America’s primary interest in NATO is preventing a European hegemon like Germany, or France from taking over and acting like a peer to the US.

“The purpose of NATO is to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”


Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. An international order accepted by all of the major powers is “legitimate” whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is “revolutionary” and hence dangerous.


The classical “realist” position is that the key to promoting order between states, and so of increasing the chances of peace, is the maintenance of a balance of power between states — a situation where no state is so dominant that it can “lay down the law to the rest.”

As the maintenance of power could in some circumstances require a willingness to go to war, some critics saw the idea of a balance of power as promoting war rather than promoting peace.


In an article in the NYT that everyone wanted to break it down into contrasts of idealist and realist, but “if you had to put him in a category, he’s probably more realpolitik, like Bush 41… You’ve got to be cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation.”

Realpolitik distinct from ideological politics in that it is not dictated by a fixed set of rules but instead tends to be goal-oriented, limited only by practical exigencies.


Since decisions to use military force are the most important that any nation-state faces, limiting their decisions or transferring them to another source of authority is ultimately central to the diminution of sovereignty and the advance of global governance.


Negotiation of both of these measures had commenced with the strong support of President Clinton, whose Administration has consistently been the most Globalist of this century. Ironically, however, the Clinton Administration has not yet sign either of the two treaties, perhaps reflecting why President Clinton has also been one of the most successful American politicians of this century.


Impatient with democratic inefficiency and what are perceived to be faulty decisions, human rights groups seek to use universal jurisdiction and related concepts to advance their own value preferences.


Yet it is precisely the detachment from governments that make international civil society so troubling, at least for democracies. Within each democratic nation-state, political interests compete for governmental power — in other words, the legitimate authority that flows from victory to implement their preferred policies. In the international context, that includes the authority to negotiate on behalf of the entire nation, including opposing political forces that were defeated in democratic elections. Civil society, by contrast, provides a second opportunity for intrastate advocates to reargue their positions, thus advantaging them over their opponents who are either unwilling or unable to reargue their cases in international fora. It also provides them at least the possibility of external lobbying leverage, to force domestic policy results they could not have otherwise achieved.

Even the geography of international conferences reinforces the point, as NGOs increasingly crowd the meeting halls, participating as functional equals to nation-states. In this parallel universe, governments see political factions that are obscure minorities within their own countries emerging as powerful actors in complex global negotiations.


Convention on the Law of the Sea entered into force, its underlying theory that the seabed was a part of “the common heritage of mankind,” became fixed in the Globalist mindset, and spread to many other fields. For example, the ever-creative Group of 77 decided that “technology” was “part of the universal human heritage,” thus ensuring that all nations “have the right of access” to it.


Nothing illustrates better the collapse of the Westphalian notion of noninterference than the proposition that freedom of speech and the press, which has never existed in the five millennia of Chinese history, could be brought about through legislation by the American Congress.


National interest, often referred to by the French expression raison d’etat (reason of state), is a rationality of governing referring to a sovereign state’s goals and ambitions, be they economic, military, cultural, or otherwise.


Suzerainty is a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy. The dominant state is called the “suzerain.”


The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power. No single claim to truth or universal rule had prevailed in Europe’s contests. Division and multiplicity, an accident of Europe’s history, became the hallmarks of a new system of international order with this own distinct philosophical outlook. In this sense the European effort to end its conflagration shaped and prefigured the modern sensibility: it reserved judgment on the absolute in favor of the practical and ecumenical; it sought to distill order from multiplicity and restraint.


Since 2001 the UN has adopted new responsibilities that directly challenge Westphalian principles: asserting the “responsibility to protect and intervention as a duty of care” even within the boundaries of sovereign states.


Self-determination. Peoples, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference.


It would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a separate state.


Các nước giàu khi viện trợ ODA đều gắn với những lợi ích và chiến lược như mở rộng thị trường, mở rộng hợp tác có lợi cho họ, đảm bảo mục tiêu về an ninh – quốc phòng hoặc theo đuổi mục tiêu chính trị… Vì vậy, họ đều có chính sách riêng hướng vào một số lĩnh vực mà họ quan tâm hay họ có lợi thế (những mục tiêu ưu tiên này thay đổi cùng với tình hình phát triển kinh tế – chính trị – xã hội trong nước, khu vực và trên thế giới). Ví dụ:

  • Về kinh tế, nước tiếp nhận ODA phải chấp nhận dỡ bỏ dần hàng rào thuế quan bảo hộ các ngành công nghiệp non trẻ và bảng thuế xuất nhập khẩu hàng hoá của nước tài trợ. Nước tiếp nhận ODA cũng được yêu cầu từng bước mở cửa thị trường bảo hộ cho những danh mục hàng hoá mới của nước tài trợ; yêu cầu có những ưu đãi đối với các nhà đầu tư trực tiếp nước ngoài như cho phép họ đầu tư vào những lĩnh vực hạn chế, có khả năng sinh lời cao.
  • Nguồn vốn ODA từ các nước giàu cung cấp cho các nước nghèo cũng thường gắn với việc mua các sản phẩm từ các nước này mà không hoàn toàn phù hợp, thậm chí là không cần thiết đối với các nước nghèo. Ví như các dự án ODA trong lĩnh vực đào tạo, lập dự án và tư vấn kỹ thuật, phần trả cho các chuyên gia nước ngoài thường chiếm đến hơn 90% (bên nước tài trợ ODA thường yêu cầu trả lương cho các chuyên gia, cố vấn dự án của họ quá cao so với chi phí thực tế cần thuê chuyên gia như vậy trên thị trường lao động thế giới).

Diplomats should be able to be very tough if necessary in order to achieve their goals. It is not all about being nice and polite. This is what I used to tell my younger diplomats. Your job is to advance Singapore’s national interests. Preferably by being nice and polite but if required, by using whatever means necessary, even if it means being nasty. But the point is to advance your goals.


The fundamental reason why they are going to find it very hard to catch up and take a long time to do so is that all or the most vital parts of the supply chain are controlled by the US, its friends or its allies. There are so many small parts, and the most vital ones are controlled by the US.