The system of international relations we have known since the second world war has broken down. The reasons given for the Anglo-American attack on Iraq were largely fraudulent. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction turned out to be weapons of mass distraction. It is straining at a gnat to argue that UN security council resolution 678, passed in 1990, made legal an invasion undertaken in 2003. However, it is also true that the Iraqis will be far better off without Saddam Hussein; and there is a chance that the middle east will be reshaped for the better. The main problem in international relations is to define the scope of lawful and acceptable military interventions in today’s world.
The traditional theory of international relations, based on the principle of national sovereignty, would not have sanctioned the Iraq war. Each state is deemed to be sovereign in its own territory; that is, secure in law, although not necessarily in fact, against aggression by another state. The badness of a state is not grounds for attacking it; only its aggression, actual or expected, against another state. Self-rule is better than foreign rule. These remain the bedrock principles of international sentiment and law.
The system of international relations to which these principles gave rise is sometimes known as the Westphalian system, from its origins in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This established the European state system on the basis of national political sovereignty and religious toleration, as opposed to dynastic rule and religious monopoly. Largely through the agency of two murderous world wars, the Westphalian system became a world system after 1945, as the big European states lost the power and will to hold on to their imperial positions. Today there are over 190 national units, each one claiming sovereignty-freedom from foreign intervention-within its own internationally recognised borders.
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