The West's Double Standards on Human Rights and National Sovereignty

Human Rights Council Chamber: Photo Taken During Urgent Debate on Syria
(Image by US Mission Geneva)   Details   DMCA

For the past 20 years, the intellectual movement in the West has been away from an international order based on equal, sovereign nations and towards one in which states which are deemed liberal democracies (by us in the West), or are friendly to the West, enjoy greater rights than those who are deemed otherwise. Not all nations are equal.  Take the views of Canadian philosopher Brian Orend, a prominent just war theorist. In his book The Morality of War, Orend argues that states do not exist for themselves, but to safeguard and promote the rights of their citizens. 'Minimally just states', which manage to do so to at least some degree, merit full sovereign rights. But those which are not 'minimally just' have no rights at all. They forfeit the right not to be attacked.  This is very dangerous logic.