Blog post 5

About the question of wether there are things states can and can't do based on social norms and expectations, Of course their are certain things states cannot do. Every state is subject to the judgements of other states, and not to mention international law, on every action they take at both an international and domestic level. If a state believes that another state is doing wrong by another state, or by it's people, it has been common in the past for that state to intervene when the situation proved to be unresolvable in any other way.

One good example is with genocide. Starting with the Nazi genocide on Jews, Homosexuals, and other minorities during world war II, there have been several other genocides in the past sixty years. Genocide is such an international outrage because the state itself, rather than protecting it's people, is killing off the people it deems undesirable. Even so, Genocide is a really tricky issue. It is really tricky to tell if Genocide is actually going on. One example is the controversial Turkish-Armenian genocide. According to Armenians, the Turks commited genocide against them in the World War 1 period. It is believed that there were 25 concentration camps, and that the death toll was somewhere near 1.5 million. Armenians are constantly fighting to have the genocide recognized by other countries. But the Turks insist that a Genocide never took place, there is nothing in the governmental archives about it, and in fact even accusing Turkey of genocide is against the law in Turkey. So when hearing two very different stories from both sides, it is very hard to tell wether or not something actually happened, thus making Genocide a really tricky topic.

Another issue, which seems to give everyone the chills when it comes up, is the production of Nuclear Weapons. The Cold War left the world forever fearful of the power of Nuclear weapons, after the Cuban missile crisis had everyone fearing for the end of the world. And according to the Center for Defence Information (http://www.cdi.org/) the US alone could possibly have enough Nuclear weapons to destroy the world, and they have since reduced their Nuclear Arsenal greatly. So it is natural that when you hear of another country developing a Nuclear Weapon, for example the current situation with North Korea, The rest of the world goes crazy over it. Right now even the US is highly concerned with the possibility of North Korea developing a Nuclear weapon, and are intervening to try to put an end to it. This has also happened with Iraq and Iran in the past; President George W. Bush was even suspected of falsely giving information of WMD's in Iraq to convince the Senate to invade. The development of nuclear weapons is almost prohibited on the world stage.