At the recent opening of the 54th session of the U.N. General Assembly, the issue of state sovereignty was again brought to the forefront.In addressing the General Assembly, the leaders of various imperialist states attacked the principle of state sovereignty. For example, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin asserted that "we must defend the principle of intervention by the international community, under U.N. auspices, to bring relief to the victims," and that the U.N. mission must be extended to "defending human dignity within each state and where necessary, as the Charter permits, against states.... Bill Clinton, citing the U.S.-NATO war against Yugoslavia as a model, insisted that the big powers did not even need the sanction of the U.N. but could take on themselves the power to launch military action against other states.
For some time now, the imperialist powers -- in words and in deeds -- have been waging an all-out war against the sovereignty of countries. The big powers talk about "defending human rights," "intra-state conflicts," "preventing ethnic conflict," etc. But behind this rhetoric are the real expansionist, capitalist motives of the Big Powers -- the drive to control the markets and economies of other countries, to extend their empires. In attacking the principle of the sovereignty of nations, the imperialist powers are undermining the very foundation of international law and the established norms of relations between states. The imperialist powers, with U.S. imperialism in the forefront, want to remove any obstacle to their domination and rule the world on the basis of "Might Makes Right."
But the imperialist powers were not the only ones who spoke at the U.N. The representatives of many small and dependent countries pointed out that it is invariably the weaker states which suffer from imperialist intervention, that state sovereignty is a defense against the unequal power of the imperialist states, and that the U.N. Security Council, rather than incorporating the small nations in decision-making, has become a tool of the big powers.
Today, defense of the principle of the sovereignty of countries is one of the cornerstones of both the struggle for peace as well as the struggle for the rights of the oppressed peoples and nations. All this century, it has been the oppressed peoples, the small countries and nations -- those colonized and dominated by imperialism, who have fought for the principle of the sovereign equality of all nations. This principle was given further prominence as a result of the worldwide struggle against nazi-fascist aggression. After WW II, the peoples of the whole world demanded that peace be defended and preserved as a fundamental value of humanity, a sacred cause of the peoples. People insisted that to preserve peace, every state must renounce the use of force in international relations and recognize the sovereign equality of all nations.
In a speech given earlier this year, Michael Thorburn, a representative of the Workers Party, points out:
"When Clinton and U.S. imperialism declare that national sovereignty is obsolete, that the U.S., alone or in conjunction with other big imperialist powers, can decide which countries have the right to independence, when the Paris Charter insists that Western imperialism can decide the social system of every country, imperialism is going against one of the great motive forces of the contemporary era -- the anti-colonial movement. The recognition of the sovereignty of nations and the equality of the peoples is a verdict written with the blood and struggle of hundreds of millions of people in the colonial countries. . . . we live in an era in which the oppressed peoples everywhere -- in the Philippines and Indonesia, in Vietnam and Korea, in Cuba and Nicaragua, in China and India, across the whole of Africa and the Middle East -- have stood up and are fighting for their liberation. National sovereignty, the independence and equality of all peoples, the liberation of the oppressed is not something given the people by the British or American colonists, nor is it something the Paris Charter can take away. It is something the peoples themselves have asserted and fought for. It is a struggle, a demand, which arises from the very humanity of the people and a practical problem taken up for solution."