PD breaking individuals, SoD spoilers...

[Geoff Thorne]

But then, assuming one's culture is objective while all other cultures are to be studied in their natural state, is frankly a pretension, which also denies its own cultural values and their historical costs--and biases.

Yeah. Again, I don't see it that way. Especially when you're dealing with an entirely new and alien planetary culture.

Essentially the read is, "If they're already warping around space (making interstellar travel viable vs only intra solar system), they're fair game. They've assumed the risk of contact. If they're still planet bound we have no way to predict what problems our sudden appearance will cause. We MIGHT be a beneficial influence or we might, inadvertently, lead to the destruction of an entire species/culture/society just by showing up."

Some criteria had to be established to govern First Contact situations and the Federation chose to use technological development as its primary rubrick. Certainly its a bit chauvinistic but whatever they chose would have expressed some form of cultural bias.

Personally, I think it's a bit simplistic to use that, alone, as a determiner which is part of the reason I gave Riker the same difficulty. In my mind it fits with his earlier aggressive embrace of the Other that he would have a more flexible veiw on the subjet of "cultural maturity" than his bosses back home.

I think the other TITAN authors would agree.

It doesn't mean he doesn't do his best to obey the letter of the law but it does mean he's going to look for any way he can to bend the rule if he thinks it's warranted. And it also means he's going to take any such bending extremely seriously.

 

[Sci]

So, Trent, are you saying that there's no hope for a truly united Earth?

Actually, if anything, the interconnectivity that Trent describes is our best hope for a truly united Earth. As states begin to determine that the "interanl affairs" of other states affect their welfare, the concept of national sovereignty becomes eroded, and states become more inclined to participate in, and grant significant powers to, intergovernmental organizations -- the European Union, for example, which has taken on many of the traits of a state and may one day achieve genuine statehood. I would continue to contend that a truly united Earth can only be achieved when all of the cultures of the world have, of their own violition and without foreign interference, adopted the basic principles of constitutional liberal democracy; once the world's political cultures truly align -- as most of those in Europe do, for instance -- the advantages of political unity will probably come to be seen as outweighing the advantages of continued sovereignty.

As an academic exercise, to all who post, what could we do to remove tyrants, dictators, and corrupt democracies from world states without overtly violating the UN Charter or the Human Rights Charter?

The most we can do is use economic power, working through the United Nations. If a tyrant's actions constitute a direct -- and real -- threat to our security, or to the security of states that request our aide, we can step in and use military force. Both tools were used successfuly against Saddm Hussein's Iraq prior to the Bush II administration; Bush I successfuly used military force to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty, and Bush I and Clinton both successfuly used economic sanctions to reduce Hussein's Iraq capacity to threaten its neighbors and to weaken Hussein's control over Iraq proper; by the time of Bush II, Hussein only had control of the middle third of the country, in point of fact. Military force was also used successfuly against the Taliban after they continued to harbor the al Qaeda terrorist organization.

Anything beyond what I described above, though, would constitute a violation of the United Nations Charter and of international law. (Not that that bothered George W. Bush, of course, but still.) Further, it's also important to note that both of those strategies, while effective at their goals -- economic sanctions at diminishing the capacity of Iraq to constitute a genuine threat to other states, and military action at repelling Iraqi forces and at overthrowing the Taliban -- had significant "collatoral damage;" it's estimated that sanctions led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children throughout the 1990s, for instance (though, to be fair, this was also in part due to the corruption of the Hussein government -- oil-for-food going into Hussein's pockets and not to food for the Iraqi people, for instance).