The Right to Rule

• October 27, 2005

When engaging in debates about the legitimacy of actions on the international stage, the term sovereignty (or some permutation of it) gets thrown about a lot. Sovereignty is commonly defined as “the exclusive right to exercise supreme authority over a geographic region, group of people, or oneself”.
How many people, having expounded upon the legitimacy (or more likely, the illegitimacy) of an action based upon claims of sovereignty, have ever stopped to ponder the word and its implications? If one accepts the legitimacy or illegitimacy of an action rests upon a question of sovereignty, then one must question whether the sovereignty itself is legitimate. To do otherwise is to be ethically selective and intellectually dishonest.
In determining the legitimacy of a regime’s sovereignty, we must look to its origin. There are essentially two ways that a regime can achieve sovereignty: it can be freely given to the regime by the people, as in a democracy, or it can be taken from the people by force or subterfuge, as in dictatorship.
The first instance is what is called popular sovereignty, and it is ultimately an outgrowth of the idea of natural rights (the basis for modern basic human rights). The idea of popular sovereignty is rooted in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau in the mid 1600s to the mid 1700s. There are many different variations of the exact meaning and proper extent of popular sovereignty, but all the variations state that there is a social contract between the regime and the governed: the legitimacy of the regime’s actions rest upon the majority of the people’s consent.
The second instance, from a natural rights standpoint, is not an example of legitimate sovereignty. When force or farce is used to deny popular sovereignty it’s a denial of a people’s basic rights, and a legitimately sovereign people has every right to state that it is so. To support an illegitimately sovereign regime is to deny a people of its human rights.
So the next time that someone declares that an action was not legitimate because it was a violation of sovereignty, all people of conscience should ask themselves whether that sovereignty was legitimate to start with.

Tags: Politics

http://Array Seth Williams

People make choices and give/deny support for an action based on legitimacy or the lack thereof. To a principled person, legitimacy is not just a nicety.

Of course defending yourself (and your nation) is a legitimate action; I would argue that, while it hasn’t been traditionally recognized as such, self-defence is a basic human right. Without that right the principled are at the mercy of the unprincipled.

But let’s not kid ourselves, Iraq was a pre-emptive war. Now, you’ll find few stauncher proponents of the importance of having invaded Iraq than I. I base my support on several grounds, not the least of which was what I felt was the illegitimacy of the Ba’athist regime, the existence of causus belli in the form of several violated UN resolutions, and the clear and present danger their policies presented. Clear and present, but not (in my opinion) immenent. It’s important to make these judgements, if only for the exercise of having mulled over the issue.
Seth Williams

Robert: I don’t actually disagree with any of what you are saying. Especially the part where you state it was a judgement call. It’s my hope that people would exercise similar judgement when claiming we invaded a soveriegn country, and ask themselves if that soveriegnty was from a legitimate source or not.
Seth Williams

Well, actually yes WOOF. You explained half of that right.
MikeAdamson

Good post Seth.
robert108

For Mao, and the rest of the dictators, that is true. It’s not the only way, however. There is the one we do, involving winning an election by getting a majority of the votes.
Seth Williams

Rob108: yes, that’s why I said that WOOF had it half right. My post discusses both sorts to the end of framing future debates on America’s actions abroad in legitimate or illegitimate terms, and having a solid basis for holding that position.
Seth Williams

You’re right Rob. Maybe I should have said “not generally recognized as a human right”…? What I mean is that self defence hasn’t always been recognized, and clearly stated as a right, and still isn’t in a lot of quarters. That’s why gun right are under constant assult. In Britain, you can prosecuted for defending yourself in your own home. So, not sure how I should state it, but it’s not universally accepted as a right, even in the West…or America for that matter.

Why not immenent? Just my own opinion. I don’t think we were at a crisis point, and I think that makes it harder (not impossible) to make a self-defence claim. So instead of relying on the less than clear-cut claims of self defence, I look to other philosophical and legal grounds for a stronger case for what I believe to have been the proper course of action.
robert108

Good points. To me, 9/11 made the whole matter of Islamic terrorism imminent. I think we should have considered it imminent before that, but 9/11 changed that landscape forever. I think it is sophistry to somehow compartmentalize one group of Islamic terrorists(Al Qaeda) as being in any way different from other Islamic terrorists. I guess that is the kernal of my argument.
robert108

Seth, you make a great argument for your point. I think there is something that trumps it, however. We have the right to defend our country. I know there is a lot of blather that there is no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, but we are defending ourselves against worldwide Islamic terrorism, and Iraq is a beachhead for us in that battle. I don’t think the UN or the World Court has anything to say to us on this matter. Legitimacy is simply an argument. In the real world, you live your life or you live someone else’s.
robert108

In light of the continued violent Islamofascism directed toward us and our allies since 1972, in light of I think 19 violated UN resolutions since the end of the Gulf War, and in light of his seeking yellowcake in Africa, to name only a few of the many reasons, I think going into Iraq was only slightly pre-emptive. It was mostly long overdue. It’s a judgment call, but I think for any American President not to have acted would have been collassal bad judgment. If there had been another attack after 9/11 in the absence of any action by the President, he would have been savaged for that. He took the hero’s path.
WOOF

Simple explanation:
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Mao Tse-Tung
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I would argue that, while it hasn’t been traditionally recognized as such, self-defence is a basic human right.

Our founding fathers recognized it, in the 2nd amendment to the Constitution.

Clear and present, but not (in my opinion) imminent.

Why not immenent? Our intelligence at the time told us that Saddam was seeking yellowcake in Niger. We had no idea how close he was to getting a nuke, and once he had one that would have been some toothpaste we couldn’t put back in the tube.
Pingback: buy Adobe Acrobat 8.0
Pingback: 1000 iPhone Backgrounds

SayAnythingBlog.com

The Right to Rule

Create a SAB Readerblog

Recent Comments