Knowledge Partner
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist
Image 38: United NaLons General Assembly Hall
insurrec*ons by force if necessary … are commiqng the United States to
endless wars of altruism. And that’s folly.’ Rwandans from genocide in 1994, would you have considered that an
inadmissible interference in Rwanda’s sovereignty?
This sounds rather like the traditional non-aligned objection to any
interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Countries like India,
China and Brazil, which abstained on the Libyan resolution, have long
been profoundly allergic to any attempt by countries to impose their will
on Third World nations by the force of arms. The experience of colonialism
underlies many of these attitudes—nations that have won their freedom
after centuries of subjugation by foreigners supposedly acting out of a
‘civilizing mission’ are understandably none too keen on seeing the same
conduct re-emerge under the garb of humanitarianism, or even R2P. And
yet those in the developing world who would resist such intervention have
no answer to the question—if the world had been prepared to protect the The squeamishness is not only on R2P has suddenly come to
the part of the developing country
life again, though, with the
ideologues. The potential
i n t e r v e n o r s h a v e t h e i r o w n aerial military interven@on
hesitations. In the 1820s, US by NATO forces in Libya.
President John Quincy Adams
declared about America: ‘Wherever the standard of freedom and
independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her
benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of
monsters to destroy. .. she is the champion and vindicator only of her
own.’ Adams’ statement recognized that the principal duty of a
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