Human Rights vs. Sovereignty :: Human Rights Essays

The massive, protracted attack of Serbia was "the first offensive action for NATO, and the first time that Allied gird forces were unleashed against a sovereign nation with which the United States was not formally at war or without express authorization by the United Nations certification Council," observes Stephen Presser, professor of law at Northwestern University. "What we were doing in the Balkans is part of the post-Vietnam unveiling of a new set of school of thoughts of international law. These doctrines lack clearly defined limits," he warns. "We may be witnessing the opening moves in the forging of a New Global order that fundamentally impairs national reign and allows possessors of sea captain military force to dictate the basic terms of domestic heart to other nations without even the formalities of conquest." In the current issue of Orbis, a quarterly publication of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (fpri.org), Presser argues that the trustworthy reason for NATOs bombing of a sovereign nation "appears to have been to fasten Belgrade to cede autonomy, if not territory, to a minority ethnic group. What is there, then, in the United Nations charter or in international law that would lead our action in the Balkans," he asks, "and what, if any, ar the reach and the limits of our new doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention? The UN Charter seeks to secure both the protection of fundamental gentle rights and the equal rights of nations large and small," Presser notes. "The Charter clearly undertakes to protect the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of person nations, and seems to preclude interference in a nations domestic affairs unless the Security Council declares a situation a threat to international peace and security and expressly authorizes intervention. While the UN and its agencies expressed official concern about what went on in the Balkans," he affirms, "the Security Counc il did not authorize intervention in Kosovo by UN or NATO forces." Presser points out that "a series of international law doctrines all outside the UN Charter authorize interference by one render in anothers affairs. These have included military actions to protect ones own citizens who are within anothers borders, and there have been several armed interventions by individual or groups of nations purportedly to protect the rights of minorities in particular or military man rights in general, whether or not the individuals to be protected were citizens of the intervening nations.