Draft I
Westphalia:
After a particularly brutal war that raged all across Europe, everybody gathered in a place called Westphalia to settle things and make sure that there would never be a repeat. The solution they came up with, national sovereignty, saved the world from countless horrible, nasty wars ever since...
Until now...
It's been over 350 years since royalty, military and spiritual leaders all gathered together to hammer out the Peace of Wetphalia. Since then, a few unimportant colonies in the wilderness of the New World became the greatest power on Earth. The International Law that depended on Westphalia's national sovereignty principle stretched and grew and became a huge, complex structure on which rested many treaties, many organizations.
But today the great threats to our security come from people who simply do not accept the limits of national sovereignty. They make war in an older, more brutal fashion because they can't get what they want any other way. They organize across borders and can't be eradicated by declaring war on a nation, or even a group of nations.
For the first time in America's history, the underlying foundation of the world system is up for grabs. A big chunk of the world is too frightened to even try to address the big question. Others see the issues but are just too small to do the work without us.
President Bush broke 350 years of precedent and declared war on a non-state group, he implicitly challenged the world to move beyond Westphalia. The world, to a great degree, has ignored his call because they hope that the next President of the United States will let us all get back to the business of letting us be killed by terrorists at a "sustainable" rate. They are too frightened to do anything else...
Are you?
current running time 1:00
Posted by TMLutas at July 26, 2004 08:23 AM