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Windows
of Freedom:
Sovereignty after Iraq and the New World Order
Jan Mortier
The recent American and British led
intervention in Iraq has challenged the principles of state
sovereignty and non intervention in ways that are testing
the robustness of the international order to its limit. Questions
abound about the wars legality and legitimacy yet the crucial
issue that has arisen out of this intervention is: What does
sovereignty now represent in the 21st century, and what are
the prospects for world order?
The removal of the illegitimate government
of Iraq by military force was undertaken by legitimate democratic
states to enforce Security Council Resolutions. Iraq’s
sovereignty was, suspended and this act has shown the inadequacy
of the current order and the need for the creation of a new
one. This act was a challenge to the UN charter’s non
intervention principles, yet arguably could be defended as
an action in defence of the humanitarian purposes and principles
of the United Nations and the collective will to uphold the
values of the New World Civilisation. This suspension of Iraqi
sovereignty was more than classical conflict it was the most
recent action of legitimate democratic states in a series
of interventions that are remaking the concept of sovereignty
by highlighting the illegitimacy of the undemocratic abusive
states.
Sovereignty was originally envisaged as a
concept to determine authority within territorial state boundaries
while preventing the interference of states within each others
realms and to protect state emissaries. As a right to authority
it has always necessitated legitimating processes, such as
monarchical solidarity, religious conformity and peer recognition.
However a succession of renaissances in the concept of citizenship,
and legitimate authority and most recently the right to self
determination, and democracy shifted the basis of the foundation
of the sovereignty principle toward the citizen. While international
law still recognizes the Seventeenth Century Westphalian principle
of sovereignty of the current member states, it does not yet
adequately incorporate the San Franciscan principles of the
individual’s human rights originally proposed at the
inauguration of the United Nations.
Today, sovereignty is undergoing a re-qualification
that derives its authority from the two pillars of legitimacy
in the international system - democracy and the protection
of fundamental human rights. Democratic states derive their
legitimate authority from the consent of their sovereign citizens.
The individual citizen invests their personal sovereignty
in their state and entrusts it with the authority to govern
on the understanding that the state will act as a guardian
of the citizen’s rights and the guarantor of domestic
security. In the Twenty First Century sovereignty has become
a ‘responsibility to protect’ rather
than a right to rule with impunity. (ICIIS, 2001)
If a
state's legitimacy is based on the protection of its citizen’s
fundamental human rights and its authority is derived from
the guardianship and the responsibility principle, then it
follows that a state that flouts these principles by ceasing
to maintain a peaceful ordered society that protects its citizens
cannot claim an absolute right to sovereignty in this instance.
Furthermore, undemocratic states that systematically abuse
fundamental and basic human rights in a manner that ‘shocks
the conscience of mankind’, open themselves up to the
military intervention of democratic states in the name of
protecting the fundamental human rights of the sovereign citizens
who are the ethical foundation of the new world civilisation.
The
New World Disorder
The case
of the Iraqi regime change poses a significant challenge to
the sovereignty principle. Here was a state that could be
described by Geoffrey Robertson QC as an ‘outlaw’
and ‘criminal’ state. (Robertson, 2002) The Baath
party regime of Mr Hussein and his cohort was an illegitimate
unelected junta that came to power through force. It held
onto power by the most brutal use of force against its own
population. It had ‘outlaw status’ through the
numerous condemnations of the majority of states in the international
community, the UN Security Council and numerous human rights
organisations. Accordingly it was subject to varying degrees
of sanction and ostracization. The weakening or removal of
an illegitimate regime such as this that perpetrates these
gross abuses is the logical conclusion of the new international
ethic based on a humanitarian universalism. This is not so
much a question about whom in the new world civilisation has
the right of intervention but rather who now can claim a right
to absolute sovereignty and non interference?
The Second
Gulf War should be understood in terms the end of the Westphalian
order. The Westphalian order ended during the period that
began with September 11th 2001 and ended on May 1st 2003 with
the Second Gulf War. This order most visibly began its demise
with the 1999 humanitarian intervention in Kosovo where Seventeenth
Century sovereignty clashed with the Twentieth Century popular
rights based sovereignty and the emergent Twenty First Century
new world civilisation. Currently we are experiencing the
post Westphalian paradigm of world disorder. This
era is an era of unpredictable flux and stable crises that
are beyond the management of states and the current system
of order. This era is at a point of instability furthest from
its known equilibrium which poses the greatest danger while
simultaneously providing a window of opportunity for the greatest
change. This window of freedom, if grasped collectively and
resolutely by the international community could usher in a
new era of peace, prosperity and order that can manage and
resolve this transnational state of disorder that has had
such a high human cost. Disorder, at the state level, intrastate
level and supra state level must be resolved if we are to
avert an irrevocable state of world disorder and insecurity.
Windows
of Civilisation
We are
living in a new paradigm of post-modern states characterized
as; “states which have decided never to fight each
other again and which value the rights of peoples above states”
(Skidelsky, 03). There is a collective effort of the post
modern world to solidify this the new world civilisation and
it has the support for implementation in the pre modern world
from states such as Afghanistan (Ahady, 03). Afghanistan,
once a state furthest from the light of civilisation with
its people having suffered for an age, now place their hope
and societal development in the new order and keenly legislate
for the pluralistic principles of the new world civilisation.
This world civilisation has no centre, and no imperial character,
it is an organic extension of universal principles long enjoyed
in the post-modern world and now demanded by the citizens
in the pre modern world. It is an imperium of human rights
and good governance, a universal standard of decency and culture
that is supported but not controlled by the post modern world
and has its voice in civil society rather than classical state
structures.
The new
world civilisation is perhaps the culmination of the desire
of mankind in its march of freedom to universally yearn for
peace, prosperity and happiness. This is the natural state
of mankind not anarchy or disorder which has only ever been
the result tyranny. Freedom as a natural state of being can
only be ensured by democracy and the rule of law.
The new
world civilisation is based on the emergent realisation of
a universal culture characterized by the respect for life,
the dignity and integrity of individuals and their communities,
the respect for the rule of law, the pursuit of pluralism,
tolerance and participatory governance through democracy along
with the abhorrence of outdated systems of governance that
usurp these fundamental principles. Principles that are derived
from the will of individuals - in all societies - to have
their individual corporeal sovereignty respected by all authority,
and their refusal to believe in the inevitability of anarchy
and disorder. Global civil society representation has been
a most recent development in this field and many governments
have acknowledged this new world culture by renouncing war,
weapons of mass destruction and tyranny. These governments
ostracize regimes which flout universally acknowledged principles
of good governance and at times collectively remove by force
regimes which abuse these principles to a level of barbarity
that shocks the moral conscience of mankind.
In the
years of the Cold War and early periods of globalisation large
scale human rights abuses would go on either unnoticed or
ignored by those with the power to prevent or alleviate. Nowadays
in the age of instantaneous information exchange and a truly
globalised international system, a citizen in a state across
the world can learn of the plight of other citizens in distant
states and pressure their own governments to act. We live
in a world where thousands of people’s fundamental human
rights are systematically abused by their own illegitimate
governments. And where there are forty three undemocratic
governments ruling a third of the world’s population,
the same third which is the poorest, the most conflict prone
and with the least guarantees of personal security and basic
human rights. We must ask ourselves: Is this really the type
of world we want to live in the Twenty First Century?
Democratic
society is based on the principle of the sovereign individual
who has the right to choice within society - the right to
choose their government and the right to choose how they participate
in the free market. This empowerment of the sovereign individual
creates stability, growth and sustainable peace and should
be emulated at all societal and international levels.
There
is no clash of civilisations, but there are some cleavages
that are often inflamed by discourse and events. Yet, what
unites us, in the new world civilisation is far stronger than
what divides us. Civilisations are not divided, but systems
of governance are. The current world order is divided between
states that are; democratic, inclined to protect the fundamental
human rights of their citizens by working toward the new world
civilisation, and those undemocratic states who govern a third
of the worlds population yet deny their citizens their most
basic fundamental rights and freedoms. These states react
adversely and sometimes violently as their people demand participation
in the world civilisation. Their existence is a threat to
the current order and they risk destabilizing the development
of the new order. The question is how to go about ensuring
that the pre-modern states become part of the new world civilisation
and the post-modern state becomes the accepted norm, so that
tyranny disappears into the realm of history?
Windows of Sovereignty
To answer
the question of sovereignty and address the state of world
disorder we must re-conceptualize our outdated conceptions.
In the Twenty First Century there are three dimensions of
sovereignty through which we can view the world and begin
to understand the emergence of a new universal civilisation.
The first
is the current outdated notion of state sovereignty, particularly
its legal definition. It remains rigidly bound to its Westphalian
roots, yet has been affected by the two other dimensions and
is itself undergoing a metamorphosis, philosophically and
legally as events and perceptions unfold.
The second
dimension of sovereignty is the sovereignty of the individual,
it is a new interpretation based on the old tradition of human
rights philosophy, and the enlightened evolution of law to
legislate progressively for the protection of the individuals
fundamental basic rights. Once we understand that sovereignty
is vested within the individual and moreover can only derive
from the consent of the individual, then all higher authorities
from the community to the state and beyond can claim legitimacy
only if they do not violate the individual’s sovereignty
and act solely in the best interest of protecting and ensuring
the sovereignty of the individual. The second dimension is
a looking glass of analysis and a benchmark for calling to
account powers that claim authority based the first dimension.
Regrettably the most obvious way to conceptualize individual
sovereignty is when it through the dignity of the person is
being denied. Oppression, violence, torture, imprisonment
and ultimately death are the most obvious forms of infringement
of individual sovereignty.
The third
dimension of sovereignty is a realm still in genesis. It is
the international sovereignty (Curtis, 1918) and is characterized
by those supranational problems and solutions that affect
the two lower dimensions of sovereignty. These problems are
issues of disorder that are so vast that they can affect the
state and the individual adversely and cannot be addressed
by the first two dimensions. These issues are the issues of
the global commons. They are; the environment, armed conflict,
water, energy, health, terrorism, tyranny, poverty, security,
human rights, trade and development. The issues of the global
commons are issues which neither the individual nor the state
can address in isolation. By their nature only multilateral
efforts and a ‘pooling of sovereignty’ can solve
them. (Toynbee, 1939) The first two dimensions thus need the
manifestation of the higher third dimension to address these
issues. Supranational problems of disorder require supranational
solutions. Supranational frameworks of the third dimension
can only be workable if they are multilateral and based on
the guiding principles of the two lower dimensions of sovereignty.
Sovereign responsibility should extend to all levels in each
dimension; the individual, national and supranational.
An
Arc of Peace
Boutros
Boutros Gali once envisaged an ‘Arc of Peace’
such an Arc of sovereign responsibility needs to be created
in the international system. An Arc that will form a core
society within the international community of states. This
Arc of Peace should take the form of all liberal democratic
states whatever their geographic location entering into a
functional alliance. The first stage of which should be the
adoption of a ‘Treaty of Sovereign Responsibility’
that codifies what the contemporary right to democratic sovereignty
should entail. This Arc of Peace is already in genesis and
could build on the lattice of multilateral international institutions
already linking these states together. The aim would be to
create an alliance of democratic states that have the protection
of fundamental human rights as core values and a common interest
in seeing these values endure throughout the 21st century
and beyond.
This Community
of Democracies (Huntley, 2001) would be united in the idea
that authority and sovereignty are derived from the legitimating
consent of their citizens. Such an alliance would be a bulwark
against the spread of oppressive regimes and insecurity. It
would provide a protective shield and stability for the delicate
process of emerging democracy in newly independent states.
This alliance of states would span the diverse regions of
the globe and would be integral to the spread of peace, human
rights protection, liberal democracy, and free trade. Current
multilateral and bilateral arrangements would not be weakened,
they would continue as before. This system would allow for
the dispersal of costs for the maintenance of international
peace and security, which seem now to fall to the United States
of America, which is unfairly expected to be the policeman
of the international community and at the same time condemned
when it acts in this role where the United Nations has failed.
Such an alliance could even provide the much needed impetus
for significant UN reform, which still remains the best hope
for the international community.
Codifying
a Treaty of Sovereign Responsibility would articulate the
current requalification of sovereignty and its basis in legitimate
authority once and for all. This would realistically protect
the fundamental human rights of citizens, and states would
have clear boundaries and guidelines with respect to intervention
and the limitations of sovereignty in a new international
social contract.
The challenge
is to determine what should constitute the unifying principals
of such a Treaty, what the minimum standards of international
human rights protection should be and to come to a common
agreement that the principle of sovereignty should now mean
a responsibility to protect rather than a right to rule with
impunity.
If we
are ever to escape the seemingly perpetual cycle of violence
and catastrophe that is the human condition in a state of
world disorder and realistically achieve our natural state
of freedom, we have to rethink our outdated assumptions on
the relationship between the state, the individual and international
structures of management. To do this we must complete the
re-qualification of sovereignty and create a new international
order.
We may
well be at an ominous point of international disorder, yet
this also may be our greatest window of opportunity to improve
the global condition. If the international community can resolutely
address this state of world disorder and use this as a window
of opportunity to forge a new international social contract
and a ‘structure for global peace’ (Powell,
2004) the new world civilisation may well be our Twenty First
Century window of freedom.
Notes:
The International
Commission on State Sovereignty and Intervention. (2001) The
Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: IDRC
Robertson, G. (2001, 2nd ed.) Crimes Against Humanity,
London: Penguin Books
Lord Skidelsky, (2003) The New World Disorder, the
World Political Forum
Ahady, A. (2003) The New World Civilization, The
World Political Forum
Curtis, L. (1918) Windows of Freedom, London: The
Round Table
Toynbee, A. (1939) First Thoughts on a Peace Settlement,
The World Order Papers, Chatham House
Huntley, J. (2001, 2nd ed.) Pax Democratia: A Strategy
for the 21st Century’, London: Palgrave
Powell, C. (Jan 6th, 2004) Why America Takes the Path
of Enlightened Self Interest, London: The Times
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