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Never really understood the pearl clutching on this matter. Litvinenko, Khashoggi, Georgi Markov and whatnot - who cares.
me, I prefer Russian government to be less able to murder people they dislike
(to the point that I approve/would approve of noticeably larger taxes to fund neutering Russia)
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Are you similarly surprised about nation states caring enough to kill separatists and terrorists abroad in the first place?
Because it's pretty much the same thing, one implies the other. The state*, in the crudest analysis, is a stationary bandit who claims ownership of a turf, a parcel of profitable land. This means maintaining the monopoly on legitimate violence within its borders, particularly mortal violence. Killing someone on the soil of another state is tantamount to diminishing that state's sovereignty; putting your dubious claim to «prey» above the state's claim to its legitimacy in its own domain, as if some ape's body moving around projects the qualitatively prioritized extension of yours; it is not so different in its corrosive effect from a direct attack on a local citizen, from using intimidation to intervene in local politics, indeed from supporting separatism. States, of course, exist in the condition of anarchy where might makes right and yadda yadda [realpolitik edgelording], but when such act is performed by «normal» states, ie bandits who profess to abide by some semblance of a code commonly agreed upon, as opposed to disreputable rogue shitholes with poor impulse control (or, I suppose, invincible Hegemonies), the exposure leads to apologia and compensation for damages – because it is a grave attack, even if nobody of the attacked state suffers directly.
*One of the sad things in learning languages is thoughtlessly swallowing words as one to one correspondences without pondering their etymologies and connotations, indelibly relative and path-dependent positions in the web of meaning, I believe. (This is not so much an endorsement of Sapir-Whorf as a weaker claim that different peoples use different ways to speak of the same things, same ways to speak of different things, and confuse this in translation). For example, in English, the token for «state» as in a nation/polity/unified territory is shared with an abstract, impersonal, elementary logical notion of a mode of operation maintained over some set: «the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time», the dictionary says. Hence, Balaji's «network state» is not an absurdity, «failed state» is a compact expression of a rather profound idea, and «state as a stationary bandit» might sound edgier than it should.
In Russian, however, the token for state-abstract is состояние, «condition» (itself different from условие which corresponds to a condition as in «term»), while state-nation is Государство. Государь means «sovereign» or «Prince». So, to a Russian ear, all states are principalities, dominions of an implied specific prince or equivalent; perhaps a conspiracy, at least a Deep State or a Cathedral, but not anything less, not anything that simply exists without expressing some de facto agent's coherent will.
As the honorary Russian Brodsky had uttered through the character of Marcus Valerius Martialis: «Surely, his view is barbaric, but yet candid».
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You’re going to have to be more specific.
Disliking a government killing its own citizens is pretty normal. I’d say it ought to be the default reaction. Especially in the US, where speech protections are are relatively big part of the cultural mythos.
Getting worked up enough to demand severing diplomatic ties, sanctions, whatever? Now that’s a bit weird. I’m inclined to think most people holding rallies for Khashoggi or whatever were already invested in Saudi politics. If so, caring about a visible, lurid murder is…back to being normal.
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The US exercises more control over Canadian and Mexican foreign policy than it does of any other nation (including its European and Asian allies). If an updated Monroe Doctrine covers relations with Central and South America (and the Caribbean), the situation for Canada and Mexico is even more strict. The US essentially imposes its will, a quasi-official form of suzerainty, on these two countries. An example - the US no-fly list is enforced across all of North America, if the US decides you can't leave the country, you can't travel to Canada or Mexico and fly from there to anywhere else, you're banned. And relations with Canada are even closer than with Mexico, there aren't AMLO-type figures who openly and strongly critique American liberals in mainstream Canadian politics. The US forced Canada to arrest Meng Wanzhou, even though it resulted in innocent Canadians being imprisoned in China. That's the level of influence, both by treaty partnership and unspoken control.
So a foreign assassination on Canadian soil is a big deal. The US and its immediate sphere is the one place where foreign assassinations are extremely rare, not because they're technically impossible (weapons are much easier to acquire, the southern border can be easily traversed stealthily, US domestic intelligence is not much more competent than that of the UK or France or Germany), but out of fear. The Russians, Turks, Iranians, Israelis, Saudis will assassinate political enemies in any other corner of the world except North America (the CIA claims to have foiled alleged IRGC 'plots' against some Americans, but it's very hard to believe these got far).
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