| > I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with. Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under more humane principles. For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy, then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal framework? In this particular case, the problems are well-documented. > I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger. |