Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Continuing with our precis of Buzan and Waver's REGIONS AND POWERS... we come to the discussion of sub-Saharan Africa. One finds a good summary of their view of the security climate in that vast area here: "[After decolonization] the African state system mostly did not follow the Westphalian model into military rivalry and interstate war. Instead, it developed three almost postmodern features: (1) a loose ideology of pan-Africanism; (2) a continental institution, the OAU, which at an early stage pre-empted what could have been a drift toward rival territorial claims by institutionalizing the rule that there would be no forceful changing if the postcolonial boundaries ...; (3) a willingness to experiment with a variety of regional institutions."  The phrase "the Westphalian model" refers to the principles of the Peace of Westphalia that took in effect in Europe in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years' War.  It formalized the end of feudalism, and made the Ho...

The headline is obviously hyperbolic, but this is an effort at a really cool timeline, combining several smaller timelines I've put in this blog, making some revisions along the way.  Before the Bipedal Apes The earliest primates, called the Plesiadapiformes, are said to have speciated out of the Euarchonta very soon after the dinosaur-eliminating Comet struck, about  66 million years ago (MA). Soon after (63 MA) the Plesiadapiformes differentiated into the so-called wet-nosed and the dry-nosed primates. We will ignore the wet-nosed in what follows. The dry nosed are represented on today's earth by both the Great Apes and us humans. One distinctive feature of the dry-nosed branching? It can't metabolize vitamin C. We, and millions of years of ancestors, have had to include fruits bearing that vitamin in our diets.  Interesting, susceptibility to alcohol seems to be a trait of the primate group as a whole. After observing many other primates' love for fermenting fruits,...

Without a lot of throat clearing, here are some thoughts. 1. In general, the causes of wars between nations states always involve competition for resources, and the breakdown of earlier means for mediating those conflicts non-violently. Look at it this way: A new war comes about at the end of a precious period of peace, or at least relative peace. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a new war at all, just a continuation of the everlasting one, right? Also, I think it safe to assume for simplicity's sake at least that resource conflicts are constant. Wants are infinite, resources are limited! So ... a war begins both because specific resource conflicts exist and because mediation mechanisms that until then had kept the peace have broken down. 2. In Europe, the First World War came about largely as a byproduct of the scramble for Africa. The major powers each wanted to gobble up large parts of Africa for their own use, for mining, for markets, for prestige, etc. This brought them ...