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Blinding Morality In International Relations
Some years ago Paul Robinson, a Canadian scholar of Russian history, wrote about two different views of international political rules:
I pointed out that both Russia and the West claimed to be in favour of a ‘rules-based order’ and that each accused the other of breaking that order. The problem, I conjectured, derives from differing understanding of what the rules are and how they should be applied.
Russia believes in a traditional, Westphalian, order in which states are equal sovereign entities. The rules apply equally to all of them, regardless of who they are or what they do. States may only take action against other states with the permission of a superior court, in other words the United Nations Security Council. Of course, Russia doesn’t 100% abide by the rules of its own model, but its preferred option remains one of legal symmetry – the same rules apply to all.
By contrast, human rights reasoning has pushed the West in an opposite direction, towards a preference for legal asymmetry. In this model, the just and the unjust, those who respect and those who don’t respect human rights, are not legally or morally equal.
In a recent piece another Canadian Russia scholar, Patrick Armstrong, expands on this. Recent Russian policy has taken the Westphalian view of things because it has learned from its past where it had tried to make international policies based on moral reasoning and largely failed:
Moscow had spent seven decades pushing an exceptionalist/moralist view – the world’s first socialist state, the bright future of mankind and all that stuff – and had found it to be a complete failure. It had learned the hard way that countries are as they are and have to be dealt with as they are. Moralistic posturing leads to failure.
The West has, in contrast, no yet learned that lesson. It insists on a (very subjective) ‘moral’ view of things:
The first problem with the moralistic worldview is that one soon becomes very restricted on whom one can talk with. After all, the Good cannot acknowledge the Bad. Especially after all the carefully constructed war words have been deployed: the “regime’s” “claims” are “unverified”, they’re “disinformation” spread by “state media; they’re “talking points” from the “playbook”. The Good, The Just, by contrast, have democratic governments, speak the truth and have a free media. The more the Good stresses the evil of the other, the less it can know or understand. And certainly can never pollute its purity by meeting with The Bad.
Adhering to such moralistic views makes one incapable of dialog and sound judgment:
When moral superiority becomes entrenched, other superiorities soon take root. We’re morally better and everything we do is better too. Evil fails across the board, in war and in peace. Our tools work better and we use them better. The morally inferior are worse at war too. And so we come, to quote a certain Austrian watercolourist, to the expectation that “one good kick at the door and the whole rotten edifice will collapse”.
But the USSR did not collapse in 1941 and neither did Iran in 2026.
It is astonishing that nearly 25 years after George W. Bush declared some countries to be an ‘axis of evil’ the West is still holds to this Manichean or Zoroastrian view of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’.
Related: Rush: By-tor And The Snow Dog (vid)
It’s absolutely nothing new the manipulation of economic theory has went on for centuries.
The liberal international order faces a crisis of legitimacy, and the struggle to define its aftermath is already being organized through competing visions of global order. In the present turn, the far right has seized that terrain to stage a false choice: either accept imperial internationalism or retreat into nationalist rivalry.
For those who have studied the history of colonial Africa through its fiscal and monetary dimensions, the similarities between colonial macroeconomics and neoliberal macroeconomics are striking. One might be tempted to see the neoliberal era as an avatar of colonialism.
Actually, the main principles underlying the fiscal and monetary paradigm of the neoliberal era (1980 – 2021)—sound finance, regressive taxation systems, central bank independence, and the direction of the credit system by oligopolistic banks—were already applied in the European colonies, particularly in Africa.
No right wing populist is going to change that as they propose their false choice. See Trump for details.
In the neoliberal era, sound finance, as a principle of macroeconomic management, is based on the idea that governments should avoid fiscal deficits and should even aspire to fiscal surpluses. This this view is based on the misleading analogy between a household and a governing currency.
During colonial times, sound finance had much more basic and transparent justifications than it does today. As an imperial doctrine by essence, it amounted to saying that the did not intend to participate financially in the colonial enterprise, which was supposed to be self-financing.
The “colonial self-sufficiency policy,” as historians call it, implied that the colonized territories had to pay for the costs of their military conquest, the current expenditures of the colonial administrations as well as their investment expenditures, which were often oriented towards infrastructure projects that favored the profitability of private conquering capital.
Sound familiar ?
They were supposed to just intervene periodically by granting subsidies or loans, when the financial situation of the colonies required it.
In spite of the colonial rhetoric on the expensive or unprofitable character of the colonial enterprise, the fact is that the latter had been completely financed by the colonies. Public transfers had been relatively minor, both by France and England, the two former and most important metropolitan powers on the African continent.
Since colonial governments ruled the monetary operations of their colonies, they managed through the colonial administrations to gradually impose a unit of account in which taxes would be collected. This meant, that they had no intrinsic financial constraint. In principle they did not depend on taxes to finance their local expenditures. The possibility to expand their fiscal space was not used, however, owing to the extractive orientation of colonial economic policy.
Sound familiar ?
The choice to run balanced budgets implied that the colonial government did not usually create net financial wealth for the private sector (and in particular for the indigenous private sector). The accumulation of financial wealth by the private sector—and thus growth of domestic income and tax revenues—was made dependent on the external financial balance. They were forced to export their way to growth.
Sound familiar ?
This extractive orientation was accentuated by colonial monetary arrangements and by the behavior of the banking sector, dominated from the outset by oligopolistic banks. In parallel with fiscal austerity, the fixed parity between the colonial and metropolitan currencies in a context of free capital mobility between the colonies and the metropolis and the obligation to cover the money supply entirely with foreign exchange reserves (as with the currency boards in the British Empire) gave a highly restrictive character to monetary policy.
The idea that private banks should organize the credit system with some freedom—the freedom not to finance productive activities as opposed to extractive activities—while colonial governments should maintain balanced budgets was part of the imperial credentials.
Sound familiar ?
Turn on that little box in your living room and you will hear this repeated 7 days a week using modern language.
In the major British colonies in West Africa the Bank of British West Africa and Barclays DCO ruled almost unchallenged for the first six decades of the 20th century. The role of of the banks had generally been to protect the interests of businesses at the expense of local entrepreneurs through discrimination in access to credit. It had also consisted in facilitating the short-term financing of the exports of primary products as well as the transfer of local economic surpluses (financial savings) to the the colonialists.
Sound familiar ?
You keep pointing at treasuries ( foreign financial savings) held by the US empire at the FED. So it should sound familiar.
As captive markets and cheap sources of supply of raw materials, colonial empires also played the role of the financial managers. In the case of England, the over-accumulation of foreign exchange reserves by its most resource-rich colonies had contributed significantly to its financial stability and to the alleviation of recurrent liquidity crises on the London money market.
Sound familiar ?
Dumb people even say this to the letter today. That’s how familiar it is even though it no longer applies as floating exchange rates replaced it. But we still act like it does.
Nowadays, under neoliberalism, for many countries of the Global South, the priority given to balanced budgets and exports, the over-accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in a context where their local resources are under-utilized, the dominant role of foreign banks and financial institutions, the under-financing of the “real” economy, etc., all represent elements of continuity with the colonial period.
Bingo ! There it is in a nutshell. As if nothing has changed in a 100 years.
Neoliberal economics, it could be argued, is an iteration of the logic of colonial economics in a context where trade and financial flows are less and less hampered by the barriers once created by the coexistence of formal colonial empires. With neoliberalism, the latter are replaced with the networks and agencies of globalized capital. In the Global North, this pursuit of colonial economic logic entails an undermining of the previous socioeconomic and political achievements of working classes and hence a widening of within-country inequalities. In most of the Global South, next to the weakening of working classes power, neoliberalism has consisted in suppressing nations and peoples right to self-determination through the imposition of deflationary policies, forced “free trade,” privatization and financial liberalization.
So What’s changed ?
The Cambridge controversies, the farce of Bretton Woods, NATO charters and the EU treaties have tried to ensure it continues for another 100 years.
In the 1980’s the sheep thought it was something completely new. When the reality was it was just the same old, same old coated in modern language. Advertised and sold like a pair of old shoes.
Posted by: Andrew | Aug 5 2026 21:37 utc | 61
Hmmm…. Where to weigh-in on this topic? I dealt with morality in a comment a number of weeks ago that concluded for morality to be a powerful concept capable of governing actions/behaviors all its multiple facets needed to find consensus, that having different models of morality–Islamic, Christian, Taoist, etc.–would never work as we’ve seen. The arrival at two fundamental Charters agreed upon by the vast majority of nations–UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights–represent monumental progress along the path to establish an established consensus on morality and thus how individuals and to nations and everything in-between ought to behave and conduct relations. Yes, many other agreed upon rules exist, such as the various Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention. Yet we see how they’re ignored/violated without much in the way of condemnation and punishment suffered by those breaking them. The same goes for the UN Charter and national constitutions.
IMO, Humanity is probably too immature to reach a consensus on morality because all too many sociopathological people are able to acquire power via immoral means. Until that process can be halted, Humanity will continue to suffer the consequences of highly immoral acts of the sorts we’re currently experiencing. I’ll present an historical example:
The FDR administration clearly designed the Bretton Woods arrangement to control and dominate the post-war global financial system for its own gain at the expense of all other nations–what we’d call highly immoral. That same administration along with other world governments at the same time set about to construct the UN Charter as the basis for a global governance institution to replace the League of Nations with the Charter being formulated along Westphalian lines declaring that all nations were to have an equal degree of sovereignty and that no nation could interfere with that sovereignty–but Bretton Woods was arranged to do precisely that.
The result was the initiation of an immoral basis for global relations that continues today since the global hegemon was launched via Bretton Woods and there would be no way to contain it, to discipline it, because of the veto power bestowed to the five permanent UNSC members.
So, how to arrive at an agreed upon definition of morality and then to place it within a new global governance document that creates a UN 2.0? I’ll note that China’s proposed Global Governance Initiative is concerned with recovering the rule of law and making it enforceable so proper governance can be conducted. This document, “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions,” says nothing about morality yet mentions the word “law” 35 times and “governance” 134 times. IMO, an agreed upon definition of morality is assumed and subsumed within law and governance.
I’ll close with some quotes made by Frederic Bastiat 170+ years ago:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.
The principles of morality are intuitive, as Frederic Bastiat explained in his essay, The Law:
Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life…
Collective right [government], then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.
For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of isolated forces?
Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense.
Yet, Bastiat also noted in the first citation that law can be coopted and made into something that isn’t natural or moral. A vast library of books exists dealing with this very extensive topic. How one’s society is organized affects how morality is defined and would generate another comment.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 5 2026 22:02 utc | 66
This is a completely wrong thesis that mixes propaganda and actual geopolitics.
The “moral” West is the most immoral in the history of mankind: it sides with nazis in Ukraine, it makes bloody coups with fascists, it sides with terrorists in Syria and in many other places, and it sides with colonialism and even ethnic cleansing and GENOCIDE.
On the other side, the entire Russian justification for intervention in Ukraine is MORAL:
– Russia is fighting agains nazis;
– Russia is defending morals and Christian valies in the face of immorality and godless beliefs;
– Russia wants peace, and intervenes to safe Donbass and Crimea, while the nazis and NATO attack those people sinde 2014 and want more war;
In the end, they all behave exclusively based on interests and geopolitical moves.
It’s just the political justifications repeated to create consent in the public that change.
Russia was in Syria siding with muslims to… “defend Christianity”?
No.
Russia was there to help an ally government and use that chance as training ground for its military.
The most pragmatic thing to do, to respect the will of the Syrian majority, would be to side with the ones that wanted the dictator Assad gone. Yet, Russia never did that.
It seems Russia didn’t respect who the Syrians are.
The West is in Syria to defend values like freedom and democracy and human rights?
No.
The Western interference in Syria was NOT moral at all.
USA, UK, France, Turkey, “israel”, and also rhe rest of NATO/EU sided with al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists, gave them weapons, helped them steal Syria’s oil, provoked and aggravated poverty and famine with their sanctions, and did all this for mere imperial/colonial goals that temporarily align:
– USA wanted a free path to bombard Iran;
– israel wants to invade more land;
– Turkey wants to reinforce ita regional power, some sort of Neo-Ottomanism;
– and the rest of EU/NATO were just happy to do anything to try to hurt Russia and Iran;
As for the “rules based world order”, it is what it always was: rules don’t apply to the strong.
That’s an innately human problem. It will never be solved by the Homo Sapiens species.
Nd finally, the Russian alleged “conclusion” that the Soviet moral approach “failed” is just propaganda by the Capitalists in power in Moscow.
USSR’s moral interventions are the main reason why Russia has any friends in Africa and South America and Asia. Russia nowadays still benefits from all those Soviet SUCCESSES. And the liberated people in those independent countries also remember who they have to thank for.
In the end, all powers deal with pragmatism, independently of their public intentions being “benign” or “malign”, depending on which propaganda you read.
Again, Syria is the most obvious example for this:
– on one day, Russia is supporting Assas and bombarding al-Qaeda (aka HTS) terrorists.
On the next day, Russia forgets about Assad and is making deals with the HTS leader.
– on one day, USA/NATO is helping the Kurds fight against ISIS.
On the next day, USA no longer needs the Kurds, so it givea the green light for Turkey to kill them, and also supports the HTS leader that frees ISIS terorrists and goes on killing sprees (massacres) against the Kurds.
– Hezbollah sided with Assad.
Now Hezbollah is ready to negotiate with al-Sharaa.
– the Kurds fought ISIS.
Now the Kurds are making deals to integrate the exact same forces, under al-Qaeda/HTS rule, that also integrated those ISIS militants.
Long story short, one thing is the propaganda and public speeches. Another thing is the actual behaviour.
There has never been a separation between “pragmatism vs morality” between the Russian leadership and the West respectively.
Only the propaganda changes.
In one moment Russia talks about “defending Christian values”, the next moment it is striking deals with Talibans…
In one moment the West talks aboit “human rights”, the next moment it is siding with nazis and terrorists and genocidal pigs…
And the “rules” are just anothet layer for the propaganda and public speeches.
The rules don’t matter.
The only thing that matters is how successfully the consent was created to violate those rules, and how much power (money and military strength) a country has to do what it wants.
Example:
– USA wanted to hurt China and Cuba, cut their energy imports;
– USA needed to steal/control Venezuelan oil;
– all USA wants to do is illegal, and the citizens don’t agree;
– so the Western propaganda created consent: it called Venezuela a “dictatorship”, it calles the West “democratic” and “well intended”, and invented a narrative about “narco-terrorists”.
– USA made aggression against Venezuela, took its oil, hurt China and Cuba, bombarded fishermen, and now the western mainstream media no longer cares about Venezuela, because the goals were achieved.
On the other side, China and Russia kept talking about the rules and about what’s right, and about the moral need to defend their independent ally.
They didn’t.
They didn’t have the power to do that.
They failed both morally and pragmatically. They lost an ally.
And now the Russian propaganda channels are in damage control mode, saying all the bads things they can say to “explain” this defeat as “not their fault”. Delcy Rodriguez is a traitor, a sellout.
And then, in a clown move on top of all of this, Russia sent ONE oil tanker to Cuba because of its moral obligation towards that ally. And that’s it.
The navy drills that Russia and China did in the Caribbean waters was a bluff, and USA unmasked it.
It’s all about power, finantial, military, and in narrative control in the media.
USA, unfortunately, still has it all.
Russia and China don’t, not even to properly defend themselves, let alone their allies at such far distances.
On the other hand, Russia and China are avoiding any over-extension, while USA is condemning itself to it.
Lets see who wins in the long term, the ones constantly distributing punches in all directions, or the ones merely doing their best to absorb the punches WITHOUT punching back.
In my opinion, it is a mistake for Russia and China to still tolerate “israel” and let Iran almost alone. The USA armada should have been sunk, and its military bases vaporized, with Russian and Chinese weapons fired directly by Russia and China.
Because, if power decides all, then looking weak is not a good strategy.
On top of that, the constant meetings between China and USA, and between Russia and USA, are a signal of stupidity.
USA wants to destroy Russia and China. Hand shaking the Washington DC emperor, be it in Beijing or Alaska, isn’t just total pragmatism and absence of morality in geopolitical relations, it is stupidity.
Still, not as stupid as Iran needing to suffer so many bombardments (during “ceasefires” and diplomatic talks) to finaly realize it can NOT negotiate with USA and can NOT put a so called religious anti-nuclear morality above the need to develop its nuclear military deterrence.
Which brings the question: why didn’t Russia nor China even dared to use their veto to stop the UNSC resolution that condemned… Iran, for resisting and counterattacking against USA military bases in the region?
It was neither moral nor pragmatic. It was immoral and stupid and a shot in the foot.
So, yeah, stupidity and mistakes are also a part of it.
Pragmatism and power are the essential.
Morality is just propaganda.
And this applies to all sides.
Except for Cuba. The revolutionary anti-fascist anti-imperialist Cuban project, is the only in the world that really puts morality and decency first, and isn’t even pragmatic enough for its own good.
The failure of Cuba, if USA decides to impose a final aggression and regime change, will not be a failure of Cuba.
It will be a failure of the whole mankind.
The exact same mankind that failed Palestine and so many other victims of evil.
Which reminds me: most of the currenr Russian propaganda that is based on moral superiority, is on Victory Day, May 9, and that’s thanks to the SOVIET success against nazism.
And yet, from 2014 to 2022, that anti-nazi morality didn’t make Russia do anything in Ukraine, not even be pragmatic enough to recognise the Donbass independence nor push for more referendums at a time when most Eastern Ukraine was much more pro-Russian than it is now.
The exact same Russian propaganda agents that justified that inaction with “pragmatism”, have since 2022 spent their days justifying the SMO with morality.
As I said, words are one thing, “morality” (except in the case of Cuba) is just propaganda, the “rules” are just for the strong to more easily control the weak without the need for confrontation, actions are always pragmatic, inaction is most of the times just stupidity or negligence, and all that matters is power.
If there is a country in the world that really understands all this, that country is North Korea.
And if there is a people that is completely unaware of all of this, that is the European people living in NATO countries.
If there is a side that is pure evil, that is israel, taking the place that was once occupied by Nazi Germany.
And if there is a country that represents decency, that country is Cuba.
Russia, USA, and China, are just entertained with The Game of geopolitical Thrones, each doing what their respective power allows them to do, each with their own virtues and flaws, and each with their own “moral” propaganda to create consent for their actions, or damage control their mistakes.
Through the ages, the only thing thst changes are the names of the countries and religions. All the problems remain the same, since their are inherent to the faulty and very far from perfect human nature.
Except for Cuba and “israel”. There’s something different, in a good way, in the revolutionary Cuban people. And there’s something different, in a very bad way, in the genocidal zionist people.
This is just another proof that we can’t all belong to the same “human race”. I hate that dishonest expression. Humans (Homo Sapiens) are a species, not a race. There are many races, and some are better than other. I’m not being racist, I’m just acknowledging facts.
A cute and friendly dog race is nowadays a success. We don’t want savage wolves in our homes.
Unfortunately, in nature, goodness doesn’t always win. The cute pandas were almost extinct. The venomous snakes are everywhere…
And that, unfortunately, seems to also apply to a technologically developed humankind.
The one that is peaceful and sends doctors to help the people in need, face poverty and risk starvation because of an external blockade.
The ones that commit war crimes against humanity, includinf usinf nuclear weapons against civilians and committing genocide, get rich and establish an empire.
We should be better!!!
Posted by: Carlos Marques | Aug 6 2026 0:53 utc | 84
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