I was watching TV today when it struck me that the world order was all wrong. I quickly wrote an elegant proof for it and here it is.
The progressive blogosphere in the USA handles debates such as torture, or the Iraq war or terrorism with a very internal focus - more simply as a debate with the right wing in the USA.
In that process they have missed the forest for the trees (or the trees for the forest - I forgot what that even means).
There are much larger issues at stake - 9/11 and Bush's attack on Iraq should have brought a focus on systemic issues in the international order. The United States' informed citizenry ideally should have taken a leadership role in defining these issues and trying to correct them.
Instead we have confined ourselves to debating why torture does not work or the individual prosecutions for torture.
Let me list some of these issues below:
Territorial Sovereignty vs Rights of Self-Determination
Issues of self-determination have never been settled across most of the world. Last year we saw the Sri Lankan Army wipe out their arch foes, the LTTE. In that process many Tamil lost their lives. The LTTE was, by all accounts, a brutal terrorist organization. But its origins were in thoughtless discrimination and suppression by the majority Sinhalese.
In India, an insurgency has been going on in Kashmir for twenty years now.
In Iraq, Iran and Turkey the Kurdish minority wants to form a single nation. Yet I don't blame these countries for trying to maintain territorial sovereignty.
The problem of maintaining territorial sovereignty vs the needs for self-determination have never been worked INTO the current international law.
This is not surprising because, international law, the current world order is structured around making life easy for the developed countries.
For example, the USA or Britain or Australia are unlikely to have to deal with a domestic secessionist movement of any power for a long time.
Remember the USA faced secession during the Civil War. You did not sit around discussing self-determination. You went to war.
Since there is no framework for determining who is right or who is wrong we see either nations going beserk over "nipping" the secession fever in the bud; thus alienating populations. Or a manufactured insurgency in some cases - in which a small group can effectively get the agenda rolling, sometimes with the help of other "interested" nations (as was the case in the Indian state of Punjab).
Human Rights vs Sovereignty
One of the justifications of the Afghan war has been the treatment of women by the Taliban. It seems that country's human rights status can be used to violate its sovereignty or justify an occupation (in spite of protests by the Afghan women representatives themselves). This sets a dangerous precedent.
Again, anyone who has knowledge of colonialism will see that pretexts of the opponents barbarism has always been part of propaganda by the colonizer. The British in India, for example, called the Indian National Congress unrepresentative because it was mostly upper caste. This was true but Britain herself was not representative at that point (women could not vote).
American (and other Western) societies seem to have convinced themself that they have reached the pinnacle of social and political development. They have this conviction even though, with every generation their own societies conception of rights has become more and more inclusive. This would suggest that there is an evolution here, not stasis at a peak.
If the last decade has shown anything to us, it is the IMPERFECTION of western societies. They are easily manipualted by talking points and do not deserve the power that has been given to them (as arbiters of the world's destiny). This is not surprising - NOBODY deserves such power - yet even now that realization does not seem to have set in.
I was appalled by the verbal attacks on the Iranian President at Colombia University. He was called a tyrant (even though he was elected). His statement saying "We don't have gays in Iran" was widely mocked - even though there is a substantial DOMESTIC group in the USA itself which believes that homosexuality is a sin. Britain was punishing homosexuals till the 1960s atleast.
There is a very real problem the world community faces - the balance between nature-given rights for all humans declared by the UN Charter and the different stages of development societies are in, around the world.
For, isn't that a truth we are denying? Every society is facing its own internal struggles (as does American society). Is there a solution to guarantee the same level of rights around world without infringing on territorial sovereignty? How can we work together to alleviate so much misery because of the lack of rights?
Preventing Aggressive wars
The international community has been rendered toothless by the US offense on Iraq. A country that had missiles which could only reach a 100 miles was attacked by a country that could annihilate the planet many times over. The US claimed it to be a defensive war. And its own citizens seemed to believe it.
7 years later there has been no consequences (other than for the Iraqi people).
This means that all the international law and Security Council and all that, is not helping.
Non-state actors vs States
Nobody has yet ironed out what the rights of non-state actors are. Their legitimacy has been denied by states. Yet it is obvious they can't be ignored.
This links to the larger question of struggle against occupation. In some cases these struggles manage legitimacy (as in Nelson Mandela). In many cases the struggle devolves into violence and goes into a vicious circle (as in Chechnya). Nobody has yet figured out how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate fights (hence the classification of the Hezbollah as terrorists by some and as freedom fighters by others).
This festering issus, unresolved by any law, links to the question of terrorism. Non-state actors have pointed at state-sponsored brutality and collective punishment (such as the Israeli bombing of Gaza) and thus a new term has been introduced - State-terrorism.
In reality, there are very few terrorist organizations that have ambitions beyond influencing events in their locality. Everyone points to Al-Qaeda now, but AlQaeda-like global terrorist networks are rare. Most (like Hamas, Hezbollah or the LRA) confine themselves to a single issue, generally linked to local grievances. The suicide bombing, for example, primarily rises in response to occupation by a State.
The USA and developed countries are not addressing the above issues because the status quo favors them. They do not face secessionist struggles at present and they have reached a level of rights that keeps their own citizens happy. They have controlling votes in te UNSC. Why would they address these?
I think we need more voices talking about the big issues and suggesting solutions or at least highlighting these fundamental disparities in the MSM as well as progressive media.
Or, if someone can type up the solution in the comments, we are done.