National sovereignty facing serious threat

May 7, 2014UKRAINE, Donetsk : Armed pro-Russian militiants march to take position in eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on May 6, 2014, the day after heavy fightings between pro-Russian militiants and Ukranian troops killed at least 34 people near the eastern Ukranian city of Slavyansk. The death toll from a military offensive in a flashpoint town in east Ukraine rose to at least 34, officials said today, amid fresh warnings of civil

war and the shutdown of a major airport in the region. AFP

While economic and strategic interests have compelled the West to engage in its military (mis)adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, it is mainly security considerations which are inducing Russia to take particular cognizance of developments in regions constituting Eastern Europe, which was formerly its veritable protective barrier against Western Europe.

As far as the big powers are concerned, national sovereignty seems to be an easily disposable concept in International Relations. The world was witness to how this cardinal concept in the ‘comity of nations’ was blatantly violated in the Balkans and South West Asia and it is being treated to the same disturbing spectacle now in the Crimea and evidently in the Ukraine too.

The UN-sanctioned principle of the Right to Protect (R2P) needs to be seen as valid in consideration of the fact that all member states of the ‘UN Family’ are obliged to protect their citizenries from harm and in the event of their proving incapable or unwilling to do so, the ‘international community’ may have to take upon itself this crucial responsibility. However, there is no denying that R2P could be abused by the powerful states of the international system. The horrors of the Rwandan civil war of the

early nineties, proved beyond doubt that the world could not stand idly by when communities of a country butchered each other with impunity.

It was this trauma of Rwanda and inhuman ‘ethnic cleansing’ in some parts of the Balkans around the same time that essentially set the UN thinking of the need for R2P, but it is not entirely the ‘Right to Protect’ that led to the US military involvement in Serbia in 1999 and later Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. Ironically, it was the national interests of the US and the West, narrowly conceived and violently implemented, that led to the crises situations in the countries just mentioned. Moreover, it is the UN which is obliged to practice R2P. Countries and groupings of states cannot take on themselves this responsibility which is a prerogative of the UN system.

In the case of Kosovo, the US-led NATO needed to demonstrate that in the post Cold War world, it and it alone, was the principal military grouping and that its will and might needed to prevail the world over. The world was being alerted to this fact in the Kosovan crisis and was also being simultaneously reminded that the path was being further paved for the prevalence of Western economic interests internationally.

These and many more aspects of US and Western hegemony have been receiving the attention of commentators of Western capitalism over the last couple of decades but they would now have to factor in to their configurations of international developments the dramatic changes in Russia’s relations with some of its former ‘satellites’ in its veritable backyard.

While economic and strategic interests have compelled the West to engage in its military (mis)adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, it is mainly security considerations which are inducing Russia to take particular cognizance of developments in regions constituting Eastern Europe, which was formerly its veritable protective barrier against Western Europe.

In all such developments, national sovereignty seems to be counting for nothing for the big powers. The strictures on this score which could be directed at the West, in respect, for instance, of Iraq and Afghanistan, could be directed at Russia too with regard to the Ukraine.

In a sense, considering the foregoing, it could be said that the tasks before the UN have not changed much from the early years of its existence. Establishing the sovereign equality of UN member countries and the inviolability of their geographical and physical integrity was a principal challenge of the UN in the forties and fifties and it is remaining so to this day. Considering these facts, it could be said that a principal aim of the international community has remained stillborn. To be sure, colonialism, in the usual sense of the term, is no more, but could it be said that we have seen the last of ‘The Age of Empires’?

Oil and the need to do ‘business’ took the West into Iraq, while the need to maintain a strong military presence in South West Asia and the Gulf region took it into Afghanistan. The increasing economic significance of the Asia-Pacific is compelling the US, meanwhile, to strengthen its defence and military ties with the states of this region. This is basically what US President Barack Obama is about, in his current tour of Asia. Barring many of the former communist states of East Asia, the US has been having defence ties with the majority of East

and South-East Asian states. Therefore, ‘Empire-building’, in a vital sense, continues.

The world, from the viewpoint of the main capitalist powers, is one vast market, which is waiting to be exploited and, as some students of capitalism remind us, capitalism takes numerous guises and forms in current times, including, ‘Casino Capitalism’ and ‘McWorld’. Therefore, for the US and other powers sharing its economic interests, ‘niceties’ in International Law, such as the concept of national sovereignty, may need to be disregarded in the scramble to build economic empires, where capitalism could have a free run.

Against this somewhat worrying backdrop, the UN would need to work consistently and untiringly towards fostering and consolidating the core values of the system it has with some success maintained over the decades. Apparently, UN reform may need to be persisted with. The UN Security Council may need to be restructured to reflect the current world power balance which is tilting towards the global South. Countries, such as, India, Brazil and South Africa need to be members of the UNSC to better reflect the power realities of the times.

Such rearrangements would enable a check to be imposed on the disproportionate control being exercised by the West in UN structures. After all, the West is no more the power it was. This could result in the sovereignty of the more powerless states of the world being protected.