I'd hardly call the BBC non-for-profit. It's making a good deal of profit.

http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcast/2010/07/bbc-worldwide-profit

A report by the Cardiff School of Journalism concluded that the BBC was the most pro-war of any British news agency during the lead-up to the Iraq war. It was created to be the voice of the British Empire, and it continues along similar lines today.

Its science journalism is also quite poor.

http://www.techbelly.com/2007/07/30/more-shoddy-bbc-science-journalism/

Non-for-profit means the profits go back to the organization so it can advance its goal, rather than being sent to shareholders.

OK Putin, I'll play along.
Who are the IR professionals? How do you know they're the professionals? What is the agenda of the professionals and where does it come from? Who decides if they're doing a good job or not? Who prevents them from abusing their position? To what extent are they responsible for the product or outcome of their labour? Who holds them responsible?

How does wikileaks profit from selling it's product? What does it gain?

I think that there is a difference between not-for-profit organizations and publicly funded organizations.

Assange gains fawning media coverage and damages the United States. That's the goal of Wikileaks. It's a nihilistic organization.

Invictus: If you look at their site, they mention other things that have been leaked through them that are not U.S. based. Are you saying their goal has changed recently or do you honestly believe they are strictly anti-U.S. even in the face of (possibly biased, but still extant) evidence to the contrary?

For the record, I could believe it to be a recent change. I just want your thoughts... and I want you to read what they're saying before dismissing it all as tosh.

Personally, I used to be on their side but I feel the diplomatic cable leak was completely unnecessary, so I'm starting to support them less. As for the warrant that's out for Assange, though, it wouldn't surprise me if that was complete bull.

I didn't say purely anti-American. I said nihilist. They stirred up trouble here for the sake of stirring up trouble. Nothing truly shocking was revealed, it just destroyed the trust in confidentiality that allows a lot of diplomacy to function.

They leaked some stuff on Scientology, which I happen to think is a cult and it's good that it would be embarrassed. But that's all that happened: embarrassment. No policy changes, no greater good. Just a joy from watching it burn. So what good does it do? That's what makes Wikileaks nihilist and what makes it dangerous.

scientology? tell me more about that

@Invictus: So do all journalist organizations also need to work in governments to affect change? If whoever leaked the documents leaked them to (say) the Washington Post, and the Post published it, does that make them nihilistic if they just publish it and have no ability to actually bring about change?

"OK Putin, I'll play along.
Who are the IR professionals? How do you know they're the professionals?"

The people whose occupations involve international relations - civil servants in the Defense and State departments, academic social scientists who study and analyze international relations, policy think tanks, etc. How do we know they're professionals? The same way we know doctors and lawyers are professionals. They have rigorous degrees qualifying them as such, or they are practitioners of statecraft.

"What is the agenda of the professionals and where does it come from?"

Like any professional community, there is no monolithic 'agenda'. Some IR professionals seek to advance the national interests of their respective states (so-called 'realists'). Some however, are not nationally focused and aim to advance the cause of international law and global governance (so-called neo-liberals, cosmopolitan theorists, etc). It depends. It comes from their experience, analysis, and normative beliefs.

"Who decides if they're doing a good job or not?"

Who decides if a doctor is doing a good job or not? Other doctors, typically. Since the foundation of cosmopolitan or international law is weak, typically IR practitioners are judged by the extend to which they advance the interests of their states, although international lawyers do have a say also, since IR professionals are indeed agents of the law.

"Who prevents them from abusing their position?"

International relations has no centralized authority - it is a system of sovereign states - so it is difficult to prevent 'abuse'. But to the extent that international law is accepted (and it is to a great extent), international organizations such as the ICJ and United Nations tribunals are able to prevent abuse. However, typically the Law of Nations has always been the law of the stronger. Without a centralized authority capable of independent enforcement, this will continue to be the case. I personally do not believe any such centralized authority will ever exist. So to a certain extent, the state and its agents can do as their power permits.

I see, the PROFESSIONALS.

"So to a certain extent, the state and its agents can do as their power permits." Exactly... And the pros have done such a fine job up to now, why change a thing? The irrelevant cows, I mean people should go eat from their troughs when they feel hungry and contribute to production in proportion as they consume a quantity of goods in order to maintain the economy in proper working order. Let's not bother them with the boring details of statecraft, let them leave the dirty work to the priestly class who know best. Why didn't I think of that?

Putin +33 :-)

You, sir, have a much better grasp of many aspects in many subjects than some others of us (myself included) and a very eloquent and precise in your arguments. You would make a great orator or, God hels us, politician. :-)

Of course, I wonder if you couldn't actually convince someone that the Chevy Corvette and the Chevy Chevette weren't actually the same car. :-)

Putin +...34 I guess
You do make very concise and good argument. I agree with everything you say.

and mcbry, why not let the "priestly class" do the statesmanship? They are trained to do it for heavens sake. For example, would you rather of Condi and Hillary representing us abroad or Sarah Palin? Even Jefferson said that governing should be done by the educated.

"Let's not bother them with the boring details of statecraft, let them leave the dirty work to the priestly class who know best. Why didn't I think of that?"

For a clue as to how the mass public would run our foreign policy, simply look at Congress. There is never an electoral campaign without some absurd, simplistic, jingoistic soundbite some problem or another on a foreign enemy. Read the comments section of any CNN article dealing with the Middle East, and count how many times somebody advocates for the nuclear destruction of Iran or Afghanistan.
I disagree with much of what US policymakers have done when it comes to foreign affairs, but whatever mistakes they have made are nothing compared to the kind of havoc the average populist would wreak upon the world if they were in charge of it.

I no more trust a random citizen to run our foreign policy than I would trust a random citizen to give me a heart transplant.

Despite the contempt I have for Putin's historical revisionism, he's pretty much described the state of international affairs.

I might add that if you want to get involved, one should get some education, in the same way that if you want to comment on legal affairs, a basic understanding of the law is very important.

Wow. Putin33 and I agree. Well said, comrade.

"I no more trust a random citizen to run our foreign policy than I would trust a random citizen to give me a heart transplant."

Despite what you say, there is such a thing as the wisdom of crowds.

So instead of taking a random citizen, take a random sample of citizens...

I however do not know enough on this topic to explain it properly, nor even to suggest that an alternative system could readily be used as an alternative... still i think it's worth thinking about.

I am not one so naive as to think statemen/diplomats can simply be replaced, I do beleive we can build better systems than we have relied upon in the past. And i don't think that this wikileak will completely undermine the sytem of diplomacy, HOWEVER i'm not againts a change in IR, and how the nations of the world interact.

This is not currently ideal - there is no reason to think that our system of diplomats will be destroyed in one actions leaving ruin; NOR can i assume that change to our current system will be bad; humans are adaptive, and solve problems.

So i again allow that the leak has done damage, but that isn't neccesarily a bad thing. (sorry if anyone replied to my previous points, i didn't get a chance to read back over this thread yet.)

IR folks and their acolytes aren't normal but there sure are a lot of 'em around here. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Yes, of course, you and doctors are cut from the same cloth. But the system so elegantly described is broken. Governments and their technocrats cannot continue to say one thing and do another. The US for all it's pretensions of noble causes today is the laughing stock of the world and deservedly so. Its influence is waning fast, the illusions can no longer be maintained. But it's not just the US, which is under scrutiny because it still retains a privileged place (he with the biggest stick) in this mythological state of nature in which the nations are said to exist. This elaborate and arcane world system Putin so gracefully outlined without revealing any of the secrets is little by little being exposed for the lie that it is.

And if I were you, my dear Putin, I would not underestimate the people. They are waking up from their slumber under this old regime and realizing that they are responsible for their governments' actions and so they must make their governments answerable. The people in Nazi Germany said they didn't know what was happening, but it was a wilful ignorance and we are starting to wake up now to the fact that we are all guilty of those crimes. We are not every man and woman but we are reaching a critical mass.

You don't need an IR degree to know that internal contradictions make the biggest cracks in any foundation. It's starting to seem to me that having an IR degree is actually a handicap on that point. If enough contradictions are brought face to face with themselves, the whole damn system is just going to eat itself. That's true for this myth of nations in a state of nature and it's true for the hegemony of the corporations. It's just a matter of time now.

By the way, I have about as much respect for my doctor as I have for my plumber. The difference is my plumber is usually able to fix the problems he's presented with.

Damn Putin, those are some of the most concise and well written posts I've ever seen here. You don't mind if I probe a little, right? I feel like this is a good opportunity to learn.

You express your contempt for populism, and I might agree. However, if a State's interest should not be based on the popular interests of the people contained therein, then upon what should it be based? Would you argue that the average person only thinks they know what they want, but an educated person actually has more insight into what the average person *really* wants? Or perhaps you would only argue an educated person knows better how to achieve these wants?

mcbry, really with doctors and plumbers? One is holding your life and health in their hands, the other a properly functioning flush toilet... I would have thought that to be the main difference. I'm sure that plumbing requires just as much problem solving capacity and technical know how, but the stakes are completely different.

Invictus, I'm not sure I would classify wikileaks as nihilistic so much as antistate or antiauthoritarian. Assange seems to have some pretty clear objectives and moral imperatives.

"The US for all it's pretensions of noble causes today is the laughing stock of the world and deservedly so. Its influence is waning fast, the illusions can no longer be maintained."

And what is replacing it is anarchy and disorder, just like what replaced the Roman Empire was to certain extent, anarchy and disorder. Like you say, internal contradictions will lead to the unraveling of the international order which is held up by the lonely creaking shoulders of the United States. It won't be destroyed by another power of rising strength. You and I do not disagree on that point. Where we disagree is on this idea that the nihilists, populists, and anarchists who would replace the orderly world system enforced by the 'priestly class' would be more noble or moral. They most assuredly will not be.

We are in an era of information overload, where the dawn of new technology makes information of all kinds instantaneously available. In order to be 'heard' in such a world, you have to scream louder and louder. People are becoming more extreme as a result, and much less deferential to authority. This is going to mean that every individual is going to feel 'entitled' to get 100% of they want, and if they don't they will not hesitate to engage in violence against authority. It's now fashionable to simply want to tear down, destroy and be cynical, rather than build.

So the people who say the system is rotten should be replaced may be correct, but they have no vision of what to replace it with. All they offer is visions of chaos.

Putin33, are you the same person in this thread as the one holding up North Korea as a shining beacon of freedom in other threads? This guy talking about the international system is so lucid and makes such wonderful, powerfully persuasive arguments.

Chrispminis, I don't see too fine of a difference between nihilism and the anti-state attitudes on display at Wikileaks, but I suppose there might be some sort of a philosophical distinction. Angels dancing on a pin, perhaps, but a distinction.

+1 again Putin. Although some may argue that China is to rise as the next world power to take on the burden, but they do not have the internal stability that they need, and probably have the better part of a decade or two until they reach the capability of surpassing the US

"You express your contempt for populism, and I might agree. However, if a State's interest should not be based on the popular interests of the people contained therein, then upon what should it be based?"

We accept as a truism that corporations acting for their own profit enhances the well-being for those who work for the corporation. If a corporation makes gains those gains could translate into more jobs, pay raises, etc. States, in an international environment of de-centralized authority and security competition, have even more reason to maximize their "profits", in the form of power and influence. People, generally speaking, do not understand the long-term strategic implications of foreign policy decision-making. The Germans probably ignore the fact that their generous welfare state came not as a result of liberal do-gooders or even working class radicals, but as a result of Otto von Bismarck's Blood and Iron foreign policy. War, more than anything else, is responsible for the expansion of social spending and the welfare state. Why? Because state leaders wanted a healthier population with which to use to fight wars.

Would the average German populist have understood that it took careful strategizing and three wars to create the conditions necessary to unify Germany? I don't think it's likely. They're adverse to sacrifice, think in the short-term, and only want to do what is popular, avoiding tough decisions. Bismarck, by calculating what would maximize Prussia's power, unified Germany and brought unprecedented prosperity to the German people.

So to answer your question, States should behave in such a way as to maximize the overall power and influence of their state. Operating according to any other principle will sacrifice the long-term security of the state for short-term popularity, or the long-term security of the state for utopian fantasies of a law and morality based international order.

Would you argue that the average person only thinks they know what they want, but an educated person actually has more insight into what the average person *really* wants? Or perhaps you would only argue an educated person knows better how to achieve these wants?"

This is the funniest one: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2008/04/08ASTANA760.html

Putin i can't help disagree with you and Mcbry on the imminent collapse of the international order.

It is easy to predict catastrophe, but humans behaviour has a way of defying most predictions.

I doubt that there are any nihilistsm anarchists or populists who will overthrow the system. There will be a huge element of populism incorporated into the next change in IR - recall the first world war and the league of nations, replacing previous individual diplomatic embassies and militrary alliances, replacing colonial powrs with mandates, changing the way the world organised itself. Recall the Second world war, the invention of atomic weapons, and the Unite nations, a second attempt to create a world order - though argueably peace was achieved only be the fear of mutual assured destruction rather than the existance of the UN.

In recent decades we've seen the rise of special economic areas, the EU/EEA, South American Union, NAFTA, and other super-national bodies which link nation-state's interest together. The new world order will not be a simple authoritarian government as we've had in the past(however democratic). The continued failure of the UN leaves us with no option but to explore other avenues. People have no faith in the idea so for now it will not come to pass.

But new models of organisation have sprung up (with the technology which has developed) wikis are an example, the fact that systems don't have to be authoritarian, that power an be communally shared... scientific investigation does not run on any authoritarian basis, simple peer-review.

The trend of human societies has been to build on old system, build our connections to ever more people, and i believe this will continue.

I do not think the system will be replaced by chaos, i think the system will adapt itself to include new ideas and methods of decision making. It is flawed, but i do not say rotten. The individuals who have a vested interest in it will oppose change, sure, but there will be those who attempt to forge ahead with a new and better system even against such opposition.

"Putin33, are you the same person in this thread as the one holding up North Korea as a shining beacon of freedom in other threads?"

There were Soviet realists just as there were American realists.
We can both have the same general understanding of how the world operates, but play for different teams.

'States should behave in such a way as to maximize the overall power and influence of their state.' - and as humans have many times proven, working together is the best way to improve your influence.

Uniting germany helped Prussia... uniting Europe will do what?

so systems failed when the administration and communication effort became too difficult to manage, the Roman empire declined largely due to structural and organisational issues (and external agressors) these issues have changed with morden technology.

I would argue that the 'interest of the state' will inevitably result in a world-centered order... of some kind.