09-07-2013, 03:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-07-2013, 04:12 PM by FireIceTalon.)
(09-07-2013, 02:04 PM)Sabra Wrote: Just have to jump back in and remember that you can talk Russia all you want, and it will be well worth discussing, but the really "bad actor," as the talking heads love to call them now, in much of this is Iran.
There are no "good" and "bad" actors in international relations per se, just actors. Labeling one nation good and another bad is a trap for a number of reasons - firstly because it paints with a broad brush (Iran in general isn't a bad actor - the Iranian government and the regime that it enforces is problematic - but not Iran as a whole). Secondly, good and bad is a qualitative analysis that simply comes down to perspective and whose values you agree with - it's just another product of the subjuctive moralism that is predominant in each society by their respective ruling classes but has little to do with how the world really works, and in general is ahistorical. Thirdly, even if there were good and bad actors, I would say the primary imperialist powers of the US and Russia would be as bad or worse than Iran, since this conflict has all the makings for another proxy-war betweeen them, in which a nation like Iran would just be a smaller nation fighting on behalf the interests a larger imperialist, hegomonic nation (Russia in this instance). And while there has always been a difference in cultural values between East and West, the competition for dominion in global markets transcends this and has done so from WW1 onward.
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"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)