"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Ancient Greek proverb
The management of power in international relations is the most complex, complex and sensitive process on which the survival and effective competition of states depends, and it is a function of various factors, the most important of which is the "national" interest. The management of power is carried out either by peaceful means or by direct or indirect recourse to violence. The peaceful management of power is essentially implemented within the mechanisms of diplomacy which, however, realistically, is achieved by covering especially military power and the saying is known in diplomatic history: "diplomacy without weapons is like an orchestra without instruments", as well as "when diplomacy is silent, guns speak". The peaceful management of power also takes place, crucially, in the context of the diffusion of ideologies, political or religious, party forms and mechanisms, etc. The non-peaceful management of power is carried out in the context of its exercise and enforcement with violent measures such as hostilities, provocative and terrorist acts, etc., but also with covert violence measures e.g. financial blackmail for the purchase of weapons systems and energy, propaganda through the media, etc.
Fear is the main catalyst for managing power at all levels and is systematically cultivated and extracted by those in power to secure and promote it. In ancient Greece, the peaceful management of power was achieved through diplomacy between the city-states centered on the Delphic Amphictyones, and the non-peaceful one through military confrontations, etc. The Oracle of Delphi was a lever for managing power through fear. As for Greek mythology, it abounds with shocking examples of power management, as well as the Old Testament. A great ancient Greek myth, "the ring of Gyges" (which had magical properties and made its owner omnipotent and invisible) is a unique timeless symbol of power management, but also an important moral lesson with the question: if each of us had a such a ring what would he seek?
In ancient Rome, the management of power was expressed with human sacrifices, murders, terrorism, etc., and later with the Inquisition, which consolidated the power of the rulers with the state of fear. And the ultimate image of power management was reflected in the infamous "Pax Romana". With the development of nation-states, the management of power changes in the framework of alliances and balance of power. Religious doctrines have always been an important driver of power management, with the Crusades as a high point of its enforcement by the most anti-Christian means. In modern times, various doctrines manage their power in the context of proselytizing, spreading fanaticism, superstitions, formalism, etc., and cooperation with totalitarian regimes. Jihadists are a prime example. The American Professor William Sumner wrote: "You want war, cultivate (nurture with) doctrines."
The mutation in the way power is managed due to the corruption it entails is also seen by powerful occult organizations, which while they were founded to defend against the indecency of powerful monocratic regimes, but then, gaining power themselves, became corrupt and jealous of the methods of the tyrants which they perpetuate. Technology is a fundamental means of power management, especially warfare with the new complex weapon systems. In particular, weapons of mass destruction, the anti-nuclear umbrella, etc. they are crutches of the rulers who invest their interests in them. Also electronic technology, telecommunications, UFOs, IT and media. The management of power in forms of violence has undergone mutations since the time of anarchists and anarchist pacifists such as Tolstoy and Gandhi (it is unknown to the general public that there is considerable correspondence between them and that the latter was taught "passive resistance" by the former but differentiated it).
Before the establishment of international organizations and until the IPP, power management was carried out within the framework of the balance of power. With the establishment of the Council of Europe and the UN, the management of power is included in a new institutional framework, that of collective security, which means, in its authentic form, the absence of a predetermined opponent, and which emerged as the other pole of the balance of power, but when they failed, it returned at this pole. Also, traditional diplomacy has declined and evolved into a broader spectrum such as parliamentary diplomacy, NGO diplomacy, multinationals, virtual diplomacy and lobby diplomacy.
With the establishment of the UN, while the impression was created that the management of power would be carried out with the aim of consolidating international peace, the rule of law, respect for human rights, etc., the powerful, unmoved by the tragedies of war, besides, they provoked them, they artfully took care to exclusively secure their interests. Furthermore, within the framework of the UN, new methods of diplomacy were developed such as the famous "good offices". Other forms of modern diplomacy are oil diplomacy, dollar diplomacy and the "medical diplomacy" successfully instituted by Cuba. Space diplomacy is also nascent. But also the establishment of regional organizations with the blessings of the UN served for the exclusive management of power by the rulers. Another form of power management is through "sexual diplomacy", which was particularly cultivated in the Cold War, as well as through marginal social groups. Other political measures of power management include promoting nationalist patterns and libertarianism, fragmenting states, creating minorities and refugees, taking over political forces, movements, NGOs, etc., inciting riots, overthrowing regimes, establishing criminal courts, exporting terrorism and criminality, causing of division and conflicts, export of repressive mechanisms and security systems, creation of international non-transparent power mismanagement organizations, influence of institutions such as, e.g. separate trial and criminalization of holocaust denial {it is reasonable to ask why the same does not apply to other genocides} etc.
Economic measures include control of wealth producing sources, investment, stock exchanges, multinational cartels dealing in arms, uranium, black gold, precious metals, money laundering, export of technology and know-how, granting of loans and aid, often used to buy out governments, promotion of consumerism e.g. . falsified, mutated, etc. products, degrading or falsifying them for profit, etc. Social measures primarily include social exclusion with institutional etc. measures, management of refugees and migrant workers, used in various ways especially as a lever of pressure to control the internal labor market, etc., control of insurance agencies, promotion of trade in drugs, alcoholic beverages, etc. Yet another way of managing power is achieved through the management of the 'population explosion', which is variously used to exploit the 'surplus' of people for war conflicts and consumer tools as well as for the trade in drugs, white flesh, body parts, etc.
Another important method of power management is "brain drain", which has been reduced to a science especially by some countries. Also, another modern form of power management, which particularly afflicts the USA and which is methodically exported, is "sexual harassment" in the context of which powerful circles use armies of "bait" to harass, trap and exclude the undesirables, and which today is one of the modern social scourges. Cultural measures include media, cinema, which by spreading the mentality and lifestyle (eg the infamous "American way of life") as well as violence and peoples' addiction to it as well as extreme individualism and feeling supremacy, promote the interests of the powerful (it is perhaps unknown to the general public that according to UN data, the most profitable business of the US is Hollywood films that have taken the world by storm while only about 3% of foreign films are allowed to be imported}, counterfeiting historical and cultural events, gambling, sports and the arts, especially the bleeding of sports and artistic talents, the promotion of foreign languages and educational institutions, polling of public opinion, the projection of models of the nouveau riche and the underworld, the exploitation of scientific discoveries, the ridicule and parody of dramatic events for the purpose of disorientation and painless deflation, obfuscation and disinformation as a safety valve (CNN in the war in Yugoslavia typical), advertising, fashion, etc. Globalization, defined as the multifaceted and multiform diffusion, penetration and enforcement of the power and interests of the powerful, is the most basic lever of power management, which with every form of violence as the tip of the spear, self-mutating and mutating into modern Lernaia Hydra, or Circe, divides, fragments and flattens, at the same time mutating the global society into such a rigid competition, but also exclusion and special needs that it controls and exploits as the case may be.
Evaluating the management of power during modern history, one can come to the conclusion that the so-called "national" interest that determines it, is often not valid, but rather that of warmongers, etc. organized profit-making circles. During the Cold War, power management was blatantly implemented by the two Superpowers at the expense of the rest of humanity. Today, with the arrogant and alienating behavior of some Superpowers and their international accomplices, as well as with the control they exert on the UN, the management of power is trapped in closed, undemocratic power frameworks, at the expense of the principles and purposes of the United Nations. As for the UN itself, its institutional framework, which ensures the management of power by the powerful with the veto, the political through lobbies, etc., but also through economic measures and indirect blackmail, highlights the failure of its members to manage collective power to achieve universal ideals. Indicative of the great flexibility and adaptability of power management to serve the interests of the powerful is that Article 107 of the Charter, which refers to an "enemy state", has been abolished!
Also, as far as NATO is concerned, while it was founded within the framework of the principles of the UN Charter and with the main objective of collective defense, along the way and although the adversarial awe has faded and the reason for its existence has changed, it has mutated into an all-powerful global organization monopolizing the management of power replacing the UN. Finally, as far as the EU is concerned, the lack of a common foreign, security and defense policy weakens it and makes it subordinate to extra-European powerful actors, as demonstrated by the crises in the Balkans, the Middle East, etc. It is obvious that if the regional organizations wanted to contribute to the implementation of the principles of the UN Charter, on the basis of which they were founded, they would sincerely take care of its strengthening and not its deprecation and substitution. But, in addition to the political, social and economic problems that plague humanity and which the international community – and within the framework of international organizations – failed to resolve because it managed power selectively at the expense of the majority of peoples, it also failed in terms of managing the serious environmental problems that seriously affect the planet Earth.
It is common ground that today's global competitive system cannot survive without rivals and therefore the management of power is still perpetuated in the classic frameworks of "divide and conquer" and "the supremacy of the strongest" dragging international organizations along, which, in degree of their involvement, they cannot take credit for success. Power is like air, which when it finds a void it covers it!
Today, humanity is in serious danger, as we have seen in recent years in the tragedies that have struck various countries, from the new terrible enemy: international terrorism, which develops nightmarishly into the vicious cycle: terrorism-counter-terrorism-terrorism, and which expresses the most brutal aspect of human nature. gaining power. Back to "Homo homini lupus est" or the Greek poet's reversal of "lupus lupi homo est"? And the reasonable question: How did the terrorists, Jihadists, etc. appear? From parthenogenesis or from space? Who recruits them, trains them, etc.? Also, what does the new libertarianism and neo-imperialism of some countries - especially neighboring countries - express, as well as the irrationality of leaders like in North Korea? Is it in the climate of fear and conflict that some invest the inhumane aspect of their power management?
What is required is the achievement of political will and consensus for the faithful implementation of the UN Charter in terms of the management of power for the benefit of all humanity and not the privileged classes, as well as the redefinition of the concept of the state and private initiative in the light of more general good and not the imposition of the dilemma between strict statism or free market snobbery and hype, because otherwise the management of power will continue to accumulate greater woes by remaining trapped in seals of anti-social, belligerent competition and undermining of universal democratic institutions, which instead of being strengthened and to be respected, they will be discredited and weakened to the glory of the "happily depraved" according to Demosthenes.
Why was the Kellogg-Bryan Pact that prohibited war not implemented and is not implemented? Also, Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Peace Guide? Is it because the arms production and trade industries as well as strategic resources with their stooges stock markets etc. do they impose their own exclusive power? In the 40s, the great American Professor Hans Morgenthau wrote that "the nationalist masses of our time advance carrying their idols, each one convinced that it is carrying out the mandate of history, that it acts for humanity, that it seems to act for itself, and that he fulfills a sacred mission dictated by Divine Providence, as it is defined. Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed! I ask: Do they have the illusion that they are being replaced? And the great Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: "Just as the leaf of a tree does not wither by itself, but with the tacit knowledge of the whole tree, so no evil happens without the hidden will of all." We are all jointly responsible!
And if the planet Earth is in danger of being destroyed by the new undisclosed anthropogenic cataclysm, it will not be the ozone hole's fault but the "hole" in the consciousness of especially the powerful.
source "FREEPRESS" 14/10/2007
photo https://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/
