The revolt against the West: intervention and sovereignty

Abstract

Debates on intervention and sovereignty since 1945 can be summarised as a tale of two cities, San Francisco and Bandung, and of two countries, Rwanda and Libya. All are symbolic of different phases of these debates. The UN was born in San Francisco in 1945 with very little substantive participation by Asian and African governments. The great powers established a system in which they would determine when, where and how military interventions could take place. The 1955 Bandung Conference saw Asian and African countries seek to use new norms of intervention to regain their sovereignty. The 1994 Rwandan genocide, however, forced African countries to dilute notions of absolute sovereignty to allow military interventions for human protection purposes. The 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya did potentially irreparable damage to future UN-mandated interventions and was widely seen in the Global South as an abuse of the responsibility to protect (R2P).

Keywords:

• United Nations
• sovereignty
• intervention
• decolonisation
• nonalignment
• Global South
• the West
• R2P

Notes

1. Mazrui, “Introduction,” 21.

2. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, 203.

3. Bull, “The Revolt against the West,” 217.

4. United Nations, The United Nations Charter.

5. Steinberg, “Reforming the Notion of Sovereignty,” 68–75; and Davis, “Non-Western Anxieties.”

6. Claude, Swords into Plowshares, 66.

7. Russell, A History of the United Nations Charter, 551–572.

8. Ampiah, The Political and Moral Imperatives; and Tan and Acharya, Bandung Revisited.

9. Brecher, India and World Politics.

10. Gupta and Chatterjee, “Indian Foreign Policy,” 100–106.

11. Adebajo, The Curse of Berlin.

12. Mwanasali, “The African Union,” 388–413.

13. Deng, “The Evolution,” 191–213.

14. Hutchful, “Understanding the African Security Crisis,” 218.

15. Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, 5.

16. Gupta and Chatterjee, “Indian Foreign Policy,” 120.

17. This paragraph and the one above draws from ibid; and Virk, “India and R2P’s Burdens,” 129–138.

18. Abdenur, “Brazil as a Rising Power,” 54.

19. The preceding two paragraphs draw from Abdenur, “Brazil as a Rising Power,” 49–74; and Herz, “Brazil and R2P,” 107–114.

20. UN Secretary-General, The Role of Regional and Sub-regional Arrangements, 2.

21. Ibid., 2–3.

22. Landsberg, “Pax South Africana,” 436–457. See also Aboagye, “South Africa and R2P,” 29–52.

23. Sangqu, “Statement delivered during the UN General Assembly Debate.”

24. This paragraph and the one above draw from Odgaard and Daojiong, “China and Coexistence”; and Tiewa, “Is China like the Other Permanent Members?,” 148–170.

25. Abdenur, “Brazil as a Rising Power,” 49–74; Herz, “Brazil and R2P,” 121–123; and Hamann, “Brazil and R2P,” 71–89.

26. Banerjee, “India and R2P,” 91–109; and Virk, “India and R2P’s Burdens,” 138–144.