West or the western term is the term that is used differently in different context. It is defined as the countries of Western Europe and other countries such as Israel, New Zealand, Australia, and North America. These countries share the same culture, traditions, values and religion. The Western countries or the West enjoys strong economies and stable governments. In the present world, West refers to 28 NATO members and other countries aligned with United States of America. Western world follows Christianity as their main religion. Western world allow freedom of religion and adopt democracy to manage their politics. They favor capitalism and some type of military and political alliance exists amongst them. The best example of the above-mentioned characteristic is United States, where different religions including Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Hindus are living peacefully. Western world, sometimes become hard to define because Japan and Russia possess western elements but they are not treated as West and are not included in the Western Countries. In this piece of information regarding west, “Western countries will be referred to 28 member states of NATO and the countries those are aligned with US.”
Contemporary world is divided into two halves, West or the Rest. The Rest or the Others can be defined as mainly keeping Asia and Africa into account. Combined population of Asia and Africa is approximately 70% of the world’s total population. Asia is very important for the west because of three main reasons: Firstly, Muslim oil producing countries are located in this region. Secondly, the potential to challenge this uni-polarity of US exist in three Asian countries including China, Russia and India. Thirdly, China is practicing a unique blend of socialism and capitalism, while its politics follow Socialism. Thus, Asia is of great importance to West. According to the statistics related to oil producing countries, Saudi Arabia is on the top, Iran rank on 4th position, UAE on 9th, Iraq on 14th and Kuwait stands on 15th position.
How the doctrine of intervention is developed?
Intervention can take any form. It can be political, social, economics or military. It is defined as an act of interference of one state or nation in the affairs of another. It has been a subject of great importance in International Law. In 1823, President James Monroe issued a proclamation that warned European states against imperialist designs in the Western hemisphere. In essence, Monroe claimed the Americas as US protectorate, and his proclamation, known as the Monroe Doctrine served as a justification for US intervention in hemispheric affairs. In Monroe Doctrine, US cleared that efforts by European countries to colonize or to interfere in America would be treated as act of aggression, which require US intervention. That is how US made its first plan to intervene in the affairs of the others.
The concept of sovereignty of states was developed by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. According to it, “a state is a supreme power and no state can interfere or intervene in the internal affairs of that state”. A state could have only one ultimate dispute settling authority, which is referred by the Latin phrase summa potestas,or supreme power. The term was latter translated into French vernacular as souverainete’ and hence the English sovereignty.
United Nations is the world organization that should be taken into account for all the issues in the international world and for any dispute arise among the member states. Here i would like to mention the principle of sovereign equality of states, written in the declaration of “Friendly Relations” adopted without vote, on October 42, 1970 in the UN general assembly . This principle states that all states enjoy sovereign equality. They have equal rights and duties and are equal members of the international community, not withstanding differences of an economics, social, political or other nature.
In particular, sovereign equality includes the following elements.
- states are juridically equal;
- each state enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty;
- each state has the the duty to respect the personality of other states ;
- the territorial integrity and political independence of the state are inviolable;
- each state has the right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems;
- each state has the duty to comply fully and in good faith with its international obligations and to live in peace with other states.
The legal significance of the “friendly Relations” declaration lies in the fact that it provides evidence of the consensus among member states of the UN on the meaning and elaboration of the principles of the UN charter.
In the above information it is written clearly that all the states are sovereign in their territory and can practice any political system, but unfortunately west is intervening in the affairs of other states in the name of promoting the political system which is democracy and on the grounds on humanitarian intervention. Below the weakness exist in the UN charter is mentioned and then a brief detail of NATO is given to understand the west intervention.
United Nations Charter is the document for clarifying sovereignty and intervention in the international law, but it has a duality which cannot be protected in today’s society. The duality is creating trouble for the Rest and ease foe the West. Because of this duality, West intervenes in the affairs of the others on humanitarian grounds. According to the Non Intervention Article of UN charter – 2(4) and 2 (7), “humanitarian intervention can be done by one state in the other state”. Article 1(4) and 1(3) of the carter mentions, human rights as a purpose of the UN, promoting and encouraging respect for
West is using a tool of humanitarian intervention to control the world and promoting this concept to justify its intervention.
West intervene in the affairs of others, mainly to maintain US hegemony in the world. In order to support this argument we examine the role of NATO because “west” or its better to say US is using NATO as a military tool to achieve her objectives. Take a brief look at the NATO.
The North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) is an alliance of 28 countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of North Atlantic Treat signed on 4 April 1949.
I would like to quote the the 2 main articles of the treaty those are important to understand the role of NATO and its formation.
Article 1, read as “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations”.
Article 7, is written as, “This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security”.
The main objective of the formation of NATO is defined in the Article 5 of the treaty, according to which , the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, they take collective action against that element or state, further the article explains that “Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security”.
It means the formation of NATO took place to take action against the party or state which create threat to 28 member states of NATO, objective is not to fight a war for the rights of others and not to intervene in the internal affairs of the other states. NATO can not operate legally in any type of situation without a mandate of the security council. The result of the legal analysis is quite conclusive, forcible actions taken without a Security Council authorization cannot be considered legal. To justify unauthorized action on the ground of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention or on the ground of international peace & security is not possible. Intervention in rights of other states is eroding the concept of sovereignty. It is also very important to understand that the role of UN cannot be deleted by any regional organization. NATO supersedes the UN and take actions in isolation because it is clear to NATO that is the presence of 2 members in security council i.e China & Russia , its hard to create a unanimous resolution on any issue.
It is also very important that who the “West” is to decide that what are the rights of other are each state is free to decide about the political or social system and the in the presence of UN its not good to intervene UN. UN which is an organized body and represented by the members of all the nation states in the world. West is just protecting her own interests in the world and take actions according to her own preferences and not in the benefits of others.
Now we will take a look on the actual interventions done by the west mainly in Asia and will reveal the truth that they are done in isolation by the west for its own interest without taking UN, security council in confidence and without creating a consensus among the member states of UN. West in intervening in the Muslim world not to promote democracy or to better the social conditions of the people, only & only for the black gold, oil. We have to limit the discussions of interventions by the west to the Muslim world because this is not intervention its the “clash of civilizations”, Which has been rightly pointed out by Samuel P. Huntington in his article published in 1993.
According to U.S. Federal Bureau of investigation Anti-Muslim hate crimes increased 1700 percent during the year 2001. (Published in World Report of Human Rights Watch 2003, Events of 2002, ISBN-1564322858, Pg 498)
The tragic incidence of 9/11 has revolutionized the term terrorism, and the modern definition of terrorism covers only Muslims as terrorist whether they are fighting for their own right of self determination in Kashmir or in Palestine. US is intervening for the rights of others, just a joke, in the whole world but when it comes to Palestinian and Israeli issue, the fact file is amazing , according to the human rights watch of 2003, Israel remained the largest recipient of U.S. Bilateral aid and differences exist between the state Department, White house, and defense. After the destruction of the World Trade Center in September 2001, Israeli government characterized all armed Palestinian activity as terrorism, and justified Israeli military actions in the occupied territories as a part of the global “war on terrorism.” Its very hard to predict that when west will intervene for the rights of Israelis those are claiming that they are fighting the “war on terrorism”. Surely not, West will not intervene because of the two main reasons first Palestinians are Muslims and there is no oil in the occupied territories. One last thing which I want to mention is that United Nations, security council debated a resolution on December 14, 2001 to condemn violence against Palestinians and for supporting the establishment of an international monitoring mechanism. The resolution failed to pass as a result of U.S. veto. US reactions to reported Israeli violations of international humanitarian law continued to emphasize Israel’s right of self-defense without clear reference to international law standards.
Now we will take actual interventions of
Let us take the first example of Kuwait. The history of Iraq and Kuwait relationship is an old one both share common culture and religion. Kuwait has supported Iraq on different occasions financially, mainly in the eight years of war which was fought between Iran & Iraq started in the year 1980. In the history of both the countries its still mention with bold words that in 1932, the youth of Kuwait run a movement known as “Free Kuwait Movement”, the objective of that movement was to reunify with Iraq and to get free from British rule. US-British Kuwait oil company discovered the oil reserves in 1937, since then the importance of Kuwait is increased in the eyes of western countries. The lack of unity among the Muslim countries has always welcome the foreign intervention in their personal affairs. Kuwait gain independence in 1961, with the end of British protectorate. After the independence of Kuwait west is always is in search for the reasons which the west can prove valid in the eyes international community, and that reason they have found when Iraq attacked on Kuwait in the year 1990. This reason proved sufficient for the west to stick with the oil fields of Kuwait and on September 1991, America and Kuwait signed a military pact for 10 year which has given passport to US to stay on long-term basis in Persian Gulf region.