If you're the leader of a sovereign country and try to make decisions that clash with wishes of USA, they will make your own life difficult.
Interesting play.
In the end sovereign relations is little different from playground antics; pleading your case from the stance of rationality and/or fairness doesn't get you very far, only once someone is seriously hurt do things change (sometimes not ever then; Stubenville anyone?).
That's the first I've heard of this line of thought. Is there research on this statement? It's pretty counter-intuitive to think that the true power in a relationship lies with the subordinate party. I don't see how slaves, military personnel, or even office workers could be considered truly powerful over their superiors. In some cases saying "no" would lead to serious inconvenience and possible misery. In other cases it could lead to death.
Obviously you couldn't get that many people to allow themselves to be tortured to death to prevent future enslavement, but the thought exercise makes it appear that the GP's assertion has merit even if it's not entirely practical.
Doesn't look like a big win to me. Native Americans were not very popular as slaves, so they were simply killed instead...
I think in the end it's all a matter of how you sell it. There wasn't a unifying story for all those enslaved africans to rally behind. In the end there needs to be a narrative that pushes people into openly rebelling against the status quo.
There are no masters, only slaves. None command, when none obey.
It's not vulnerable, it's more dangerous.
It's just that more people are finally see the men behind the curtains and realizing that they are just as petty and human as the rest of us, but have insane amounts of power. And are not willing to give up any of that power or even display any true global leadership or responsibility.
Realize that "these people" have absolute power. And as time goes on, don't need as much as the population around to maintain their status or luxuries. What would you do in their place if faced with a angry populous?
I can't remember it ever happening. Dictators can fly around the world with impunity but they'll contrive to ground the plane of a democratically elected president and search it, for some guy who published a bunch of powerpoint presentations?
And they did all this... with all the consequences it's going to have and they didn't even get Snowden!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...
Sometimes I think the powers that be are poking an enormous sleeping dog with a stick just for giggles.
"We had to destroy the [village] in order to save it" doesn't really apply if you consider, say, New York City.
As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 (and, of course, successful terrorist acts over the last decade) demonstrated, low tech is still Good Enough for a lot of purposes.
The US gets away with much of what it does because of the enormous US market. But at some point other countries will realize that the cost of that market has gotten too high and then a large chunk of the the US' power will dissolve.
I would behave so much better than when faced with an apathetic one.
To me this is like the argument that "prostitution avoids rape", it's blackmail.
France, Italy, Spain and Portugal all agreed to deny this aircraft access to their airspace. Europe may be furious with America, but they are certainly not showing it by their actions.
Europe's bark is worse than it's bite - and America will be very satisfied with that.
Unfortunately, I doubt that. I think that anything the US does in its search/example-making of Snowden will be accepted by the majority of Americans as reasonable and even virtuous.
They're in total control of the beast. They want the beast. They could end the beast at any time.
You think that Bush's and Obama's massive expansions of government weren't all about amassing and maintaining political power? Those guys both believe that more government power/money solves all woes.
Where are all the big government apologists in this thread? Let's hear a defense for the inevitable abuse of power that unchecked government growth leads to.
Tell us more about how those of us who believe in investing in public education and transit infrastructure while cutting the military/security budget are really the ones in favor of this military/security program.
Don't forget to include how the Tea Party are the heroes here. You can cite all the redstate.com contributors calling Snowden a traitor as evidence. (http://www.redstate.com/2013/07/01/tech-at-night-snowdens-on...) Or you could go to David Brooks or basically every conservative except for Rand Paul.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should drop the tribal BS and recognize that this issue cuts across party lines.
I understand the "almost true scotsman" as a reference to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman but I'm not really sure how it's applicable.
> You think that Bush's and Obama's massive expansions of government weren't all about amassing and maintaining political power? Those guys both believe that more government power/money solves all woes.
This is clearly bipartisan. He's attacking both democrats and republicans and suggesting that on many issues there's little difference. I don't believe it's possible to argue that it's partisan. It attacks both sides.
It might be tribal, but on an axis orthogonal to the traditional left/right political spectrum.
No non-US entity is ever going to give high-value confidential data to Google, GMail users, Android phones, AWS, companies hosted on AWS, Apple, iPhones, or Skype ever again.
Even if NSA swears up and down that they've stopped spying, how could we ever know if they're lying? (We already know they're more than willing to lie under oath.)
So we can expect massively disproportionate actions like this.
And you know what... that's great. Because you know what it does? It reinforces a sense that at the heart of the American government there's an intelligence community that's turned into a feral beast. A beast that seemingly can't be controlled by anyone we elect and it's wandering around the world pissing off people indiscriminately in its wild attempts to get Snowden back.
Snowden has revealed the nature of the beast and the beast itself can't help but make things worse for itself.
So with this latest escapade, they've thoroughly pissed off the South Americans, who will likely be absolutely furious with America, but even more so europe. The european populace is going to be scratching its head wondering why the hell they're denying flights into their airspace at the behest of people who apparently spend all their time spying on them?
Seems like a complete and utter mess to me. The beast can't help itself, it's panicking, running around the world doing increasingly stupid and desperate things to get Snowden back.
The beast has lost its anonymity, it's showing itself up by taking actions obviously not in the best interests of the USA but rather out of pure panic.
It's making itself vulnerable.