13 October 2003
Intervention Referendums
Michael Ignatieff boldly outlined five cases for international intervention in the affairs of sovereign states in his article that was published in the September 7, 2003 New York Times Magazine. However, the United Nations may be at a dead end created by the doctrine of state sovereignty. The true sovereign in the modern world is the individual, and democratic rule is the principle that the U.S. and other like-minded nations have adopted as their ultimate goal. As the Wall Street Journal phrased it on 13 October, the UN Secretary General still leads a “collection of despots.”
Democratic states, led by the U.S. and its NATO allies, should replace the worn-out U.N. structure with a new international security organization that would be authorized to intervene on humanitarian grounds in the affairs of any state, member or not. It would allow each member state to veto collective intervention in its affairs on condition that a majority of its residents objected in a national referendum. This device might answer the fears of American unilateralists. And it will put even the most benevolent of autocrats on notice that the international system has changed.
Michael Ignatieff boldly outlined five cases for international intervention in the affairs of sovereign states in his article that was published in the September 7, 2003 New York Times Magazine. However, the United Nations may be at a dead end created by the doctrine of state sovereignty. The true sovereign in the modern world is the individual, and democratic rule is the principle that the U.S. and other like-minded nations have adopted as their ultimate goal. As the Wall Street Journal phrased it on 13 October, the UN Secretary General still leads a “collection of despots.”
Democratic states, led by the U.S. and its NATO allies, should replace the worn-out U.N. structure with a new international security organization that would be authorized to intervene on humanitarian grounds in the affairs of any state, member or not. It would allow each member state to veto collective intervention in its affairs on condition that a majority of its residents objected in a national referendum. This device might answer the fears of American unilateralists. And it will put even the most benevolent of autocrats on notice that the international system has changed.
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