Gongol.com Archives: August 2024
August 30, 2024
Rules, not gentlemen's agreements
One way or another, the United States and China will have to coexist as major global powers. It is certain to be a rocky relationship from time to time, but occasional diplomatic encounters -- like the US National Security Advisor's meeting with the Chinese president -- are likely to be fruitful on the whole if they help to keep avenues of communication open between the countries. But what is actually said still matters. ■ In his campaign book for the 1988 Presidential election, George H. W. Bush wrote, "One of the lessons I'd learned in two diplomatic assignments, at the United Nations and in China, was never to underestimate the importance of symbolism. Not image -- that's something else entirely. Image has to do with appearance, how you look to the world. Symbolism has to do with messages, what you want to tell the world." ■ Xi Jinping's words at the meeting went like this: "In this changing and turbulent world, countries need solidarity and coordination instead of division or confrontation." At a glance, that sounds unobjectionable; who wants "division or confrontation"? ■ But it's the kind of platitudinous nonsense one might say when they really mean, "Stay out of our sphere of influence". And that's clearly how China's rulers see matters. The Soviet Union liked that "spheres of influence" idea, too, and for the same reason: If rivalrous great powers can agree to split up the world and stay out of one another's claims, that looks a lot like "coordination" and prevents "confrontation". ■ That's not how a world order based upon rules is supposed to work, though. Different nations agree on rules by mutual consent, and stand behind those rules everywhere. ■ And differences of opinion about the implementation and consequences of those rules can easily lead to "confrontation" -- much more of it than if powerful countries merely "coordinate" and agree to let one another force "solidarity" upon weaker neighbors. But the observance of rules, even if it's sometimes messier and less immediately satisfying to the expansive ambitions of the powerful, is a more just way to regard self-determination for all. ■ Conflict within rules-based boundaries can be contained. It's when a power insists that "coordination" looks like absorbing a neighbor, muscling out another's naval claims, and making incursions into another's airspace that we come to realize what's really being said behind the symbols.
A man who went hiking up a 14,000' mountain on a Colorado company retreat got separated from his group and lost off the trail. He ended up stuck, lost and alone, overnight, and was "lucky to be alive" when found by a search-and-rescue team. ■ It isn't uncommon to hear cheery marketing and recruitment materials alike using phrases like "work family". But the fact plainly is that a work team isn't a family, and it never will be. Even real families that work together have to consciously address the differences between work and familial bonds, if they want to remain healthy at either. ■ Words matter, and using "family" language for non-family activities can set misleading expectations about things like duties of care. Even Cub Scouts are taught to practice the buddy system when out on a hike. Any company outing to a mountain should have come with the same expectations. ■ As awful as it would be to find oneself left behind on a mountain, it's probably less tragic than what happened to the Wells Fargo employee who died at her desk in Tempe, Arizona, not to be found for four days. ■ A freak incident, perhaps. Regardless, it should come as an emphatic reminder that you can work with friends, you can work with family, and your friends can ultimately become like family -- but at no time should any of us be seduced by the spin that work and love are to be judged by the same standards. Even when love isn't involved, we owe one another duties of basic responsibility that neither a nanny state -- nor a corporate "parent" -- can ever supply.
