When Rights Are Retracted

Sovereignty was "born" in the wake of a long and devastating war that shattered Europe between 1618 and 1648. Definite borders were regarded, with the Peace of Westphalia, as instrumental to avoiding future wars. The principle of sovereignty also undergirded the United Nations Charter just before the end of World War II. The Charter, in addition, declared that nations large and small had equal rights in the newly created organization, and established the expectation that all nations would cooperate to avoid future wars. 

The principle of sovereignty was not enough to avoid all wars in the post-1945 order, and we know that the United Nations was able to be created only on condition that the winners of the Second World War would retain veto power in the Security Council, the equivalent of its executive body. And yet, the system has survived and sovereignty has remained the guiding norm of the international system. As an essentially conservative norm, based on stability, it was in the interest of the most powerful actors to uphold it.

We are now witnessing the violation of this norm in different — but equally brazen — ways by two of those powerful actors, holders of veto power in the Security Council, and major stakeholders in the post-World War II order until now. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, bringing war to that country. More recently, the United States has demanded that Ukraine make concessions of its sovereignty over coveted natural resources, its rare-earth metals, in exchange for US support in countering the Russian invasion and upholding Ukrainian sovereignty. 

Is this the twilight of the norm of sovereignty as an institution that for the last few centuries — ever imperfectly — has helped to protect peoples, lands and resources? Is this the end of the international system as the grounds not only of war, but also of cooperation and respect for the territorial rights of its members?

Even scholars and practitioners of realism — who questioned that there could be coordination or cooperation at the international level, any bite to international law or any effectiveness of international institutions — had limited themselves to expressing criticism and skepticism about these norms and institutions, without really setting out to dismantle them. Henry Kissinger, the most famous realist in power over the last few decades, still paid lip service to at least certain norms, as his model — Niccolò Machiavelli — had recommended. George W. Bush still found it necessary to appeal to the United Nations to justify his foreign policy actions.

Norms in the international world, as in any setting, serve to establish expectations about the behavior of actors in the system. But more than in other settings, norms in the international world are crucial because this is an environment where we cannot rely on any overarching power to adjudicate disputes and enforce rules.

Today, international norms are under an existential threat. The effort of countless human beings and institutions to subdue might by right is in jeopardy. Over the last 80 years, some believed in the international institutions they were building, others cynically used them to further their goals, but even their lip service served to reinforce the prestige and standing of those institutions. Without reverence for the norm that nations large and small enjoy the same rights in our world, the sovereignty of all states is in danger. If norms and the language of rights do not stand in the path of power, even just nominally, then we are all at its mercy.

Rather than throwing our hands in the air, the current situation reveals to us that norms and principles are only as strong as the people willing to embrace them and uphold them. In the darkest days of the Cold War, under the tangible threat of mutual destruction, committed individuals worked to strengthen or build organizations that could make war less likely, or to draft human rights documents at a time of segregation and oppression. Individuals of good will have been working for decades, and are working even today, to bring justice and peace to the Middle East. 

In the face of war, shamelessness and prevarication, as students, scholars and citizens who care about cooperation, justice and equal rights, we must continue to uphold norms and principles, lest they fade out of consideration altogether. 

Justice is fragile. In Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus makes a mockery of it, in ways not dissimilar to the way in which justice is mocked today by the most powerful men of our time. In Thucydides’ account, in response to the Melians’ plea to do what is right, the Athenian envoys to Melos asserted that questions of right only pertain to equals in power, while “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” For more than 2,000 years many have tried to build institutions to defend justice and contain power. The task now is for us to continue.