It is fascinating to read the comments from the readers of the Jerusalem Post to the news that, finally after 70 years, the International Red Cross will create a symbol that can be used in Israel, China and India that is not a Christian or Muslim symbol (the new one is a red diamond).
Nearly all the letters to the JPost are concerned with moral issues relating to the global Red Cross' decision.
But my reaction was to think about ....
But my reaction was to think about the politics of global democratic voting. Democratic means equal votes of the eligible voters (nation states in this case), it has nothing to do with "true representation of a population" which doesn't exist anywhere except in good survey research.
The politics of equal votes has become highly refined and is different than the internal politics of corporations, inside the military or inside any hierarchical organization for that matter.
It would be interesting to know the oldest continuous forum where democratic voting has existed. My guess is that it would be some Dutch, Scandinavian or English institution.
The politics of democratic forums is inherently non-moral, just like technology, commerce and the legal process...which explains its singular global growth alongside commerce and technology. The politics of democracy has only one function: to accommodate and reconcile conflicting powers.
Power can arise from many sources, and before I die I hope to have some idea what "power" is. In the meantime, power can come from (1) large groups of people held together by a common vision, a common need or a common attribute; (2) smaller groups which have the same qualities but are bound together intensely; and (3) varieties of common financial interests including income.
Reconciling power has several characteristics. One is the use of time. Time creates the anomaly that good politicians get along with each other regardless of personal differences. Over time, nearly every other voter becomes either your ally or your opponent. So alliances are shifting.
Another is that new alliances are easily formed by minor changes.
The Red Cross battle against Israel had just such a nonmoral history. The voting body of the Red Cross has 309 national representatives. That means that the U.S. is on a voting par with some island of 2 million people.
In the 1990s, under the leadership of Elizabeth Dole, the American Red Cross tried every political mechanism to shape the votes of the 309 national representatives and got nowhere near a majority. So financial support from the U.S. was slowly cut off. Still not a majority since the Red Cross staff that was affected was not represented very well in the voting body.
Finally a tiny issue was found that would merge a few large voting blocks. The tiny issue was to let the non-state Palestinian Arabs join the Red Cross, formerly an organization made up only of states. Voila, the majority was created.
Never mind that the non-state Palestinian Arab medical groups had a habit of carrying weapons in their ambulances. This was nonmoral politics in action, effectively.