Franchises of Violence

An army is a State’s questionable monopoly of violence held via a democratic contract and reinforced by a constitutional mandate. This is the way it should be.

Proxy wars are international franchises of violence outside the legitimate scope of the current mandate. It is much cheaper to have a proxy profit-sharing operation than a conventional operation on the ground. In view of all the logistical, investment, political benefits [for the special interests of the State], however, the risk of such an operation is quality control [of immediate and long-term outcomes] and the long-term deterioration of international law (not merely the paper it’s written on but order itself). Hence, in view of the cost/risk/damage carried by this concept, it is irrational (wrong) to employ this strategy.

The risk management instrument we have created, the UN, only seems to partially fulfill its purpose, where the dysfunctional void is filled by this proxy irrationality. Talks of stability and reduction in a conventional military budget only mean that the capital is allocated elsewhere to achieve the same counterproductive goals via a more ‘efficient’ use of the assets at hand.

Economics of Murder & the Order of Zero

Ordinary citizens don’t murder one another due to risk and cost that surpasses the perceived benefit of the action. The risk/cost variables in the calculus are ethics and the rule of law.

The State can murder and do so uninhibited due to its monopoly over violence given to it via a citizen’s mandate, but also when that same calculus applied to its citizens (above) becomes skewed in its favor towards a perceived cost of zero.

The status quo of the international law/order presents its participants (States) with a nearly zero risk environment when it comes to collateral damage. The situation is dangerous for the same reason its dangerous to give cheap money to bankers — they make stupid decisions and become highly arrogant towards reality. The reality is — you are employed not to do as you please, but as stated in your mandate and contractual obligation to your client (the citizenry). The mandate is underpinned by ethics, violation of these fundamental standards makes the entire overarching contract void.

Every mandate, is underpinned by an ethical standard, even if not exclusively stated. This silent agreement forms the base of order. One must note, that in combination with other deterrents, ethics is stronger than law, because law, essentially, is comprised of two: words on paper and an executive branch that has to have enough power to put the law into action in the first place. Ethics, on the other hand, can only be compared to an evolutionary survival instinct, breaking which destroys trust, absence of trust dissolves an organization, subsequently diminishing its functionality and survival. In other words, without trust, you’re on your own and your chances of survival in the wild are closer to zero than they were before. Hence, ethics is not just a Utopian fantasy standard, it carries functional value in the order of our society.

The current state of affairs points to a continuous breach of contract and trust, on all levels. We do as we please, because we can. Yes. We. Can. We want, we can, what we’re ought is out of the question. ‘Can’ has become a paradoxical mix of Darwinist realpolitik and ethical interventionalism. It is not a matter of politics, but a matter of the very fabric of a newly evolving multipolar international order that we are precisely ought to build, where good and bad intentions (if such exist) can be equally dangerous to its stability.