One World, Many Peaces

The History of American Recessions and Depressions

Source: Online Schooling

The Nile Treaty, Water Security and the Future of Peace in Africa

The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement (or Nile Treaty, under the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative, NBI) seeks the establishment of a permanent Nile River Basin Commission through which member countries will act together to manage and develop the resources of the Nile, the world's longest river. To many who visit, the Nile and its fertile valleys are a beautiful backdrop for a cruise or vacation. But for those who live around and depend upon the river, it is that and the source of their physical survival and cultural heritage.

Formally launched in February 1999, the NBI provides an institutional mechanism, a shared vision, and a set of agreed policy guidelines to provide a basinwide framework for cooperative action, according to the Nile Basin Initiative website. The initiative's policy guidelines define the following as the primary objectives of the NBI:

•To develop the Nile Basin water resources in a sustainable and equitable way to ensure
•Prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples
•To ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of the resources
•To ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries, seeking win-win gains
•To target poverty eradication and promote economic integration
•To ensure that the program results in a move from planning to action.

The NBI's Strategic Action Program represents Nile riparian concerted approach to achieving sustainable socioeconomic development in the basin through “equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.” The Strategic Action Program provides the means for translating this shared vision into concrete activities through a two-fold, complementary approach:

•Lay the groundwork for cooperative action through a regional program to build confidence and capacity throughout the basin (the Shared Vision Program)
•Pursue, simultaneously, cooperative development opportunities to realize physical investments and tangible results through sub-basin activities (Subsidiary action programs) in the Eastern Nile and the Nile Equatorial Lakes regions.

So far, five countries have signed the Nile Treaty: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and most recently, Kenya. However, two countries key to the viability of the whole project, Egypt and Sudan, have so far vehemently opposed the Nile Treaty on the grounds that it will detract from their economic interests in the river. 

Nonetheless, Egypt, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda belonged to the Technical Co-operation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin (TECCONILE), founded in 1992, a forerunner to the NBI.

As the African population grows with the rise of industrialism, and bigger cities replacing villages, water security and agriculture will be of paramount importance. The Nile Treaty gives reason to hope that these potential conflicts will not turn violent, but no guarantee.

The Nile remains a current event after thousands of years of human dependency on it, and will create a future of peace only if humans can work their problems out before they become violent. 

Finish Ratifying the START Treaty Already

 "October 1st marks 18 years since the U.S. Senate approved President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. It also marks the 300th day since that treaty expired, cutting off U.S. weapons inspectors' access to Russian nuclear sites. Conservatives in the Senate are now blocking the restart of Reagan's inspections." So begins a recent article by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which invests in peace and security around the globe. The irony is not lost to anyone.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were to vote in mid-September on whether to send the new START Treaty to the Senate floor for ratification. The START Treaty passed that test, to Obama's approval, but it most likely won't be thought of until after the consequential mid-term elections in November, if then at all. The treaty would cut US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads by about one-third, to 1,550 each.

Since the original START Treaty expired, on-site monitoring of Russia's nuclear weapons and facilities was suspended, to say nothing of those of the U.S. Now that it's open knowledge that Russia is giving Iran nuclear materials, you would think that the U.S. Congress would show a bit more urgency and concern.  In addition to removing hundreds of warheads from US and Russian nuclear arsenals and renewing and enhancing verification protocols, "New START" would also help improve cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism, a vital international security priority.

Will the U.S. Congress suddenly realize what is at stake in ratifying the START Treaty and permit a floor vote? Kevin Martin, the leader of Peace Action, says "the New START is a modest step forward toward the realization the President Obama's goal (and ours!) of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.  It's a step that should be taken without further delay so the administration can begin work on the steps that must follow." It is that, but it is also a dangerous election-year gamble which no politician, especially conservative ones, can afford to lose.

So doing nothing makes sense for them and them only, even if it puts domestic and global security at risk. Please continue to contact U.S. Senators and ask them to support the New Start Treaty.  Call 202-224-3121, or write your Senators at: US Senate, Washington DC 20510; or email them at Senate.gov. Your vote this November can make a world of difference.   

When Capitalist Democracy Meets Maoism in India, Peace Results

Indian Maoists, not to be confused with the original Chinese ones, are members of the Communist Party of India, whose explicit aim is to violently overthrow the government, also the largest democracy on earth with over one billion people. But in a strange and hopeful twist in Indian politics, a unique synergy between capitalist democracy and Maoism is taking place, for the first time outside of China. 

Maoists have been attacking government troops, paramilitary groups and civilians in the northern part of the country for decades in the hopes of separating along ideological lines, including their most deadly attack ever earlier this year. Just this week, however, Indian Railway Minister Mamata Banerji addressed a huge rally - supported by Maoists - at a rebel stronghold in West Bengal. Ms. Banerji and her Trinamul Congress Party, a majority Indian Congress Party ally, have always denied any links with the insurgents, according to the BBC. But maybe those ties will emerge with her peacemaking proposal.

A senior Maoist leader urged local people to attend the event in Lalgarh and thousands showed up. Her message was clear: to open negotiations between the national government and the Maoist rebels, stop the terrorism. "Terror should stop in Lalgarh and all areas around it and the counter-insurgency operations in the area should be stopped," she told flag-waving supporters. By "counter-insurgency" she meant the government and paramilitary forces who have been just as violent, if not more so, than the Maoists themselves. Nothing short of a tremendous development, to be sure.

Indian Maoists are an outgrowth of the People's War Group (PWG) which emerged in the 1980s. Extreme in their anti-globalization just as much as in their anti-caste system, they believe in the Marxist revolutionary model that Mao proposed, in which rural peasants (not just industrial workers) can lead the way. Until now, this required the use of revolutionary violence to be accomplished along Maoist ideological lines.

What this momentous event signals is a possibility that Maoists could adopt the native Gandhian practice of nonviolence and integration, rather than the foreign-derived violent separatism they have stuck to, signaling a shift in Indian politics that could have repercussions worldwide.

Making Better Choices: Peace, Preference Theory and Behavioral Economics

Why don't people chose peace over its commonly associated opposites, like violence and war? New breakthroughs in the field of preference theory and behavioral economics may help explain why, and so doing may help us help others who don't chose peace to do so. Yes, it's a bit complicated at first, but we promise that understanding these principles and innovatively implementing them can help bring inner peace to you, and peace worldwide. In other words, we can all make better choices with this knowledge.

 

Economic arguments have been used to support both peace and its opposites for centuries. Unfortunately, and generalizing to a fault, those who use them to support peace are often one-sided (socialist) just like those who use them to support war (capitalistic). Preference theory and behavioral economics not only provide innovative insights and common ground, but a scientific rather than ideological basis for working out our most pressing war and peace problems. 

 

First there's what's called "revealed preference theory." Pioneered by American economist Paul Samuelson, revealed preference theory is a method by which it is possible to discern consumer behavior on the basis of variable prices and incomes. A consumer with a given income will buy a mixture of products; as his or her income changes, the mixture of goods and services will also change. Assuming that the consumer will never select a combination which is more expensive than that which was previously chosen, revealed preference theory deliberately ignores measures of utility.

 

The choice of peace or not with a revealed preference theory framework works like this, and provides unique insight into President Obama's Afghanistan troop surge and war plans.  Lets say a country, ethnic group or tribe has engaged in both peacebuilding and war-making in the past, even simultaneously in certain cases. According to Samuelson, what would make them chose one or the other in the present or future is not their utility, as is commonly assumed, but the total cost of engaging in them separately and together compared to what that total would be now.

 

Seeking to get more benefits out of that total or reduce it so part of it can be re-allocated elsewhere is the point. Thus revealed preference theory goes a long way towards explaining why President Obama chose to re-deploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan instead of bringing them home. The total cost remains just about the same, both in lives and resources, and the perceived benefits of the one war gets transferred to the other, both in his mind as "decider" and in the complacency of the American public in not contesting the troop surge to the point of disabling it. By convincingly calling the connection into question and proposing compelling alternatives, according to the revealed preference theory, the behavior will change.

 

Then there's there bio-psychological principle, recently discovered, called "relative preference theory." Hans Breiter, MD, principal investigator of the Massachusetts General Hospital Phenotype Genotype Project, explains its premise thus. Relative preference theory incorporates aspects of three existing theories in reward/aversion: prospect theory, which includes the fact that people are more strongly motivated to avoid negative outcomes than to attain positive outcomes; the matching law, which describes how the rates of response to multiple stimuli are proportional to the amount of reward attributed to each stimulus; and alliesthesia, which notes that the value placed on something depends on whether it is perceived to be scarce -- for example, hungry people place greater value on food than do those who have just eaten.

 

One of the key differences between relative preference theory and these earlier theories is that it evaluates preferences relating to the intrinsic value of items to an individual, rather than relating preferences to values set by external forces -- such as how the overall economy sets the value of the dollar. The patterns observed in this study are similar at the individual and group levels -- a relationship known as "scaling." The relation to peace should be self-evident: similarly to revealed preference theory, the intrinsic value of peace and/or its opposite is not the only factor in people choosing one or the other, contextual and other people's choices are just as important and predictable. In short, war breeds war, and peace breeds peace, so anti-war and pro-peace tactics or strategies need to adjust accordingly.

International Cooperation and Local Development: A Perspective from Mali

By Genevieve Hamel

Cooperation, development and international solidarity, you know these words? You hear them everywhere, so sometimes you wonder what they really mean ... All international cooperation agencies do not work the same way, although their goal is often the same: to try to improve living conditions of the poor around the world. Easy to say! But when you see the magnitude of the task, lack of access to clean water, food or political insecurity, illiteracy, AIDS or malaria, one really wonders if the challenge is not a little too big for just non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This implies a somewhat worrying question: who actually benefits the thousands of dollars invested in this "international cooperation"?

For a dozen years, I worked in developing countries for different NGOs based inthe Canadian province of Quebec: Burkina Faso, Haiti, Senegal and most recently ... Mali. I just returned, still breathless from three weeks of work at a dizzying pace. Each time I take the opportunity to go see for myself what is happening there, how people survive and live and, more importantly, what they think of us and about “international cooperation.”

So, I find myself in Bamako, the Mali capital, as a journalist and photographer, accompanying my director-cameraman, a young intern barely 18 years old, and a logistician. The team is sent by a foundation L'OEUVRE LÉGER (www.leger.org) which funds many Malian organizations working directly with the poorest populations. We have before us 18 days to "capture" images and words that will describe the challenges and successes of this country, ranked 178th out of 182 in the Human Development Index (www.unpd.org). The ultimate goal: to produce several communication tools to raise awareness and convince Quebec to the importance of supporting a country like Mali.

From Zantiébougou to Soy, and through Sansanding Kolongo, we scoured the remotest villages, the very embodiment of all the stereotypes in our collective imagination: no running water (just a well), no electricity, small mud houses with their thatched roofs, children playing barefoot in the dirt, girls 15 years with their baby attached to the back, men in fields and under the old baobab tree. Rarely a small school or a literacy center. And when there was a health center, is still seeking a nurse or midwife. Yet everywhere, strangely, we met people more courageous, generous and optimistic than it is possible to imagine.

Through ceremonies, traditional dances, shared meals on the floor or the official speeches, it is also filming, photographing and interviewing the villagers, who have much to say about development projects in their community. To achieve this, the conditions are harsh, as you may imagine. Even under mango trees, it is between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius, the wind blows full of dust and sand, the sun makes the light too harsh, the sky too white: the devices get dirty at the speed of lightning, they "cook" in nothing less than our hands full of sweat ... But no matter. Before us, the villagers hold together while munching on some peanuts, proud that we have come far to see how they fare.

Before our Westerners’ eyes, the situation may seem catastrophic. We ask lots of questions first ... How can farmers feed a family, a whole country, with a simple wooden spade to grow huge crops, often threatened by drought? Where do women get the strength to rise before dawn to fetch water, gather shea butter, pound millet, clean the house, then go work in the fields too, or the market? Why would children go to school, knowing that they must walk over 6 miles without having eating? The more you observe, the less you smile. And we wonder, when an organization reaches a certain village, where can it start?

Most of the communities we visited have benefited from a proven approach, the so-called "local development" strategy. The history of this approach in the mid-1980s and is the result of very particular twinning between the village of Sanankoroba and that of St. Elizabeth, Quebec. The project has snowballed, and now benefits more than one hundred villages. Since 1992, the local development approach was systematized by the organization Solidarité Union Coopération (SUCO), which now receives both financial and ideological support from L'OEUVRE LÉGER. What distinguishes this type of development? Several features, but especially the placing at the project’s heart of its only possible engine of change: the community.

If there is one thing you realize very quickly when traveling in countries such as Mali, it’s that they are far from an individualistic system like ours. So if one wishes to make any change in a collective system, it cannot be achieved by attempting to impose the only model we know.

By putting communities at the hub of the whole process, the local development approach meets many goals: local ownership of objectives, greater adherence to values and culture unique to each environment, a stronger civil society. But the villages who choose to engage in this process are also choosing to sacrifice certain traditions ... The village chief loses some of his power in favor of participatory democracy, patriarchy weakens in the face of gender equity and learns to give its voice to women. Changes that may seem trivial, but are in themselves small revolutions.

Thus, the world changes a little, slowly but surely. I could give you a ton of figures, statistics on the results of all these projects. Tell you that the villagers provide their food security, they are more likely to be literate, they repay the loans and make 200% profit. It's true. That’s international development? Yes. But for me it is also all Malians who have shaken hands, who told me thank you ... and wanted one thing: that we can still “work together.”

Photo credit: Genevieve Hamel

Global Peace Index 2010 Points to a Less Peaceful World This Year

By Liz Ford

The world has become less peaceful over the last year, despite a drop in the number of armed conflicts, according to this year’s Global Peace Index (GPI).

Figures published today show homicide rates and violent crime had increased around the world, particularly in Latin America, where levels of peacefulness showed the biggest slip over the past 12 months.

The GPI has been published annually for the last four years by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global thinktank that researches the relationship between economics, business and peace. The rankings, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, are calculated using 23 indicators, such as violent crime, political stability and military expenditure, correlated against a number of social development indicators such as corruption, freedom of the press, respect for human rights and school enrolment rates.

Figures show that Africa has become the most improved region of the world for peacefulness over the last four years. The continent has experienced fewer conflicts, less military spending and improved cross-border relations. However, sub-Saharan Africa still remains one of the planet’s least peaceful areas, with nine states featuring in the bottom 20 countries listed.

The Middle East has also shown improvements in its levels of peacefulness since 2006, largely through decreasing military spending and improved relations between states.
However, South Asia has become the most volatile area over the last four years, mainly due to increased involvement in conflicts and human rights abuses. This year, Pakistan was ranked 145 out of the 149 states listed and India ranked 129, evidence, says Steve Killelea, founder of the GPI, of the impact of the war on terror.

Levels of peace

For the second year running, New Zealand is rated the most peaceful country in the world, with Iceland climbing back up to second place, after dropping from the top slot in 2008 to fourth place last year. Japan ranked third. Fifteen of the top 20 countries are western or central European states and all Scandinavian countries are listed in the top 10, suggesting that small, stable, democratic countries are the most peaceful. The UK was ranked 31, one of the few countries to improve positions, while the US dropped two places to 85, largely due to its military expenditure, high prison population and increasing rates of violent crime and homicide.

For the fourth year running, Iraq was found to be the least peaceful country, followed by Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan. Russia ranked 143.

This year, five extra countries were added to the index – Armenia, Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Swaziland, which ranked 113, 63, 99, 53 and 73 respectively.

In a sense, the GPI make a case for peace – putting a monetary value on peace in terms of business growth and economic development. The index authors estimate that the total economic impact of an end to violence could have been US$28.2tr between 2006 and 2009. A 25% reduction in global violence would add an annual $1.85tr to the global economy. Killelea said these amounts could pay off Greece’s debts, meet the yearly requirements needed to hit the Millennium Development Goals and pay for the EU’s carbon reduction programme, and still leave change.

Aid thoughts

The rankings could provide useful backing to donor governments rethinking their aid strategies. The UK government is currently reviewing the countries to which it gives aid and has set up a National Security Council to pull together plans for development and defence. In a speech last week, the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, spoke of the importance of building “peaceful and stable societies abroad”, with particular reference to Afghanistan.

“It’s highly appropriate to look at the index and review how we go about giving aid. In the past, a lot of it was giving on a political whim, to prop up some government,” said Killelea. “You need the right resources and approaches to build a well functioning government and make sure resources are spread around the people.” A government would also save “hundreds of billions of dollars” in military expenditure.

Africa, he added, had experienced significant economic growth over the last decade, which had resulted in improved GDP across the continent, a drop in armed conflict and improvements in child mortality and education rates. But Killelea the continent still had a long way to go. “We don’t want to lose sight that Africa is the most violent region in the world”, he said.

The highest ranked country in Africa is Botswana, at 33. Uganda ranked 100 this year, an improvement on last year. However, Killelea noted that while the country had clearly improved in a number of areas, particularly in terms of economic growth, political instability, a worsening respect for human rights and an increasing number of deaths from organised crime remained major problems.

Photo Credit: syvwlh

Disarmament Talks Blend Economics and Ethics for Greece and Turkey, in Arms Race

In the midst of the worst debt crisis in recent history, Greece has received unprecedented diplomatic, economic and disarmament overtures from neighbor and longtime foe, Turkey.

Late last week the two countries held joint cabinet meetings in Athens, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan talking directly with embattled Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou about how the two countries can halt and reverse their arms races as a step towards Greece regaining a sound economic footing. Of course, Turkish aspirations to join the European Union (EU) were not far in the background, if seldom mentioned.

"I honestly feel national shame each time I am forced to buy weapons we do not need — based on an objective and correct estimate of the dangers the world as it is holds for Greece," said Deputy Prime Minister Theodore Pangalos to a Greek-Turkish business conference being held during Erdogan's visit.

"I know that on the other side of the border too the Turks are also buying weapons they do not need ... due to an imaginary threat that arises from a political confrontation, which can be solved and must be solved." All in all, twelve agreements were tendered between the two Premiers, including trade deals in the billions of Euros.

The animosity between Greece and Turkey dates back hundreds of years to when the Ottoman Empire that disintegrated into modern Turkey ruled Greece with an iron fist. After World War One, by which time Greece was again independent, the Turkish government expelled the large Greek population living throughout the country, tightening the tensions even more.

Then came the conflict over the island Cyprus, never fully resolved. Relations between the two countries improved after Greece provided aid to Turkey after its devastating earthquake of 1999. Armed conflict flared three times between 1976 and 1996, with military tension easing for the first time only now.

The point is that debt crises are usually tied to escalation in military tensions, not de-escalations as is the case here. As an increasing number of commentators draw parallels between what is happening to Greece now and what may happen to the U.S. with its own debt crisis, the demilitarization spurred by debt between Greece and Turkey is something to be studied first, and celebrated later.

As a current event creating the future, what  Papandreou and Erdogan are up to is surely deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize and Nobel Economics Prize.

A Tale of Two Neo-Colonialisms: China and the U.S. in Africa

There's a new "Scramble for Africa" taking place as you read this, one that rivals that which gripped and stripped the people and resources of the continent in the hands of Europeans in the late nineteenth century. But now, it's being waged in unprecedented twenty-first century ways that build upon those of the late twentieth, with two main players not a handful as before: China and the U.S.

Taking a closer look at what's been happening since the waves of supposed decolonization of the 1950s-1970s makes it clear that there are two very different kinds of neo-colonialism making inroads now, and they're not shaping up to be what you may expect from the two superpowers, the one old, the other even older.

This U.S. neo-colonialism actually being in the early 1800s, shortly after Americans through off the British yoke they tried to impose their own by supporting the nascent Liberia. The pattern has repeated itself innumerable times since: remain sovereign in name, while we supply you with capital, ideology and military support. During the Cold War, programs like the Peace Corps put a palatable veneer on what was then called neoliberalism in the next few decades, code name for the exportation of capitalism and democracy, whether the receiving country likes it or not.

The results have been mixed at best, and totally off target at worse, causing some of the worst humanitarian crises in human history while the upper classes of the oil-rich countries benefit and the lower classes continue to suffer, as they always have. Meanwhile purportedly global financial institutions, actually the U.S. and its allies in disguise, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lend African countries sums and at rates they cannot possibly repay just as they "give" them foreign aid that gets sucked dry by men with guns supplied by the U.S. off before it reaches its most desperate targets.

As U.S. neo-colonialism began, China was doing its best not to be colonized by the West, only to be so by the Japanese in the early and mid twentieth century, often considered worse than Nazi occupation. By the time the Communist takeover was complete in the 1950s, China had such serious internal problems that looking outside its borders was practically impossible, let alone doing something. That situation changed when the toil and trouble of the billion or so Chinese made their country a manufacturing, and now middle class consumer, global powerhouse.

Ironically, for the past two decades, China has been anything but communist or neoliberal in its neo-colonialism, instead preferring to make huge direct investments in the infrastructure and resources of dozens of African countries without the pretenses and airs of democracy and military security (at least so far for the latter) Americans like to put on in doing exactly the same thing.

Together, American and Chinese neo-colonialism in Africa are likely to dominate Africa for the foreseeable future, or until such time as they come into conflict with one another. When they do, it will not be a battle of ideology that takes place, but a battle of the businesses and organizations that each country has and will put in place on the continent. That is, unless the pitiable African Union shapes itself up to be the continental leadership it can be and itself throw off all yokes, once and for all.

Or, better yet, keep the yokes that work as current events, make them their own and then disappear, and discard those that don't, at which point we will be in a future created by U.S. and Chinese neo-colonialism in Africa which cannot yet be predicted.

U.S., Europe Two-Timed by Ukraine: 'Double Accord' Sealed with Russia on Gas Prices and Navy Bases

How is the Ukraine getting away with playing the two main sides in one of the world's major ongoing power struggles? Or is this an early sign of new era of power sharing? As previously reported on One World, Many Peaces and by Antony Adolf on Change.org, the Ukraine remains buddy-buddy with the U.S. largely thanks to missile sites President Obama promised to scrap in his campaign, then went ahead with anyways after taking office. However, what became clear today is that Ukrainian leaders are proving expertly adept at attracting more than one major power into their sphere of influence. A coup de grace?

Viktor Ianoukovitch, President of the Ukraine, and Russian Premier Dmitri Medvedev have just concluded what France's La Presse is calling a "double accord." First, to avoid any more gas shutoffs that kept large parts of Europe in the cold last year, the two countries agreed that gas coming from Russia and passed through Ukraine would be purchased by the Ukraine at a significantly lower rate so that it can make higher profits as the European distributor of Russian gas. Since coming to power, Ianoukovitch has sought closer ties with Russia, and the so-called "blue gold" deal proved to be the surest and most beneficial means to bring the two countries into their closest ties since the Cold War. Europe stands to gain little and will likely pay even more for Russian gas passed through the Ukraine now that this first part of the double accord is signed.

Second-- and the connection is altogether unambiguous-- in return Russia will be allowed to have its naval bases at the port in Sebastopol until 2042. Given that the Ukraine controls 80% of gas entering Europe, Russia understandably wants to keep its near-monopoly safe and sound, and Ukraine seems to be more than happy to outsource this task. But when it came to the U.S. missile shield to be housed on Ukrainian territory, the country's leaders also seemed more than willing to in-source military projects, again for the sake of increases in gross domestic product. Russian vehemently opposed the U.S. missile shield but has remained quiet about its latest development. At the signing of the double accord, Medvedev explicitly stated that the reduction in gas prices was to be understood as a "payment towards the rent for the navy bases." The U.S. is also paying the Ukraine for using its land for military purposes.

On May 9th, 1,400 troops from the Ukraine and Russia combined will mark the 60th anniversary of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. The joint exercise is mostly symbolic, but a highly potent symbolism at that. What is being signified is a rather small country's power to two-time two major world powers (the U.S. and Russia) as well as a whole continent (Europe). Should other equally-situated countries follow suit, major powers as current events will disappear under the weight of deals they rush into and know nothing about until its too late, creating a future in which money can be made off militaries that aren't even one's own.