Does Gabon have the right to exist?

[Kirran]

Go on @Rowan, define an internationalist government! It'll be fun.

 

[YmirGF]

I would say non-internationalist governments entirely have no right to exist.
That's not going to generate much discussion though.

Isn't imperialism a form of internationalism?

 

[LuisDantas]

You are safe here with us in the past. The future cannot touch you here. Let someone else deal with the reckoning.

Sounds like a temporary solution, you know.

 

[LuisDantas]

Isn't imperialism a form of internationalism?

It can be, but that is a difficult thing to define, let alone to agree on.

Roughly speaking, there are at least three aspects to imperialism. Military occupation, economic impositions, cultural influence. And it can envolve complex forms and degrees of cooperation from the natives, when a clear differentiation between the "natives" and the "imperialists" is achievable in the first place.

But even if we could agree that imperialism is both bad and a form of internationalism, that does not really say very much about the merits of internationalism in the general sense.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Does the concept of a right to exist or, indeed, the concept of a fundamental right to anything have any meaning at all? Who went round conferring all these rights, and by what authority?

 

[LuisDantas]

Does the concept of a right to exist or, indeed, the concept of a fundamental right to anything have any meaning at all? Who went round conferring all these rights, and by what authority?

That is a pretty good question.

To the best of my understanding, the only thing that makes the existence of countries possible is the agreement of the people to treat them as such.

To the extent that a "right to exist" makes any sense, it would be nothing more than the continued existence of that agreement.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

That is a pretty good question.

To the best of my understanding, the only thing that makes the existence of countries possible is the agreement of the people to treat them as such.

To the extent that a "right to exist" makes any sense, it would be nothing more than the continued existence of that agreement.

And in many cases, that "agreement" might be caused and maintained at the business end of guns...