Why do we grant legitimacy to governments that are not elected by their people? And why do we permit such non-democratic regimes to participate in democratic international governmental organizations?
Hawkmoon, these are most excellent questions. And I will tease out pieces of the UN charter to focus my message for this post: “To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war [and] that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”
For me, this is why we allow non-democratic regimes to participate in the UN.
Q: Is there a yardstick for democracy? A: I know one when I see it.
We often read that our democracy has not gone to war against another democracy, but I’ve always wondered about what commonly-accepted yardstick was used to determine those countries with which we have fought - and were not democracies. In world history, countries have operated much like gangs in their narrow interests and their style of warfare. There was no jury to hear arguments or a “higher” council to render decisions, so each assault was replied to ‘in kind’ until one or more of the combatants were eliminated. This is the “scourge of war” that we hoped to avoid when the UN was created. We can see the scourge of gangland war still.
I mightily applaud your use of UNSCR 1441 to defend your position(s), and as an aside, I was confused (AT THE TIME) by the UN reports from Hans Blix regarding the state of Iraq’s WMD programs and stockpiles. Resolution 1441 represents the continuing defiance of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to previous UN resolutions. Inherently, this resolution represents the will of the UN - including its non-democratically elected members. This would be the crux of my point.
To continue the aside: during the run up to the war, I thought that the WH believed that there might be a spy or someone sympathetic to Iraq within Blix’s team who might inform the Iraqis of where the next search would begin. Maybe that was leaked into the media. I thought that this was why there was tension between these two groups. I see things differently now.
Finally, I said earlier that the UN could act as a jury. Within the UN, a small country like Kuwait could ‘file charges’ against an aggressor like Iraq, and force the Iraqi ambassador to face his accuser in some type of court, hoping that the “common interest” of nations might offer some form of redress. This is why we might surrender a small part our sovereignty – for some world justice(?)
I wish you well. |
