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robjwells | 10 months ago

Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.

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order

linkregister|10 months ago

Those videos are occurring because of a major power hypocritically flouting the rules-based international order. In spite of it, not because of it. We know the counterfactual of the rules-based order. It's nonstop European warfare in the 19th and the early 20th centuries.

BurningFrog|10 months ago

The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe. Absolutely not nonstop warfare!

deepsun|10 months ago

Yep, and UN had been expressing "serious concerns" every time. Although I haven't heard even those for a long time.

jll29|10 months ago

I can sympathize the with the cynicism, because I also see the bombing of Ukraine and Gaza in the daily news, which nobody seems to be capable or willing to stop.

Unlike Solferino, there are children dying on a daily basis, which breaks my heart. Yet it remains true that what Dunant has established is a better state than the world would have been in if he had done nothing.

Solferino was a big and cruel battle by the standards of its time, but not by today's standards - in stats: 150,000 men against 150,000 men, 24 km battle front fighting through one night, resulting in 6,000 dead, 2,000 wounded and 12,000 missing [1] (but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today). So a joke if compared to WWII stats. But the point here is a single individual made a difference, and beyond their lifetime, and that should give us some hope.

[1] https://www.kvwuerzburg.brk.de/das-brk/selbstverstaendnis/di...