Thread:Zillafire101/@comment-4960835-20160524105213/@comment-25309944-20160913040851

@Gorzill Apologies for the delay in my reply, the past few days have been pretty busy for me. I also wanted to give this message some thought.

"1. Part of my reason for creating this story is I want to see if I can create a story heavily involving the Covenant where I (and everyone else) can have fun and feel creatively fulfilled with what I've written."

Actually, I can get behind this. I think this would be a great basis for managing a collaboration and mediating between our two different styles and tastes. I'm definitely willing to compromise to achieve something you want to get out of the fiction, though I might also ask to add, remove, or change elements based on what I'd like to get out of it.

"2."

Alright, I see where you're going with this. I'm going to give a bit of feedback as to how I understand the theoretical framework (partly of internationalism, partly of the central concern of your story), and we'll see where that takes us.

I wouldn't necessarily characterize France's way of thinking as legalistic, as in being a proponent of strict adherence to established rules and codes of conduct as a way of justly organizing international relations. I can definitely see how one could make that observation, and it's an interesting one, but it might help if you got a look at how France thinks about international law, relations between states, and the maintaining of peace.

One of the core questions of international relations, both in theory and in practice, is how to maintain the peace. For states like France who are content with their position in the system and are not looking to garner any more power except for their own security, the stakes of this question are very high. France depends on the international system for its security, its economic prosperity, and its influence, and absolutely does not want to go to war given the costs for everyone involved. As a powerful state, the question for France is therefore how to influence the patterns and structures of the world around it so that they fall into an arrangement which prevents or dampens the (need for, or feasibility of) war, and thus make normal and productive relations between states possible.

It follows that the Covenant of Mirus was conceived by France as a structural answer to the question as to how to avoid war and create a system of productive relations between states. It began as a forum where the powers of Mirus could clarify their interests and intentions (to avoid misunderstandings and misperceptions) and to establish clear boundaries between them (to avoid unintentional foot-stepping). But where the Covenant really took off was the Treaty of Viel in 2805 where the Covenant powers essentially agreed that if any one of them was attacked, it was the responsibility of everyone to defend the peace. This fundamentally altered the dynamic, ensuring that any power looking to overthrow the peace would have to overcome a determined coalition of all of the other Covenant states. So long as the forces in favor of peace (whether to secure the status quo or to gradually alter the status quo through negotiation) have military superiority, the Covenant successful in that regard.

So, from all of this, we can kind of make out that France's idea of the role of international law and international institutions serves to (1) mediate and facilitate positive and productive relations between states and to (2) make it structurally impossible for any of these states to go to war. The ultimate goal is so that positive relations between states can exist, that individual states can coexist and fulfill themselves peacefully, and that problems and differences can be addressed through dialogue and cooperation.

You'll notice, as I believe that you have already through intuition, that morality does not play a role in any of the above. In fact, it doesn't seem to factor in at all. How can you discuss maintaining the peace without making it a moral issue? And there's the dilemma. Maintaining the peace, for France, isn't a moral issue. It's a precondition for addressing issues of morality and difference. In this way of looking at things, international structures serve to establish peace, and it is only through peace and the institutions of peace that difference can be mediated and addressed. I'm referring to differences in culture, differences in capabilities, differences in moral systems, differences in outlook and philosophy, differences in territory, and the list goes on. So long as there is peace, there is a chance and a place where those issues might get resolved, and where issues of morality might get a sympathetic hearing.

That's why it's important to defend international law against those who would overturn it (and there are always forces and states which look to do this, as we've even seen in the Covenant of Mirus), not because it's the law, but because it makes peace and productive relations between states possible. This means that, in interpreting international law and making policy, status quo states won't just blindly follow the word of the law. They'll be consciously acting in defense of the peace, even if it means going against the word of the law in desperate circumstances (unilateralism, usually).

Now, there are a number of built-in tensions into this system. I just mentioned revisionist states looking to overthrow the system versus revisionist states who oppose the system for their own reasons (could be moral, revenge, interest, or power reasons), where these two different types of states are permanently locked in a struggle to define, interpret, and rewrite the laws of the system to justify either protecting the peace or overthrowing it.

There's another inherent tension, and that's due to the fact that the system tends to constrain the ability of components of the system to act on moral imperatives for a reason that is not supposed to have any moral content. So, for example, the institution of sovereignty keeps various groups in the United States from intervening in issues of women's rights in Saudi Arabia or Sudan, or freedom of speech and the press in China and Russia, and so on. Similarly, fundamentalists in other countries can do nothing legitimately about the Western lifestyle which they consider debauched and immoral. A particularly silly example is that the institution of diplomatic immunity protects diplomats from paying parking tickets, so they park wherever they want much to the frustration of New Yorkers. The institutions where are there to ensure that peace and international society is possible get in the way of individuals and states from acting on moral imperatives, and that is where a law versus morality conflict can come in.

I have specific feedback regarding the plot you'd like to do, but I've been going on already for a bit too long. Could you give me your thoughts on the above and if it helps?