مرحبًا بكم في قانون الغاب

Mar 18, 2022 Mark Leonard

برلين ـ في كتابه الصادر عام 1960 بعنوان "الحشد والسلطة"، لاحظ إلياس كانيتي أن المُستبدين المُصابين بجنون العظمة والذين يعتبرون أنفسهم "ناجون" سوف يُحيطون أنفسهم بمساحة فارغة حتى يتمكنوا من رؤية أي خطر وشيك. الأشخاص الوحيدون الذين يمكن الاعتماد عليهم هم أولئك الذين يمكنهم التضحية بأنفسهم. ومع كل عملية إعدام يأمر بها الديكتاتور، فإنه يكتسب بذلك "قوة البقاء".

ما هو أفضل وصف للرئيس فلاديمير بوتين؟ يُفضل المُستبدون في روسيا الجلوس بمفردهم عند نهاية طاولة بيضاء طويلة - مع إصدار الإنذارات النهائية، وشن الغزوات، والأمر باعتقال (أو اغتيال) خصومهم السياسيين. لقد قام بوتين ببناء نفوذه من خلال الحروب الدموية في الشيشان وجورجيا وسوريا وأوكرانيا. يعتمدوجوده على إنهاء وجود الآخرين.

ومع ذلك، يُعد بوتين سببًا في إثارة غرائز البقاء الخاصة بالآخرين. فقط برز فولوديمير زيلينسكي المُمثل الأوكراني الذي تحول إلى رئيس باعتباره البطل الذي يُجسد النضال الوجودي لأمته. وقد أُعيد إحياء منظمة حلف شمال الأطلسي من "الموت الدماغي" الزاحف. وقد تحول الاتحاد الأوروبي فجأة من مشروع سلام يُركز على الداخل إلى مجتمع يتمتع بالسيادة والأمن. وكما أخبرني أحد كبار الدبلوماسيين الأوروبيين هذا الأسبوع، "إن روسيا أكبر وأقرب من أن يُسمح لها بالتصرف بهكذا حماقة باعتبارها بلد متنمر متحرر من جميع المعايير. فإما أن تعمل استجابتنا لهذه الحرب على وضع حد لها أو سينهار عالمنا".

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Elizabeth Pula Mar 20, 2022

"Less well understood is the central problem of this article: how a system of federalism provides for its own survival. If federalism has strong, binding effects, what makes its restrictions self-enforcing? Specifically, what prevents interest groups and distributional coalitions, limited in their influence over lower-level governments, from pressing the central government to break the restrictions of federalism and intervene in the economy (Riker, 1964)? The answer cannot be simply a written rule,
for rules can be changed, avoided, or ignored. To survive, federalism requires self-enforcing restrictions, ones that make it in the interests of national political actors to honor them."
quote again from Weingast paradox paper, page 3.

Presently none of the national political actors are honoring any self-enforcing restrictions within any constitution written on paper. As a result, there are no constraints on any of the political actors, nor on any perceived power of any state. Presently Russia is the central government that is playing the role of a central government that is capable of "overawe" of a lower unit. The EU is also only a group of lower units that are being over "awed" and are fighting the predicament. The US and China are two federal systems that are in positions to "overawe" indiscriminately. Russia is positioning and attempting to "overawe" indiscriminately. None of the present federal systems are functionally stable enough to sustain any of their individual economies.

"The reason is that federal systems are not generally sustainable if they depend solely on the discretion of the highest political authority, because that delegation of power can always be reversed. As Riker observes, a central problem for federal systems is that the highest or central government may overawe the lower units. A sustainable system of federalism therefore must prevent the central government's ability to overawe the lower governments, as condition two requires."

His further analysis is critical to understand this Ukraine scenario.
Weingast-p.5
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Elizabeth Pula Mar 20, 2022

From Barry R. Weingast, The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/765068

“For the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, this analysis suggests that economic and political institutions should be redesigned simultaneously. In particular, these institutions need to be consistent with one another. What economic incentives are implied by the degree of discretion afforded the government under the political institutions? Are they compatible with secure property rights and the development of the rule of law? “

What the EU and US sanction process is doing is totally incompatible with what Weingast is suggesting. What is occurring in Ukraine is an ultimate example of the Weingast Paradox. What needs to be done for any real policy change to enable change within the European Continent is re-examination of Weingast’s suggestions for real analysis and application of at least an interim policy to allow actual economic functionality to be maintained beginning in Ukraine.

Presently, the West and EU have only ignorantly been politically supporting inappropriate and unreasonableness to transgress all reasonable limits of constitutional political economy. In fact what is occurring is total destruction to eliminate every foundation of a constitutional culture. What presently exists is a corrupted constitutional culture, in Ukraine and essentially globally. There needs to be immediate mechanisms to intervene to re-establish points of entries and corrections to allow the initial first steps to re-establish and stop corruption rather than further destructive processes by causing human death and destruction in the processes of destroying vestiges of the present organized states.

“At the simplest and most elementary level, that described by the initial leap from Hobbesian anarchy, individuals may reach an agreement to respect the property and person of individuals other than themselves. In such a trade, each participant secures the benefits of order, thereby reducing the need to expend his own resources in defense. In exchange, each participant gives up his own freedom of action in potential exploitation of the property and person of others, as defined in the contractual agreement (Buchanan and Brennan 1985, 10.2.23). “

Ama-gi_2007.pdf p. 10

Harold James suggestion of a New De’tente is an interim step to establish immediate mechanism/s to halt further destruction within the entire European continent unto and including the entire planet.
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