more on The Geopolitics of France

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Mitra <mitra_lists () earth path net>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 11:44:57 +1100
To: dave () farber net, ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] The Geopolitics of France

The analysis of the Geopolitics of France is insightful, and may very
well be accurate, however it focusses purely on the external politics
not the internal politics.

 From my own perspective (former Brit, spent a lot of time in France,
live in Australia). It seems the internal politics are far more
important than GeoPolitics.

The population of Europe is far less convinced than the US of the
moral justification of obliterating a city and its inhabitants
because their unelected leader  possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction
sold to him of course largely by the same countries who are
complaining. It  is even less convinced  that there is a threat to
the rest of the world from this same leader, who is thoroughly
contained and is opposed by the same terrorist groups that he is
supposedly going to arm.   Whether this is correct or not is beside
the point, the population of Europe doesn't believe that the evidence
is stong enough to massacre hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians,
any more than it believes that evidence of the US's crimes is
justification for the massacre of US civilians Sept11.

So why Germany and France, and not Britain. The key is in their
political systems. Both Germany and France are democracies with some
form of either preference system or proportional representation. So
their governments are under significant threat that if the population
opposes their plans so totally, and aren't listened to, then that
population will vote for a minor party - e.g. the Greens - into a
major party.

Britain on the other hand is (I believe) the only country in Europe
that has a similar voting system to the US, where voting for a minor
party is a wasted vote, i.e. if your candidate doesn't win then your
vote doesn't get counted for your second choice. So Blair has no
credible opposition on his left, as voting for anti-war parties is
essentially wasting a vote that could be used to oppose the
Conservatives.

This also explains why in Australia (with a preferential voting
system)  the opposition Labor party is moving to oppose the war, or
risk being wiped out at the March state elections as its traditional
supporters will not vote for a pro-war party, as the large numbers at
demonstrations this weekend showed (12% of the total population of
our county marched (3000 out of 25000, with a similar number in the
next county ).

Hopefully this helps explain why the governments of France and
Germany will listen to their populations, and Blair  (and of course
Bush) won't.

- Mitra


-- 
Mitra Technology Consulting -  www.mitra.biz - mitra () mitra biz
02-6684-8096  or 0414-648-0722

Life is a Mystery to be Lived, not a Problem to be Solved


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