When should a country lose its right to self-rule?

[Souron]

Genocide. And somebody willing to nation build it away. That's the level of failure it takes.

Also it make no sense to claim that a centuries gone country borders would have any impact on deciding how the country is ruled in the future. The Nuremberg Trials and subsequently UN Charter has declared War for territorial gain is beneath the civilized nations of the world, and it would be in violation of international law for a country to pursue it. This would suggest that the result of such an intervention must be the rebuilding of the invaded state, much like in iraq, and not joining it to the invading country.

 

[Souron]

Countries have rights?

They do. They have borders and a right to sovereignty within those borders. Of course, getting the international community to recognize a group or territory as a country can be a challenge, case in point: Palestine.

 

[Traitorfish]

They do. They have borders and a right to sovereignty within those borders. Of course, getting the international community to recognize a group or territory as a country can be a challenge, case in point: Palestine.

But again, that's diplomatic convention, not rights in the ethical sense, which is what VR's OP seemed to getting at.

 

[Souron]

The OP seems to want to excuse conquering a country because the country can't rule itself according to his standards. It is presumption to use the claim that one's own countries government is ethically superior as a reason to annex another country. That's kind of unethical, and would be a "crime against peace" in UN parlance.

 

[Traitorfish]

Ok, well, how would you express that as a reply to the OP?

 

[Souron]

Erm, post#21 above... I could add a quote to it.

A country has to be pretty atrocious to excuse foreign intervention. A poor person without electricity in his home doesn't cut it. Even then, you can't just conquer it.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, why not? Your only justification so far has been reference to convention, but as I said, that isn't what VR is asking about.

 

[Souron]

My justification has been that after WWII the world (at least Europe and the Security Council) decided that making war is generally a major crime on par with crimes against humanity and war crimes. So it takes major war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other crimes against peace to justify war.

(There were similar declarations after WWI too)

 

[Traitorfish]

See, again, that's convention, not ethics.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

See, again, that's convention, not ethics.

Consider this concept, then, since the catch seems to be on "countries." Is there a point at which a community loses the right to govern itself, in favor of better governance?

You do think that people have the right to govern themselves on some level, right?

 

[Tahuti]

See, again, that's convention, not ethics.

Convention = Ethics = Morality = Herd Conformity

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Convention = Ethics = Morality = Herd Conformity

There's no way you believe an iota of that.

 

[Traitorfish]

Consider this concept, then, since the catch seems to be on "countries." Is there a point at which a community loses the right to govern itself, in favor of better governance?

You do think that people have the right to govern themselves on some level, right?

I might, but it's neither really here nor there. As my first post in this thread suggested, I'm pretty sceptical of this whole "countries" business to start with, so I'm not really capable of engaging in this discussion on the OP's terms. Rather, what I'm trying to puzzle out is what those terms actually are, but so far all we seem to be getting is appeals to diplomatic convention.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I suppose at its most basic, the right of the community to self-determination stems from the right of the individual to self-determination. The individual supposedly empowers community bodies with authority and responsibility via the social contract, such that their proper functioning is an extension of the individual's right to self-determination, tempered by the need to maximize the ability of each person to do so by minimizing the harmful interference of others in that process. Denial of the community's right to collectively self-determine its fate is therefore an imposition on each person who imbued that community with the authority to do so in the first place.

So the question is: if the community has the right to limit the actions of its members in order to maximize their collective freedom, do communities as well? Or can this only happen on a strictly consensual basis? So this becomes the question, I think, as to whether or not the social contract only includes members who explicitly consent to it. But it also begs the question that community authority stems from universal empowerment by its members, which is quite an assumption in itself. Does lack of that universal consensus of society indicate illegitimate authority? Does that illegitimacy deprive that community of the right to self-determination? Does that lack of such a right leave the door open to imposition by authority from a force outside the community?

So many questions. Wow. Such filosofee. How answer. Such unsure.

 

[Souron]

See, again, that's convention, not ethics.

WWII was bad not because it broke convention, but because war is bad. That's why the UN came about: WWII never again. It's true I have been phrasing myself in terms of the law, not the underling Ideas, but that's because I think the international consensus is a stronger indicator of ethics than anything I could say from my own gut. International law isn't necessarily ethical, but this is a funding principle of the UN, it's worth something.

 

[Souron]

I suppose at its most basic, the right of the community to self-determination stems from the right of the individual to self-determination. The individual supposedly empowers community bodies with authority and responsibility via the social contract, such that their proper functioning is an extension of the individual's right to self-determination, tempered by the need to maximize the ability of each person to do so by minimizing the harmful interference of others in that process. Denial of the community's right to collectively self-determine its fate is therefore an imposition on each person who imbued that community with the authority to do so in the first place.

So the question is: if the community has the right to limit the actions of its members in order to maximize their collective freedom, do communities as well? Or can this only happen on a strictly consensual basis? So this becomes the question, I think, as to whether or not the social contract only includes members who explicitly consent to it. But it also begs the question that community authority stems from universal empowerment by its members, which is quite an assumption in itself. Does lack of that universal consensus of society indicate illegitimate authority? Does that illegitimacy deprive that community of the right to self-determination? Does that lack of such a right leave the door open to imposition by authority from a force outside the community?

So many questions. Wow. Such filosofee. How answer. Such unsure.

If I remember right, think Traitorfish disagrees with me on this, but in my view the social contract to a country is somewhere between full consent and subservience. As such a country has limited authority over it's residence and citizens. The government's authority is further diminished by how well the government represents the interest of it's people, but if acting in the good faith interest of it's people, any government can have legitimacy.

However I do agree that liberation from an ineffective state can, as in Libya, be a justification for war. It's just takes a lot for it to come to that.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think what the "right to self-rule" is about is not some philosophical musing on the right of self-determination or other neat thought constructs but the simple matter of what we should expect of other countries to actually do.
Which is not to be devoted do-gooders. Never ever was that the course of action of one country regarding another country. Mind you, countries can do good for others, even just for the sake of it.
But overtaking a country for its own good but against the will of its sovereign and then also actually succeeding in that is - obviously - immensely difficult. It requires immense commitment - in spirit, in lives and of course also in resources. Genuine self-devotion.
It can be done. Right now - we could start. Let's assemble a huge bad ass army, occupy the Congo and rebuild the country from scratch. It is in dire need for it. We could in principle guide it for decades to become a prosperous nation, center of good fortune in the center of Africa. We could even use the local resources to partially finance it.
We don't because we suck.
What we are willing to do are half-arsed or outright exploitive moves. And those are not so prone to actually succeed.
And the right of a country to be sovereign is the next best thing we can come up with to feel not actually all-out evil.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's a very good question. By analogy, I think we all accept that we're allowed to call the police if a father is abusing his children. There's no doubt that at the time, it's purely 'an internal matter'. We can also expect internal justice someday, given that pops is going to be in a nursing home eventually. But, we still accept that the cops may (and probably should be called)).

Another aspect is that we certainly have an historical precedent of the idea of 'outside intervention' being somewhat plausible. Both post-war Germany and post-war Japan bloomed in a way that Iraq and Afghanistan might never. As well, the humanitarian record of these countries really improved as well.

So, I think that outside intervention can be justified. We need to shake out why Germany worked and Iraq didn't. I won't disagree that Iraq was in an (internal) state that justified some type of intervention: the father was beating his children.

Finally, I think that this shows that we do need some type of international organisation that's not constantly hamstrung. Tweaked? Absolutely. But concomitantly complaining about its lack of efficacy whilst proactively hamstringing it seems ... odd.

 

[Takhisis]

My justification has been that after WWII the world (at least Europe and the Security Council) decided that making war is generally a major crime on par with crimes against humanity and war crimes. So it takes major war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other crimes against peace to justify war.

(There were similar declarations after WWI too)

So the US should lose its right to self-rule.

 

[timtofly]

Or fight to get it back.