NOTE: UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) and UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) are two names for the same phenomena (they do have slightly different connotations, however).
The first part of this essay is a necessary discussion of the structure of the modern state. If you’re across this or just not that interested in it, to skip directly to discussion of UFOs, please scroll down until you see *************.*
TLDR: UFOs exist; be kind.
In International Relations, foreign policy, the media, and popular culture, discourse concerning states refers to them in absolute, unitary terms. We talk of ‘Russia invading the Ukraine’ or of ‘the United States coming to the defence of Taiwan’ and we instinctively conceptualise states as if they are unitary rational actors. Utilising language in this way gives the illusion that a ‘state’ is an entity with fully defined ideological boundaries and a cohesive set of aims, goals and ambitions; further, the international system is conceptualised as a sort of arena in which these state actors go about the pursuit of national interest.
In reality, that which we call ‘the State’ is far more nebulous: Timothy Mitchell discusses the ‘state effect,’ which holds that the distinction between state and society is much more indistinct than first anticipated. When viewed as an emergent entity of multiple constituent parts, that which comprises the ‘State’ is in fact a set of interactions mediated between bureaucratic bodies and departments, which collaborate and compete to address the competing interests of elites, lobbyists, interest groups, and that of the domestic population. In a somewhat circular logic, the State creates itself through its own governance of itself. Further, the departmental bodies which actuate this governance are comprised of employees who are themselves subject to the domestic trepidations of ordinary voting citizens.
To take this one step further, these public servants are somewhat at the mercy of the elite ruling class, who may have no ‘official’ ties to these governing bodies at all but whose interests are suffused throughout every choice that is made on its behalf. Their ability to have their interests brought to fruition is thanks to the state’s need for resources (a.k.a. money) – he who has money has power has a much better chance of calling the shots, of getting their government to bend to their will.
Therefore, the state arises from the practices of strategic interaction between a multitude of groups; these interactions then produce an illusion that the state is a single ontological entity. In reality, the boundary between state and society is not so clear: it is the product of multiple competing perspectives, it is not really a unitary rational actor in the ways our models theorise it to be. Ultimately, the most powerful perspective wins (important to note that the most powerful one may not be the most ethical, just, nor optimal).
Conceptualising the state in this way has important implications for how we might understand the process of foreign policy/national security decision-making. It is not the leader alone who is making decisions – they are informed and supported by the bureaucratic and informational networks which comprise the state body, which in turn are affected by a range of other domestic factors.
Last year, President Biden removed any ambiguity in the security pledge for Taiwan, concretising the promise that the United States plans to come to the defence of the island in the case of a Chinese invasion. This decision, rather than being the choice of a single unitary state actor, is in fact the product of much discourse within the structures of the US government: many strategic interactions across a range of actors, departments, and governmental advisory bodies have produced this outcome, in part responding to popular domestic opinion, and in part to the broader machinations of the larger international system. The decision was not that of President Biden alone, nor the US military, nor the US people. It emerged as the product of multiple competing perspectives and was instituted into policy, first and foremost, not out of an altruistic desire to protect Taiwan, but because ultimately it was judged to be favourable to the interests of the United States — but then of course, having laid out for you above the nebulous nature of the thing we call ‘the State’, we would do well to ask ourselves which player within this mess has managed to advance their view as the most alluring.
A very important presumption of traditional International Relations theory is that the international system is anarchical, as opposed to hierarchical. But is this really the case?
In theory, yes- the anarchy of the international system is evident in the lack of a supreme authority that has the power to trump the sovereignty of each and every state. International law lacks ‘teeth’ – it is difficult to enforce punitive measures at this level of justice. There are oversight bodies, such as the United Nations, which can make recommendations, but they cannot really enforce the law in the same way it can be enforced at a domestic level where the unit of analysis is individual people or corporations who can be sent to jail or forced to pay for their crimes in reparations.
When states commit crimes, that which has made the infraction is an abstraction (we are getting now, finally[!], to the Constructivist view). There is no one real person with a mind, body, and soul who alone is totally and wholly liable for the infringement. Of course, in select cases, war crimes can be pinned on individuals in governance: see, for example, the Nuremberg trials, or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The latter was a landmark ruling as sections of THE MEDIA were found to be complicit in genocide, thanks to what they chose to print about it. April 2024 marks thirty years since.
Whilst the Nuremberg Trials and ICTR are instances of justice being served at an international level, I do not believe they are examples of the law being upheld – what we’ve got here are (heinous) crimes committed and punished accordingly. Of course, many perpetrators of the crimes of the Third Reich scrambled, they were never brought to justice. Indeed, a few of them worked alongside Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project which succeeded in producing the first atom bomb.
To uphold international law, to prevent the crimes from happening in the first place, we require either: strong behavioural norms (as the Liberalists posit) which prevent bad behaviour by means of collective action and reciprocity, or: powerful systems of offensive and defensive military capabilities, which can be weaponised to disincentivise infringements of the law on the international dimension (as the realists parrot).
The latter can be used to explain a phenomena known in security studies as the Security Dilemma, which explains that one state’s efforts to attain self-security may inflame the fears of their neighbours — i.e. Pakistan looks at India building a nuclear weapon and think well S*** we’d better get one too! Then India sees Pakistan increasing their armaments and thinks, yeesh, guys, we better build an even BIGGER one – and thus we’ve commenced an Arm’s Race. Whilst the Liberalists may be right – cooperation IS possible – the Realists have got something they’ve not. This is the cold hard fact that in an Arm’s Race triggered by the Security Dilemma, one guy (by which I mean state!) will have a bigger arsenal and better defensive (and by extension, offensive) capabilities than the other guy. So although the international system is anarchic in theory, once we extrapolate it out and embed this theory in context, it turns out that there is, in fact, a clear winner, and a clear loser, of any Arm’s Race, in any Security Dilemma. In practice, this well-known state of international anarchy is, from a practical perspective, ~hierarchical~, as thanks to their superior military capabilities there is one player who is able to dictate the terms of the game.
You might know this as the rules-based international order. You might know the United States to be the present leader of the rules-based international order. And you might also know that this is probably going to change, likely very soon, given that it looks like China will be in control of the future stocks of energy, and that out of every state on this earth, it is Russia who possesses the greatest proportion of abundant fresh water. The importance of these assets is not to be readily dismissed; considerable arsenals and abundant nuclear armaments are honestly of little value when compared to essentials such as energy and water.
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If you haven’t already heard (which would be unlikely, as you are reading this on r/UFOs) there is an officially acknowledged new reality of what is called anomalous phenomena – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs also long known as UFOs) that even the US Government deems a mystery worthy of further scientific investigation. A plethora of official Government reports released under FOI laws, direct witness sightings, photographs, and videos, report anomalous phenomena over sensitive military installations, in particular nuclear weapons and power production sites across the continental USA. In Australia, where I reside, this includes the sensitive military bases such as the Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Station in North West Cape, WA, and the Joint US-Australian Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the NT.
What characterises the mystery behind these phenomena is that they all display what have been become known as the five observables (some say six). The objects display hypersonic speeds, often travelling at tens of thousands of km/h. They show a capacity to do instantaneous manoeuvres, turning at right angles at high speed with no discernible slowing in velocity, or moving from a stationary hover to unimaginable speeds in the blink of an eye. They also show trans-medium capabilities, moving from air to sea or into orbit, and stealth capacities – demonstrating an ability to disappear apparently at will, or become translucent, to appear semi-visible. And, perhaps most important of all, they show no visible means of propulsion known to human science, something that is seemingly a form of ~anti-gravity propulsion~.
At a time when most governments publicly disclaim any interest in UAPs, they are all in fact, secretly quite worried about one extremely concerning aspect of the Phenomena. This is that it has demonstrated the capacity to meddle with some of the most dangerous tools ever created, these being nuclear weapons. There are officially recorded sightings where a UFO/UAP over nuclear weapons facilities has apparently tampered with the nuclear weapons arming systems inside – either disabling them (in one notable US case) or actually bringing a weapon to within an instant of launch (as reportedly happened in the former USSR).
They are, in short, not—and I say this next word with some reluctance, knowing that it is not wholly the right term to use, but is nonetheless the best one we have at this present point in time – ‘HUMAN’.
They appear to be some kind of non-human intelligence.
I note now that the nuclear aspect is not the only commonality between sightings. There are certainly non-nuclear regions which are ‘hotspots’ for UFO activity. But nuclear bases are undoubtedly of great interest to whatever Intelligence is controlling these things.
Another thing that attracts these Inexplicable Wonders are schools, schoolchildren. The Westall Event (6th April 1966 in Melbourne, Victoria) and the Ariel School Incident (16th September 1994 just outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe) are two instances in which all children involved reported the same stories.
Should you choose to believe their testimony, to the children in Zimbabwe, the beings which stepped out of the craft which landed behind their school communicated very clear instructions to them: these were to take care of the Earth, and to take care of each other. Many other Experiencers report that when they are witness to the Phenomenon, the wonder of seeing this indescribable thing is accompanied by something else, too: this is the irrefutable and indefatigable gnosis of what can only be described as pure, endless, eternal, love.
BUT PLEASE, MAKE NO MISTAKE. This is not all that it is! There is no way for us to say with anything close to certainty that all aspects of the Phenomena are loving, that it poses us no danger. There is absolutely a shityourpants terrifying aspect to this Thing, we know this from witnesses who tell stories that are hair-raising, and quite unsavoury, and preferably not to be spoken of here.
And this terrifying aspect, this fact that there are indeed horrors stranger than fiction that people have experienced (or at the very least, have perceived to experience) has been used as an excuse since the beginning of all of this (Roswell 1947) to build up our weaponry and to prepare to fight wars against each other, under the guise of preparing to fight the Phenomena.
All wars are bargaining errors.
All victories are pyrrhic.
In order to do this, politicians, intelligence officials, and religious leaders (among others) have partaken in highly unethical and at times downright evil acts. It is the effort to conceal these acts which has been the main driver of UFO secrecy, because if we talk about these Things (the craft) then surely we’ve got to also come clean about all the horrible things we’ve done to keep it quiet? As Bob Woodward states in his book Veil, there is that which should genuinely be kept secret for the sake of national security, and that which is being repressed under the auspices of national security, when what is really at stake is the revelation to the public of highly inept decision-making and totally unethical behaviour. And the public never really can know the difference for sure.
This is, I believe, part of the reason for the existence of such a strong taboo surrounding even the mere discussion, nay, the mere humouring, of the existence of UFOs, which is absurd considering the literal thousandfold testimonies from members of the US, Australian, Chinese, Russian, you-name-it, Air Forces and Navies who have seen these craft, have experienced their impossible invocations. Not to mention your everyday civilian who spots an orb floating over the horizon as he’s driving home from work, or on his way to collect his kid from soccer practice. He blinks, its gone.
Denying the existence of these craft can only go so far in the way of repressing their manifestation. At present, it really is looking like the effort to repress is causing a near-exponential increase in instances of sightings.
So now we’ve reached maybe the most important part of this whole essay. If you’re still with me, I commend you. Thank you, I love you, I forgive you. We are all in this together.
I’ve stated just now that I am of the belief that downright evil acts have been committed to keep this secret under wraps. Sadly, these acts were committed in vain: the secret is out, or getting there at least – undoubtedly, we are part of the way through its entry into popular consciousness– and this means that the suffering expended upon innocent people at the hands of those trying to repress it was for no. good. reason.
I am of the opinion (and I hope that you understand where I’m coming from) that we’ve learnt enough from the annals of history to realise by now that harshly punishing wrongdoers leads us not to salvation, but instead draws us only closer to the godforsaken dearth of destruction, and indeed, I believe — to the complete and utter annihilation of all that is sacred. What’s at stake here is the very thing that makes life worth living.
So, to move forward, to heal from the foul miscarriages of justice we have all endured, I am of the faith that we must first and foremost seek knowledge, and we must do this with a heavy heart and a steady caution. Consenting to this knowledge is a grand act of courage. I salute you, and I want to remind you that you are under no obligation to do so, if you do not want to. It goes without saying to please respect the wishes of those who do not wish to consent. We cannot all have guts as strong as yours.
And when- if – you do consent– please heed this advice: do not seek retribution, nor vindication, nor vengeance of any kind. Empowered by this knowledge that has been hidden from us for so long, I urge you that you must seek to forgive.
Lest we Forget
submitted by /u/Lyranillista
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