Quote:
|
Originally Posted by DJ Ponz
Sovereignty will become less and less relevant as traditional notions of nation-state and other conceptual divides are stripped back in the face of an interconnected, globalized world. Thinking about this purely in economic terms is myopic.
Cosmopolitanism, my friends, is where we're going. And I think its our only hope. |
I like to entertain the notion of the universality of human rights, but is that really where we are going? I don't know if the power politics of neorealism would allow it without a bloody struggle.
-Look how the US justice department memo's justified torture. How people can be abducted as "unlawful combatants."
-Russian legislation usurping the power and independance of NGO's within their territorys.
-China's stance of the state before the individual.
Mind you i'm not supporter neorealists but this is how states act in order to protect their self-interests.
"cosmopolitanism," economically, struggles as well. Look at the DOHA round, of which set out to make "fair trade" for developing countries. The difficulty is there trying to get nations to bridge that divide in the political economy, between the periphery and the wealthy.
The difficulty in a humanitarian sense i have already outlined above.
I'm a strong believer in this universality humanitarian rights, but how it can be enforced and implimented effectively remains to be seen.
The international norm has been set already, that the sovereignty and security of a state can be used as an argument justifying torture and nuclear weapons etc etc. The first step is rolling back that norm that the US set. It probably put us back about 50 years.
Jul 09, 06
