#2 No basis in reality. Follow the news of stonings, inhuman acts around the world, and the UN singles out Israel. The UN has become a satire of itself.
#4 It's a question of preponderance...the main stream is left wing.
#5 Also doesn't follow. Here in the, a federal republic, there are states that state outright that they will not follow the directions and laws of the federal government. Does not indicate that the states actually have sovereignty that they were promised. See ObamaCare.
#6 Glad you bring up R2P. It combines several aspects we have been discussing.
1. You may find a well intentioned idea, and claim that my view is a worst case senario. And it may be not a bad idea .unless the unforeseen consequences are actually a well-laid trap.
2. The Doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, (RtoP) was accepted by the 2005World Summit, and the 2006 Security Council of the UN. The basic ideas are:
a. A State has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing (mass atrocities).
b. The international community has a responsibility to assist peacefully.
c. The international community has the responsibility to intervene at first diplomatically, then more coercively, and as a last resort, with military force.
3. Picture Bosnia, or Rwanda or Libya .what could be bad?
4. Well, what if the real intentions behind the RtoP was to allow certain forces a moral right to interfere in the National Sovereignty of a nation they didnt care for. Say oh, I dont know .the United States? Or Israel?
5. Advocates of RtoP claim that only occasions where the international community will intervene on a State without its consent is when the state is either allowing mass atrocities to occur, or is committing them, in which case the State is no longer upholding its responsibilities as a sovereign.
6. Now, lets say that the UN decides to declare Palestine to be a state What a coincidence! That was the news recently!
a. And, what if Gaza terrorists have pummeled Israel with over 120 rockets in the past few days, and now the Arab League is calling for the UN to establish a no-fly zone to shield Gaza
b. Wouldnt it be strange if Arab League Chief Amr Mussa had helped write the RtoP???? He did.
c. And look who else helped out: Dr. Hanan Ashrawi -- former Cabinet Minister of the Palestinian National Authority. Ibid.
7. Philanthropist billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the global organization that promotes the military doctrine used by the Obama administration to justify the recent airstrikes targeting the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Also, the Soros-funded global group that promotes Responsibility to Protect is closely tied to Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.
Power has been a champion of the doctrine and is, herself, deeply tied to the doctrine's founder. According to reports, Power was instrumental in convincing Obama to act against Libya.
The Responsibility to Protect doctrine has been described by its founders and proponents, including Soros, as promoting global governance while allowing the international community to penetrate a nation state's borders under certain conditions. the direction that the Left is taking us. And this is why we should be having this kind of discussion!
Hopefully there will be a right-thinking pol who will bring America back from the precipice.
If you want to jump into discussion about R2P, then we can. I see no point in rebutting your other points, as there isn't much for me to say that isn't one of those philosophical differences.
1) I agree that there may be unforeseen circumstances, and Libya is a good case. However, the failure that is the Libyan operation at the moment stems more from a lack of architecture, rather than a failure of R2P. Naturally, my argument is hampered by the fact that R2P is not perfect. Again though, R2P as theory and R2P as reality serve to show that sovereignty is rooted in states.
2) You articulate the purpose of R2P in general. However, R2P breaks down into three subsections.
a) Responsibility to Prevent
- identify root cause of conflict
- address those in constructive ways in cooperation with national government
b) Responsibility to React
- after just cause threshold, right authority, and precautionary principles have been met, intervention should operate according to operational principles.
- I will add that the operational principles are fairly weak, from my blog:
- Additionally, that R2P lacks normative standards for the scope of intervention and a delineation of alternative methods of intervention, doesn't mean that R2P is a complete failure. As the case was with Bosnia and Rwanda, the international community learns from experience.The principles articulated are concerned with the operation of the machinery, and not so much with the scope in which that machinery can be used. In effect, the report defines when the use of machinery is acceptable, how to use that machinery, but fails to specify where the machinery may be used. It is a crude analogy but one that illustrates the point: the principles fail to identify operational scope.
c) Responsibility to Rebuild
- This is the most problematic part of R2P as far as I am concerned. Such normative directions ignore the political and economic reality of rebuilding.
The Responsibility to Protect architecture defines sovereignty as a responsibility of sovereign power that is granted on the basis of protecting its citizens from war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
Regarding point 3, you're right in that R2P has operational failures. We saw it in the case of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Libya. In each case, the international community has had different reactions. Arguably, the reaction to Georgia in 2008 was a repudiation of your point #4. Russia invoked R2P to interfere in Georgian national sovereignty and was rebuked for it.
Suffice to say, I do not see it as some conspiracy to control states, nor do I see it as a tool for promoting global governance. I see R2P as a product of the beginnings of global governance, but it is clear (as the case of Georgia illustrates) that R2P, while flawed in some ways, is not some sort of monolithic colonial tool in which some consolidated global left is trying to take over the world. I believe your premise is faulty, but it is your prerogative to believe in what you want. However, this is one of those differences that discussion will only inflame, and it's not worth pursuing.
I believe that global governance is a good thing, as it will help us address collective action problems like climate, regulation of space, and the coming global challenges like population and food. Again, here we have a fundamental philosophical difference that I don't think is possible to resolve.
It was nice tousling though, I hope it was at least somewhat informative.