National Sovereignty

"colin s. cavell" wrote:

> in the present US/NATO
> war on Yugoslavia, it is my understanding that the US is "unreasonable" and
> "criminal" in accordance with international law, US national law, and, indeed,
> the NATO Treaty itself (viz. UN Charter, Ch. I, Arts. 2.3, 2.4, Ch. VI, Art.
> 37.1, Ch. VII, Art. 51; the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Pact of Paris, of 1928; the
> relevant Geneva Conventions as well as the jurisprudence elaborated at and the
> precedent set by the Nuremberg Tribunal against war crimes; the US Constitution,
> Article 1, section 8, clause 11; and the April 4, 1949 North Atlantic Treaty,
> Arts. 1, 5, and 6).  Secondly, you state that NATO's "actions are surely defensible
> from a moral point of view," basing your morals on some unspoken principles.  But
> whatever principles your morals are based upon, if any, they are most assuredly
> different from those I adhere to, for, from my vantage point, the US/NATO war on
> Yugoslavia is entirely counter to the basic principles of sovereignty which has
> governed the international system at least since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia
> and which have subsequently been incoded into international law as basic
> principles of the UN Charter.  And, to my knowledge, such principles have yet to
> be transcended through mutual agreement amongst member states; in fact, agreement
> is not being sought through peaceful, nonviolent means in the present case; on
> the contrary, the US juggernaut is attempting to establish its imperialist dictate
> on the basis of force, violence, murder, bombing, violation of law, coercion,
> threats and intimidation.
 
  Colin, I assumed that if you regard an article as worth posting to the
list, you are willing to defend or at least to discuss it. I also don't
understand why you would respond so glibly to such a serious issue. In
any case, I don't think that you addressed the main points I raised.
However, you do make one further point that is worth commenting on. This
is the issue of national sovereignty.

Respect for national sovereignty is most heightened after a war, when
the treaty-making parties must first reach agreement on sovereignty
before they can agree on anything else. However, the principles that are
laid down under such conditions -- that is, under conditions of duress
for the losers, exclusion of non-participants, repression in the various
countries that are represented in the negotiations -- should not be
regarded as having the force of moral authority. You imply, but do not
state outright, that such principles were achieved through mutual
agreement of member states. But some of these so called "member states"
were operating under duress, non-members were excluded, and many of the
member states were themselves repressive regimes that did not, by any
stretch of the imagination, represent their citizens. Given this, it
seems to me that when you base your morality on the principle of
national sovereignty, you have chosen a rather weak moral basis.  

The moral principle upon which my post was based is twofold. First, I
strongly disapprove of A's action in taking away B's traditional
property and human rights. Second I strongly approve actions that
protect the traditional property and human rights. This principle cannot
always be unambiguously applied and the Kosovo conflict presents a
challenge to one who aims to apply it. However, the arguments that were
made in your posting seemed to completely disregard it.

So I agree that the agression of NATO against Serbia violates the
principle of respect for national sovereignty. But I do not regard
respect for national sovereignty as a higher moral principle than the
one stated above. 
-- 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Web pages on Subjectivism, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises,
Austrian Economics, and my University Classes
http://www2.cybercities.com/g/gunning/welcome.htm
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