The English School (LINKLATER 2005)

 Andrew Linklater, The English School, in

Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit and Jacqui True, Theories of International Relations, third edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005

 

(...)

From power to order: international order

89 (...) In his remarks about the three international societies about which a great deal is known (the Ancient Chinese, the Graeco-Roman and the modern society of states) Wight (1977: 33–5) maintained each had emerged in a region with a high level of linguistic and cultural unity. Crucially, independent political communities felt they belonged to the civilized world and were superior to their neighbours. Their sense of their ‘cultural differentiation’ from allegedly semi-civilized and barbaric peoples facilitated communication between them and made it easier to agree on the rights and duties which bound them together as members of an exclusive society of states.

Order and justice in international relations

94 (...) Efforts to apply principles of justice to international relations are often highly selective in any event, as was the case with the war crimes tribunals at the end of the Second World War (1977: 89). What some thought was the reasonable response of the civilized world was ‘victor’s justice’ to others. The same point has been made by Milojevic and Saddam Hussein in recent times. The different responses to NATO’s action against Serbia in 1999 also illustrate the point. What leaders such as Blair regard as essential if the world is to be rid of murderous regimes is for others nothing other than the promotion of Western norms and interests which results in a new imperialism.

95 (...) Some violations of human rights might be so shocking that states have to set aside the convention that they should not intervene in each other’s internal affairs.

 

96 Whether and how they should do so are questions that became central to international relations with the destruction of Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda (Dunne and Wheeler 1999). International action to try persons suspected of war crimes and gross human rights violations has progressed but, as the debate over NATO’s military action against Serbia demonstrated, there is no global consensus about when sovereignty can be overridden for the sake of human rights.

96 (...) They added that the aspiring ‘good international citizen’ should be prepared to intervene in societies where there was a ‘supreme humanitarian emergency’ even though their action was in breach of international law. This argument has been rejected by Jackson (2000: 291ff.) who stresses, citing the example of Russia’s long-standing affinity with Serbia, the danger that humanitarian intervention might disturb order between the great powers.

The revolt against the West and the expansion of international society

100 The first was ‘the struggle for equal sovereignty’ undertaken by societies such as China and Japan which had ‘retained their formal independence’ but were considered ‘inferior’ to the Western powers. These societies were governed by unequal treaties ‘concluded under duress’; because of the principle of ‘extra-territoriality’, they were denied the right to settle disputes involving foreigners according to domestic law. As a consequence of the legal revolt against the West, Japan joined the society of states in 1900, Turkey in 1923, Egypt in 1936 and China in 1943.

102-103 (...) Genocide in Rwanda, violence against the people of East Timor, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan in 2004–5 and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans have reopened the debate about the rights and wrongs of humanitarian intervention.The debate over NATO’s involvement in Kosovo in 1999 revealed there is no consensus on whether the right of sovereignty can be overridden by an allegedly higher moral principle of protecting human rights. Some observers supported NATO’s actions on the grounds that states have duties to the whole of humanity and not just to co-nationals (Havel 1999: 6). Others criticized NATO for what they saw as a breach of the UN Charter, for its highly selective approach to dealing with human rights violations and for acts of violence which compounded the misery of the local population (Chomsky 1999a).