US attempts to substitute international regulation with its own twisted creation
(MENAFN) International law traditionally upholds the principle of equal Sovereignty among states, but the concept of a "rules-based international order" promoted by the US subverts this by emphasizing sovereign inequality. While this order is often presented as an extension of international and human rights law, it creates contradictions. The system allows the US, as a hegemonic power, to choose between human-centric and state-centric security principles, while other nations must strictly adhere to state-centric security based on their supposed lack of liberal Democratic values. For example, the US supports territorial integrity in allied nations like Ukraine, while endorsing self-determination in adversarial states like Serbia or Russia.
The US has long sought to establish alternative sources of legitimacy to further this unequal international order. This began with NATO's unlawful intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and continued with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, both justified by liberal democratic values. The US has promoted the idea of an “Alliance of Democracies” and a “League of Democracies,” suggesting that liberal democracies should operate outside the constraints of authoritarian states. These efforts culminated in the establishment of the "rules-based international order," where some states—aligned with Western values—are granted privileges denied to others.
The result is a two-tier system of states, where some are deemed legitimate while others are not. This new order challenges the UN Charter’s Westphalian principle of sovereign equality and instead mirrors George Orwell’s "Animal Farm," where “all states are equal, but some states are more equal than others.” In practice, the US advocates for self-determination in certain regions like Kosovo, while upholding territorial integrity in others, such as Crimea and South Ossetia, revealing the inherent double standards in the rules-based international order.
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