I recently watched an episode of the Inside Story, then downloaded (on a throw away memory stick) the subject they were discussing: More Just and Equitable Global Governance, aka the “White Paper” on global governance. I found much that I agreed with: fairness, justice, peace, development, multilateral cooperation, sovereign equality, and the need for all nations to have a voice. These are worthy goals, something I’ve tried to defend all of my life. As a human.
The White Paper warns against power politics, unilateralism, economic coercion, and domination by stronger states. Again, I agree.
Yet despite its many strengths, I believe the document contains a serious flaw.
It defends the principle of state sovereignty, but it does not adequately address a fundamental truth:
Leaders, nations, and states have obligations to their citizens first. This is something that has been largely ignored since humanity transitioned from cave dwellers to farmers.
A government should not exist merely to enrich its leaders and dumbify its populace. A government’s first responsibility should be to protect the lives, dignity, and rights of the people it governs—and our planet.
Not Mars. Not the Moon.
Earth.
The cradle of humanity.
The White Paper repeatedly emphasizes “sovereign equality” and “non-interference” as essential principles of international order. It argues that countries should respect each other’s sovereignty and avoid intervening in internal affairs.
Under normal circumstances, I agree. However, it omits the following:
When a government commits genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, or mass atrocities against its own people, then the issue is no longer merely an “internal affair.”
It becomes a matter of concern for all humanity.
Why?
Because history repeatedly shows that large-scale oppression rarely remains contained within national borders. People flee persecution only to be persecuted in the country they seek refuge from; then crises after crises emerge.
It is sometimes called the Snowball Effect or for those in warmer regions, Spillover.
The Snowball Effect or Spillover, is the “guiding light” that ignites the violent world of warmongers and genocidists.
Regional and domestic instability spreads slowly. It begins with small leaks in the “dam” then quickly cascades to an unstoppable deluge.
That is when extremism becomes the new “white knight.” Neighboring countries, many with shared ancestry, become involved whether they want to be or not. Entire regions are destabilized for generations. And the wealthy? The Billionaires and Trillionaires? The higher the body count, the richer they become.
What is most disturbing to me is that humanity has been conditioned to accept the loss of unarmed civilians as an unavoidable consequence of conflict.
When I hear people in my country regurgitate the false belief that killing children is righteous, necessary, or permissible in the name of national security, I want to scream. And oft times I do.
I reside in a state whose Senator appears proud of that position and speaks of it openly. By any reasonable moral standard, such conduct is indefensible. Voting him out of office, would be a win for humanity and global justice.
Killing children is evil under all conditions.
Every innocent person killed is the destruction of a future that can never be recreated.
There is nothing righteous or normal about children growing up under bombardment. There is nothing righteous or normal about families being displaced, imprisoned, starved, or ghosted from existence. There is nothing remotely acceptable about entire populations living in fear because those with power have chosen violence, profit, ideology, and domination over human life.
Somewhere along the way, in America, leaders/elites/MIC/corporations, and the U.S. Supreme Court, began reducing human beings to rulings, statistics, casualties, collateral damage, refugee flows, economic costs, and transactional calculations. And of course, up to recently, the rest of the world followed along, content to hitch a free ride on the “gravy train.”
Citizens United was the trojan horse that enable shadows to steal away my country and slowly eroded our economic future. The outcome of Citizens United: forced-choice elections and the Great Divide (of wealth): something that I wrote extensively on in times past, on various personal websites, long since shuttered.
When human beings became mere statistics, casualties, collateral damage, refugee flows, economic costs, and transactional calculations, something essential was lost. Humanity.
The people who were abused.
The people who were massacred.
The families who disappeared.
The generations robbed of their future.
They are humanity.
They are us.
We are humanity.
The pursuit of profit and power by many elites ruptures their own humanity. It detaches them from reality and the very human consequences of their actions and policies.
That detachment is dangerous. It allows those in power to rationalize the suffering of others while they remain insulated from the consequences of their decisions. It is how families become statistics, children become collateral damage, and entire populations become obstacles to be removed.
Without humanity, elites and politicians are nothing but zeros. Power only exists because there are people over whom power can be exercised. Power is relational. It depends on other human beings. Being a leader is a privilege bestowed upon certain individuals by the very people who elected them into office: the same peoples they openly, and legally lie to; the constituents they loathe and ignore in pursuit of riches for themselves and their families. In America, the majority of voters embrace this ideology; not me.
The legitimacy of a state begins with how it treats its own people.
- Statistics: remove identity.
- Casualties: remove personality.
- Collateral damage: removes responsibility.
- Refugee flows: remove individual stories.
- Economic costs: remove human suffering.
- Transactional calculations: remove morality and personal accountability.
Until elites and the ruling classes rehabilitate that mindset—until the world peoples once again “remember“ that every child’s life has value and that the suffering of unarmed civilians is never acceptable, nothing changes.
Until global peoples decide to educate themselves on the money behind the candidate—nothing will fundamentally change. These are two more indisputable facts.
When governments fail to protect their people—or become the source of the threat themselves—the international community cannot simply look away and claim the matter is internal.
Human suffering on that scale eventually becomes everyone’s problem. One more indisputable fact.
Being human: On Sovereignty
“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be upheld.” This principle is of utmost importance. Sovereignty protects weaker nations from domination by stronger ones.
That being said, sovereignty is not a loophole to exploit: sovereignty must not become a shield behind which governments can abuse their own populations, and others without consequence.
The legitimacy of a country/state begins with how it treats its own people:
- Permanent residents
- Refugees
- Asylum seekers
- Stateless persons
- Migrant workers
- Indigenous populations whose citizenship status may be disputed
- People living under occupation or contested sovereignty
The White Paper also states that:
“The future of all nations is bound by shared interests, common challenges, and collective responsibilities.”
I agree completely.
But if we truly believe in collective responsibilities, then those responsibilities must include protecting human beings from mass violence, regardless of where they live.
The document repeatedly condemns the “law of the jungle” and argues for a world based on fairness and justice rather than power.
Again, I agree.
Yet there is nothing “just” about standing by while a population is exterminated, displaced, starved, imprisoned, or systematically terrorized by its own government.
Justice requires action...
…not meaningless, empty rhetoric or international posts consisting of flaccid condemnation made by those protected by wealth and security details, safe within artificial bubbles, far removed from the realities faced by ordinary people being slaughtered like cattle.
R2P begins with a simple idea.
Every government has a responsibility to protect its population.
If a government is unwilling or unable to do so, the international community has a responsibility to act.
From my point of view, as a human, the initial response to “crimes against humanity” should always be through direct diplomacy with clear, plain wording that is not subject to different interpretations or loopholes. The cessation of atrocities and bombings against unarmed civilians should end within weeks or sooner – not months, nor years.
Every reasonable effort should be made to resolve the crisis without violence within a very limited timeframe (NOT months or years) because economic pressure, international monitoring and attempts at providing humanitarian assistance does absolutely nothing to save lives. It only prolongs the suffering, the conflict and leads to endless wars. This is an indisputable fact.
Why the time limit?
When you allow abusive, violent belligerents more opportunity to kill, maim, and grossly rape unarmed civilians while at the same time providing the belligerents the courtesy of diplomacy, it is akin to supporting the atrocities perpetrated by the violators. That makes every leader, an accessory after the fact.
If diplomacy and mediation fails, and if genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, or mass atrocities continue, then the international community should have the authority, along with the responsibility to intervene, immediately (within weeks).
Military action should never be the first option, but it must be a timely one.
Otherwise, declarations about human rights remain empty words that impress no one and gives false hope to the masses. Hope is weapon of torture.
Belligerents thrive on empty words that promise hope; they thrive on the lies uttered by shameful leaders/politicians whose empty words of condemnation imply they care about the slaughter and rape of defenseless children, women and men.
Belligerents; psychopaths and rapist love false hope, because it keeps the people they oppressed, rape, abuse, compliant because of the false belief that “some one or some invisible being” will eventually save them. Add that indisputable fact to the list.
Human beings must come before profit and governments.
The White Paper correctly argues that global governance should be “people-centered.”
That is also my core belief: people-centered (and the reason for this site).
not politically centered,
not technocrat centered,
not elite centered,
not corporate centered,
not centered around corruption.
A truly people-centered system places human life and human dignity above the absolute authority of the state.
A government that protects its people deserves respect for its sovereignty.
A government that systematically murders its people and other peoples forfeits the moral claim that its actions are purely a domestic matter and/or a matter of national security.
In a nutshell.
The challenge of our century is not choosing between sovereignty and human rights rather it is to find the balance between them both; always erring on the side of humanity.
Respect, sovereignty, diplomacy – all roads should lead to peaceful resolutions.
But when a rogue state goes on a rampage of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and mass atrocities, the global community must respond without reservation on behalf of humanity and our collective future.
Humanity has not only the right to act, it has the responsibility to act quickly and decisively to save human lives.
