouldn't know what to tax. Tax haven version 2.0 is about playing those taxation authorities against each other, so that all their weaknesses (relative to the other authorities) are attacked at once, and laws are only broken or ignored outside of the jurisdictions in which they are enforceable. The information is not kept secret, but it is managed so that the only entity that can see the whole picture has no particular reason to pry too deeply or to leak it to anyone else.
The Paradise Papers may spur additional legislative action, pending the results of the 2020 elections.
Those countries are huge.
RISC-V Foundation just calls it 'open ISA' and Wikipedia states as 'RISC-V is an open-source hardware instruction set architecture'.
Realistically, our armed forces are at a strength of about 140K soldiers right now (pretty sure that's not a state secret).
The parts of the terrain that are actually inhabited are not particularly forbidding (let them build their RISC processors in a hut nestled beside an 8500ft mountain pass. Don't forget to bring popcorn as you watch them).
And nuclear power plants make a big fat bombing target for opponents too lazy to make their own dirty bombs. Conveniently placed smack in the middle of the inhabitable part of Switzerland, too.
I highly doubt it'll come to that. It would be much easier to just infiltrate the fab and replace stock going to an important destination.
> it's enough to give an enemy a bad time
That depends a lot on the objective, I think. The defenses against an enemy controlling the transalpine transportation axes are fairly strong. But I think this scenario gets talked up a lot for exactly that reason.
The defenses against an enemy controlling 80% of the population and 90% of the economy are much weaker. Then again, it might only take a few sysadmins armed with SQL queries to deal significant economic damage against any attacker.
> It would be much easier to just infiltrate the fab and replace stock going to an important destination.
True. And if I've understood the article correctly, no fabs would be changing location. RISC-V is an open source design, so the fabs in question would probably be located in the "enemy" countries anyway.
Switzerland is filthy rich, too. Private fortunes thought to rival or surpass the biggest public billionaires, money pipes throughout the world beyond measure — the result of centuries of diligently building a discrete but very real financial empire... all of that has to count for something in the age of PMC's and acts of surgical retaliation projecting force accross the globe.
Taking on a too-rich enemy in modern times is choosing an all-out, extremely mobile, stupidly costly, and above all likely painful war. You'll lose a lot at the hand of the best weapons and talents money can buy.
That's why an extremely indebted USA is still very valuable. Because they can park a few aircraft carriers off the coast of whomever they desire (although this may be changing, namely due to China).
But I understand where you are coming at, perhaps it is because major military nations poses A-Bombs. I guess, if they are democratic countries we have no choice but to hope that their citizens can prevent it from getting used; My real worry is the non-democratic/pseudo democratic countries with A-Bombs.
Edit : N-Bomb->A-Bomb.
Switzerland's terrain wouldn't see regular war but guerilla warfare (including mined bridges and everything). Having trained marksmen in almost every household helps a lot in such a situation.
> Atomic weapons or other WMD goes against the ethos of neutral countries which traditionally are pro-Human Rights.
I think Switzerland would adopt a "whatever it takes" approach when attacked. At least that's what they credibly project, and so it's unlikely that they'll end up having to play it out.
A n-bomb is more likely to refer to use of a slavery related term, and is very frequently used in some circles which include the current US president. So demonstrably democracy does not prevent the use of n-bombs, which happens to be true historically for a-bombs as well (which were used by a democracy essentially because the war wasn't over by the time they've built the thing).
>which were used by a democracy essentially because the war wasn't over by the time they've built the thing).
But the same U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur when he wanted to drop A-Bomb on China during the Korean War.
There exist no country in the world where citizens have any say on nuclear weapon use. "Pseudo democracy" is the norm.
The US truly are the bully in the room.
This, incidentally, is why it's hard to take seriously the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover.
Like how non-USA financial institutions have to care about whether their clients could be considered USA citizens, just because USA law says so.
Or like USA export control laws apply to devices which were not manufactured in the USA, just because the device includes an USA-manufactured screw or something like that.
https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-chinese-papers-on-mus... : "Xi pushed the party to use the "organs of dictatorship" to move millions of the minority group, Uighur Muslims, into the camps in western China and cited the United States' war on terror following 9/11 for an example of how to limit civil liberties. "
I agree that post 9/11 US foreign policy making has been disastrous and utterly corrosive to America's ability to hold the moral high ground. But surely we can differentiate here. Putting millions of Uhyger men into camps and forcing their wives to share beds with Han men is on a whole another level[1].
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/muslim-china-u...
You must be saying this in jest, or you have been brainwashed. Without even touching on the interment camps, which are definitely worse than the US prison system; here is demonstrable evidence that the US cares more about global human rights than the Chinese.[1]
[1]https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/11/04/youll-be-fired-if-you-...
Also I do not subscribe to the view that Democracy is somehow morally superior to other forms of government. Anyone who has read Plutarch, can understand that figures like Pericles can manipulate the minds of the masses and rule as an authoritarian under the guise of being a democrat. The same playbook is being used for thousands of years with the same effect. See Erdogan in Turkey, I don't see him ever outsted from power democratically, aleast not in a long time.
Same reason products with the better advertisment sells better than the better product.
That's what I mean - if you go looking for incidents where the Chinese are involved and build up a prosecution argument against them, that's a very different approach to trying to systematically and without favour deal with all human rights abuses of all scale by all parties. Which is a huge job.
Do you have any idea about the history of the United States in Africa? The overthrow and murder of the first elected President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the installation of an American-friendly dictator. Support for the coup that overthrew the first elected President of Ghana and replaced him with a military government. Opposition to Angolan independence from the Portuguese empire. Support for the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
And you're comparing this to what? Chinese companies overfishing in African coastal waters? You're really lacking a sense of perspective here.
All that says is that other “democratic” “human rights advocating” countries are also to blame.
NATO tried several times to assassinate Gaddafi, killing his family members instead. For example, one airstrike in Tripoli killed a son and three grandchildren of his.[1] Of course, they did eventually bomb his caravan, leaving him to be brutally murdered on the side of the road. None of this was authorized by the UN. Western special forces were also not authorized to operate in Libya, but they did anyways.
Anyways, years after this wonderful exercise in protecting civilians, the country is still in a state of civil war, torn between different warlords. People forget that as bad as Gaddafi was, Libya used to have the highest living standard in Africa. Now, it's a nightmare.
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya/libyas-gaddafi-surv...
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/11/21/uk-govt-summons-china-...
> The US hasn't kidnapped and tortured any consulate employees recently, which China just did.
Perhaps not (though it does have a recent history of kidnapping and torturing people on a global scale), but the US is busy blasting away pine nut farmers in Afghanistan.[1]
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-drones...
The US, in general, is defensive of its sovereignty. We have our own institutions and we are very protective of them. For example, we have a right to a jury trial by one’s peers n a criminal case. The ICC has no juries, and panelists are generally foreigners to the defendant. Criminal convictions in US federal courts (and nearly all states) require a unanimous verdict. The ICC requires a simple majority. The ICC allows trials in abstentia, regularly relies on hearsay evidence, etc. Our highest court is the United States Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court cannot hear appeals from the ICC and cannot issue judgments binding on the ICC. Our practices in these areas, such as jury trials, are the part of an unbroken line of law and tradition dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215. Those practices can be refined and improved, but that’s completely orthogonal to submitting to the jurisdiction of supra-national organizations like the ICC. Our institutions can always be improved. But that doesn’t mean we have to submit to someone else’s institutions.
In my view, the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination? Why submit to the will of some foreign court that’s totally outside the framework of your own country’s laws, constitution, and institutions?
It's an easy question to ask when you're the guy at the top of the pile with the biggest guns and the ability to kill or capture your perceived enemies anywhere in the world.
For everyone else, global institutions based on universal human rights are a welcome safeguard against the abuses of 20th century style sovereignty.
The US is making it very explicit that they are above rules. They have the right to commit war crimes, while holding other countries accountable for their war crimes, and even for things that aren't even crimes at all. The US is a bully, and is very explicit about it.
You are an anarchist then? Otherwise as an sovereign individual, how can you justify being part of nation with laws over you?
It's not so much giving up sovereignty as pooling it. ie you trade your right to do so as you wish, for a guarantee that others can't just do as they wish on agreed areas - like rape, murder, stealing etc.
Same argument applies to countries - they submit to the ICC, but are also party to shaping it - it's an agreement between countries about what is 'beyond the pale'.
The sad fact is, however the US see's it's self, the rest of the world is increasingly seeing the US as the largest threat to world peace. https://fullfact.org/news/america-world-peace/
In my view, the US need to have a long hard look at themselves and re-discover their moral mojo.
They why be subject to U.N. and it's ICJ? Submitting only to institutions in which we have extraordinary influence or can veto out of unfavourable circumstances is not 'protection of sovereignty'; it's hypocrisy and disregard to delivering justice.
What would effectively be the difference for you as an individual. You don't have sovereignty, you don't have self determination, the huge country you live in does. You have zero influence over your country's laws, constitution and institutions.
Why do you prefer to be ruled over by the US, which is corrupt to the bone and ruled by whoever pays the largest 'campaign contributions' (a.k.a. bribes). vs. something like the ICC ?
Because in doing so in the form of an agreement, others can be made to give up their freedom to do bad things while you also give up the freedom to do those bad things? Like the normal social contract, but explicit and on a larger scale.
This dates even to the 1899 Hague Convention, which the US was very keen on following earlier work by Abraham Lincoln. The way to get the enemy to treat your prisoners of war humanely is to agree to treat theirs humanely, and this held fairly well even in the horrors of WW2.
The post-Holocaust international order is devoted to the idea that there is always a risk of rogue states deciding to end the freedoms of their citizens or engage in mass murder and other crimes against humanity. There are also risks of states turning on one another and escalating economic disputes to actual wars. In order to guard against these, supranational institutions were built. Not just the United Nations and the ICC, but the whole Bretton Woods system, the WTO, the NATO mutual defence organisation, the ECHR, and the EU and its antecedants.
How can the US ask China to end its human rights abuses, and expect to be taken seriously, when the US refuses internal or external accountability for its own human rights abuses and war criminals? The official position of the United States, having determined that Edward Gallagher was deliberately murdering civilians and prisoners of war, is that he should be pardoned and have his position reinstated? That's fine and no reason for imposing sanctions on the United States?
Yes, this is a tu quoque argument, but at the level of international propaganda it works.
The point is that human rights are above national laws. If an American citizen commit serious human right abuses abroad he/she should naturally be put on trial.
In particular American involved in kidnapping and torturing foreigners to obtain information ought to be put on a human rights trial. I am thinking in particular about all the human rights violations during the Bush/Cheney years.
ICC members follow universal jurisdiction when it comes to war crime.
“The Court may exercise jurisdiction in a situation where genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes were committed on or after 1 July 2002 and:
the crimes were committed by a State Party national, or in the territory of a State Party, or in a State that has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court; or the crimes were referred to the ICC Prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) pursuant to a resolution adopted under chapter VII of the UN charter.”
The only way the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over a non-member is through referral from the UN Security Council.
Probably some boring demands and Netherlands will comply because big bad USA and such.
I think that was in 'Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission', it's not a U.N. recognised body.
The world is a very fragile, dynamic balance of power and the US is the only thing holding it together.
Despite many grievances, it's sad to see people fail to grasp this.
I often wonder about the roots of this; of course 'the police' or 'America' have many faults, it's easy to point them out, but I'm always perplexed by those that can't see the bigger picture.
As though it needs to be articulated - the US doesn't really gain a lot from it's military expenditures, or '80 bases' around the world. But the world would be in chaos without them.
To start, 'high seas' (including the Suez Canal, the Gulf, and the Panama Canal) are currently open to anyone only due to US power. Particularly those 'strategic spots' - it is America that makes sure that anyone can use them. China, Russia, Iran - anyone. They're open, and free. The same cannot be said if antagonising powers like China, or local fiefdoms like a Panamanian populist to take over.
The entire world takes the concept of 'open, navigable waters' for granted, but this would not be the case were there not a force to ensure that this happened.
In Europe, the US is the only power preventing Russian Imperial expansion. Putin has already tried to 'pull a Crimea' in the Baltic states, it was only coordination by American-led NATO that enabled their defence. Even to this day, Europeans are very poorly coordinated on the issue. Ukraine would be fully under Putin's control, and Russia would be creeping into Poland. Georgia would have been invaded when the Russians occupied South Ossetia.
In Asia, we can see most recently the attempt by China to take exclusive control of vast ocean territories off the coast of Philipines, Vietnam etc. - only America has the power to ensure that this area will generally stay open.
S. Korea would not be a state without American power, it's possible that Japan would not, and certainly not Taiwan.
More contentiously, the US holds some authoritarian powers together, but even then it's for the greater good. Most obviously Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, but even Qatar, Bahrain, UAE fall in this camp. These aren't the nicest states, but they are generally 'good players' on the international scene, they mostly help fight against terrorism, and they sell their Oil on the international markets and market prices. Without US support none of those countries would exist as such. We saw what Saddam did in Kuwait, and there's no reason to believe he would have stopped there. In particular, the Iranians have been trying to very seriously destabilise those countries for some time by providing weapons, political cover, training, and support.
And that's just scratching the surface; without the US the high seas would not be open and navigable, the Suez/Panama/Gulf would be controlled by petty fiefs or hostile powers, large parts of Eastern Europe would be back in the Russian Empire and Putin would have that much more ability to antagonise, at very least Korea and Taiwan would not exist, and there'd likely be more hostility over there, and the Middle East would be unrecognisable, the hostilities would be far worse than they are today. And again - those are just the obvious areas - but if those dominos were to fall, so many others would. In short, a 'world without America' would be a dark and hostile place, there is no other leadership on the world stage that has the power to ensure the stability we have right now. Europe could, but they're not willing.
Americans gain a little bit in terms of prestige, access to some foreign markets, and their own security, but frankly it's just not enough to justify in hard terms.
Without the incredible goodwill of Americans the 'balance of internal political power' of their foreign policy would be such that they would have left the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Lithuanians, Polish etc. in the wind, long ago.
In the 1990s it was looking like the American led world order would melt into democracy, but it's not going to be that way at least for the time being.
FYI I'm not American.
My only gripe being, there aren't many neutral countries which can stand up to powerful militarized nations.
Edit: The reason, I mentioned lack of military power of neutral countries is because of the existence of law such as 'Hague Invasion Act'[2] which allows U.S. to invade Hague to liberate its personnel tried at International Criminal Court for war crimes. Neutral countries need military power to protect its Neutrality!
[1]https://shakti.org.in
[2]https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...