They Rule: Council on Foreign Relations [Centre for American Progress, Brookings Institution, etc.]

Coup in Mali Exposes All Opportunists Which Feed Off African Resources

Public speculation has it that the reason for the overthrow was Touré’s incompetence. Captain Amadou Sanogo, a coup leader, argued that the ousted government had failed to provide the national army with adequate means to defeat the rebellion against the Taureg people in the north of Mali.

At no point have coup leaders spoken out against imperialism or neocolonialism. History has shown us that military coups are a quick way for elements of the military sector of the African petty bourgeoisie to seize power and secure large chunks of resources for themselves.

Touré himself came into power in a coup against the former neocolonial dictator, Moussa Traore, in March 1991.

Today, the constitution of Mali has been suspended, its borders closed, and several ministers arrested.

The deposed president is currently in hiding.

Neocolonialism benefits only the parasitic imperialists in Mali

The neocolonial state was created to repress the toiling masses, for the benefit of parasitic French rulers and black collaborators.

The country of Mali is a former French colony landlocked between Algeria, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Côte D’ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mauritania — artificial borders created by white rulers at the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, with neither the consent nor the participation of African people.

Some observers feel there is evidence of a U.S.-led white imperialist scheme to carve up Africa and recolonize it at the expense of Africans.

Mali is vulnerable to severe drought conditions and hunger. Its most important mineral export is gold, but the reality is that Mali cannot develop economically within its present context, which is determined by imperial powers that are lining up to exploit its vast resources, including increasing U.S. influence.

The U.S. provides “military and economic aid of $70 million each year and another $70 million for food and other humanitarian needs.”

As a result of this U.S. intrusion, Mali has now been brought into a U.S.-led military program known as the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI).

Colonial borders represent the status quo: tear them down!

Despite the coup, power remains in the hands of the African petty bourgeois, class-enemy-from-within that rules at the expense the African working class and the poor peasantry.

The liberal democratic rights that we saw in Mali were actually a political space for sectors of the African petty bourgeoisie to compete for access to State power — not a space where imperialism could be fought.

We must turn our backs on both coup leaders and the deposed government.

We need a transformation of Mali — powered by the people — to satisfy the material needs and legitimate aspirations of the people of Mali.

Workers, peasants and honest progressive forces, including progressives in the armed forces in Mali, must fight for a people’s State.

The people’s State must be based on struggle for a revolutionary national democratic program that will sweep away all remnants of the neocolonial State, which is rotten to the core.

This type of State, created to repress the toiling masses for the benefit of parasitic French rulers and black collaborators, must go.

The democratization of Mali must mean that the people come to power anchored around a new revolutionary State, which must be born against parasitic capitalism and Berlin conference-created nationality, which does not serve the African working class in Mali or anywhere else.

Any news or “aid” coming from the African Union, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), United Nations or coup leaders represents the status quo. →

Keith Harmon Snow Speaking on Propaganda and NGOs

Within the lecture, Snow discusses the psyops/propaganda strategically orchestrated behind the “Save Darfur” campaigns/movements which, in 2004, began to saturate the populace. At the helm of this “movement” was “The Center for American Progress”.

The Center for American Progress, is closely connected with the same players that founded and financed Avaaz. Today, with Avaaz at the forefront, the non-profit industrial complex has been appointed trusted messenger of a grotesque and disturbing ideology; nothing less than a complete reflection and validation of the U.S. administration’s rhetoric intended to justify the annihilation and occupation of sovereign states under the false pretense of “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect”. →

LESSONS OF LIBYA FOR THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

AGENT OF CHANGE

The following article is based on a speech I gave at Brunel University at the invitation of the Brunel Socialist and Progressive Society.

With that question in mind, we need to review the recent history of an African nation that goes by the name of Libya – until quite recently known as the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In March last year, the United Nations Security Council established a “no fly zone” – which it turns out is ruling class slang for “brutal war of aggression” – ostensibly to prevent the Libyan government from killing unarmed protestors. A year later, I believe it is fair to say that the results of that war have been nothing short of tragic. →

The Morales Government: Neoliberalism in Disguise?

International Socialism

27 March 12

Federico Fuentes

Among these are: the adoption of a plurinational state structure that for the first time recognises the country’s indigenous majority; regaining sovereign control over vital natural resources and initial steps towards endogenous industrialisation; an ongoing agrarian reform; and the development of social programmes that have substantially improved the lives of ordinary Bolivians. Democratic rights have been reinforced; forms of self-government by indigenous communities established; and electoral processes expanded to include popular election even of the judiciary. Not least in importance, Bolivia has also become a prime participant in the movement for Latin American anti-imperialist unification and sovereignty and emerged as a major leader in the international fight against capitalist-induced climate change.

In his recent article in this journal, “Revolution against ‘Progress’”,² Jeffery Webber offers a harsh critique of the MAS government, illustrating it by reference to recent conflicts between the government and some indigenous groups involving environmental and development issues. His conclusion: the government remains committed to a neoliberal programme based on “fiscal austerity”, “low inflationary growth”, “inconsequential agrarian reform”, “low social spending” and “alliances with transnational capital”, among other policies. As such, it shares “more continuity than change with the inherited neoliberal model”.

These are sweeping assertions, and many are questionable. Webber criticises the government’s supposed “fiscal austerity”, yet omits the fact that budget spending has increased almost fourfold between 2004 and 2012. He attacks the government for seeking “low inflation” and “macroeconomic stability”, but what is his alternative: high inflation and macroeconomic instability? These were certainly traits of previous neoliberal governments. Furthermore, is it “inconsequential” that in its first five years the Morales government presided over the redistribution or titling of 41 million hectares of land to over 900,000 members of indigenous peasant communities?³ And if the government’s policy can be simply defined as one of forming alliances to benefit foreign transnationals, why is the Bolivian state currently facing 12 legal challenges in international courts initiated by these same companies?

Profile of neoliberalism

Simply put, Webber ignores the real progress made by the Morales government in rolling back the neoliberal project in Bolivia. Neoliberalism is best understood as a class project that sought to reassert capital’s dominance internationally in the wake of the 1970s economic crisis. Neoliberalism, as Webber himself previously noted, was “set in motion on an international scale largely under the tutelage of the US imperial state” and had as its fundamental strategy not only the “privatisation of formerly state or public resources but their acquisition by transnational capital in the US and other core economies”.⁴

Furthermore, current Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García Linera has noted that neoliberalism rested on three additional “pillars”: “the fragmentation of the labouring sectors and worker organisations…the diminished state, and impediments to people’s decision making”.⁵

The impact of neoliberalism in Bolivia includes:⁶

l The sell-off or dismantling of Bolivia’s largest state-owned companies. In the hydrocarbon sector, which accounted for 50 percent of government revenue, privatisation was accompanied by a drop in royalties companies had to pay from 50 percent to 18 percent. The workforce of YPBF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos) was reduced from more than 9,000 in 1985 to 600 by 2002.

l The state’s dependency on foreign imperialist governments, transnational corporations and their institutions was deepened. International loans and aid covered “roughly half of Bolivia’s public investment”, with each budget deficit bringing further IMF-imposed structural adjustment programmes.

l The removal of state subsidies sent Bolivia’s small industrial sector into crisis. Some 35,000 jobs disappeared in the manufacturing sector alone.

l By 1988 the informal sector had ballooned to 70 percent of Bolivia’s urban workforce, and the few jobs created in the formal sector were subject to labour flexibilisation practices.

l The establishment of power-sharing pacts among traditional parties and restrictions on electoral registration for alternative parties consolidated the grip that neoliberal politicians had on political decision making.

Compare this disastrous record with that of the Morales government. While Bolivia’s state continues to be capitalist, “and the government functions within the framework of deeply entrenched capitalist culture and social relations”, it is equally true that through a combination of successful electoral and insurrectional battles, indigenous-popular forces today are in control of important positions of power within the state.⁷ From these positions, they have used the increased state revenue, generated through nationalisations undertaken across various strategic sectors, to begin breaking its dependency on foreign governments. This strong economic position has allowed those running the Bolivian state to dictate their own domestic and foreign policy, free from any impositions placed by imperialist governments and international financial institutions in return for loans. Ties of the US military to the Bolivian army have been cut.

A constituent assembly wrote a new constitution that for the first time recognises the previously excluded indigenous majority and has recuperated
state control over natural resources. Since the referendum ratifying the new constitution the process of “decolonising” the state has continued, most recently in October 2010, with the holding of Bolivia’s first popular elections to elect judicial authorities. The result was a record number of women and indigenous people flooding into the judicial branch of the state.

The Morales government also initiated a significant shift in Bolivia’s foreign policy, leaving behind the traditional subservient stance towards the US. Instead Bolivia has spearheaded initiatives in the direction of seeking unity with anti-imperialist forces—both at the level of governments and social movements—within the context of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (Alba), and increasing regional collaboration, through institutions such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Another key focus has been the construction of an international alliance to fight for real solutions to the climate crisis, as evidenced by the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change held in Cochabamba in April 2010.

An alternative model

Webber ignores most of these achievements and instead focuses on the MAS industrial strategy and the social tensions that have been expressed around this. But he misrepresents the strategy. Let us look first, then, at what this strategy comprises, as it is a central component in the government’s economic vision. A succinct presentation may be found in a recent article on Bolivia’s economic model by Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, the minister of economy and public finance.

For Arce, “the New Economic, Social, Communitarian and Productive Model” that the government is implementing “does not pretend to immediately change the capitalist mode of production, but instead to lay the foundations for the transition towards a new socialist mode of production”.⁸

Unlike neoliberalism, in which surplus value and rents are appropriated by transnational capital, this new model, as the introduction to his article notes, has taken steps towards:

stimulating the internal market and reducing dependency on the external markets. Similarly, it has given the state a watching brief, endowing it with functions such as planning the economy, administering public enterprises, investing in the productive sector, taking on the role of a banker and regulator and, among other things, redistributing the surplus, with preference to those sectors that were not beneficiaries under previous governments.

The priority, Arce says, is promoting communitarian, cooperative and family-based enterprises (together with increasing social spending). Such a strategy is vital to rebuilding the strength of the working class and communitarian forces, pulverised by two decades of neoliberalism.

In summary: reassert state sovereignty in the economy and over natural resources; break out of Bolivia’s traditional position of primary materials exporter through industrialisation and promoting other productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture; redistribute the nation’s wealth in order to tackle poverty; and strengthen the organisational capacity of proletarian and communitarian forces as the two vital pillars of any possible transition to socialism in Bolivia today. Such a perspective, which seeks to advance the interest of Bolivia’s labouring classes at the expense of transnational capital, may be decried by some as mere reforms, but it is certainly not neoliberalism. →

Argentine Journalist Stella Calloni Denounces Avaaz | Latin American Unions Follow Her Lead

And again, as always, the voices of reason, compassion and decency resonate from those descendants of the Latin American countries …

Latin American union groups and members have been “denouncing, through the network of friendly trenches, the hidden labor of AVAAZ and its duplicity in its treatment of certain topics”.  They have also circulated the response to Avaaz written by Stella Calloni – the highly respected Argentine journalist.

(Fwd: [uniondelospueblos] La labor solapada de AVAAZ y su doble cara. Stella Calloni desmiente mensaje a nombre de AVAAZ)

Stella Calloni, a member of the current leadership of the Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires (UTPBA), is a highly respected correspondent in South America of the Mexican daily La Jornada and director of Challenge Magazine. She is also an author of numerous books including “The years of the Wolf: Operation Condor” (1999) and “Argentina, the crisis of resistance” (2002), among others.

The original version, as written in Spanish, follows.

23-feb-12, La Polilla

For some weeks we have been denouncing, through the network of friendly trenches, the hidden labor of AVAAZ and its duplicity in its treatment of certain topics; today, from Argentina, Stella Calloni thoroughly refutes the manipulative and dis-informing messages issued in the name of this group:

Stella Calloni refutes message in the name of AVAAZ

“You lie. You know that hundreds of mercenaries have entered Syria, and special operations troops (the worst and dirtiest within the armies of United States, United Kingdom, France, Israel), and what they have in mind with this story about repression is to do the same as they did in Libya, first sending in these groups and mercenaries to create focos, so as to later say, when the government under attack defends itself, that it is attacking a rebellious people. You lie as did Goebbels, who now looks small next to you. And you know very well to whom you answer. You presented yourselves as a network for justice, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to serve dirty wars, unjust invasions, and genocides like those committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. You are as criminal and mercenary as those who kill without pity. At least we are now many who have discovered your game.” →

SPEAKING TRUTH: A Profound Message to Avaaz from Poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina

As always, the voices of reason, compassion and decency resonate from those descendants of the Latin American  countries …

“I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the Spring of truth makes life more humane for you.”

The original version, as written in Spanish, follows.

 Image: Argentinian Poet, Gabriel Impaglione

Gentlemen of Avaaz,

I firmly request that my email address be removed from your message-distribution lists, a request that I reiterate once again.

The violence in Syria will cease when the forces that act to destabilize that country are shipped back to their imperial bases. The horror that the Syrian people are living is the horror of the imperial intervention, of the select world of capital.

The self-determination of the peoples is the first concept that you violate with your campaigns cosmetically disguised with do-good pacifism.

Information in the service of the causes of greed is as aberrant as the seditious groups infiltrated into the societies that come under the stare of perversity.

The Syrian Spring burgeons in the work, education, culture, sovereignty, dignity, self-determination of the Syrian people, there is no Spring on the imperial geopolitical chessboards, it is impossible to design Springs in the halls of capital and the arms industry. That which you call the Syrian Spring is the Syrian Hell, and the interests that move those savage circles of sulfur and lucre color your communiqués and evidence the display of perversion and lies.

Will other peoples in the world remain on the list of your peace campaigns?

Will you, in your domesticating efforts, call for action on behalf of the peoples of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, North Vietnam, North Korea, China…?

Will all of South America be added? Will you be told to do the same for Central America?

Will you ever allude in the slightest to the fifty-year-old blockade of Cuba that is maintained by your bosses from the North?

Do the Israeli, British, US bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, that tear life apart and yield excellent economic results for your bosses not enter into your campaigns for peace for the peoples?

The hypocrisy, the perversion, the media manipulation, at times bring directly to mind a last name that belongs to the worst of the human species: Goebbels. You follow that road of “lie, lie, for something will stick.”

The peoples of the world awaken, begin to understand the macabre game of the bosses. Peace is built on truth.

Maybe you would never understand that.

I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the Spring of truth makes life more humane for you.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Impaglione

Poet, Argentina

+++

Gabriel Impaglione is a poet and journalist born in Moron, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1958. He is now based in  based in Sardinia, Italy, where he lives with his wife, the Italian writer Giovanna Mulas. For his full bio and to source his work please visit: http://www.artepoetica.net/Gabriel_Impaglione.htm

Gabriel Impaglione (Morón, Bs As, 1958), Argentine writer and journalist. He published: Echarle Pájaros the mundo (Panorama, Bs As, 1994); Breviary of cartography Magica (El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2002); Poemas Quietos (front Mizares Editorial, Barcelona, ??2002) Bagdad y otros Poemas (El Taller the Poet, Galicia, 2003); Letrario de Utopolis (Linajes, Mexico, 2004); Callejera Prensa (The Moon Que, Bs As, 2004), Song to a Prisionero (Editorial Poetas Antimperialistas, Ottawa, 2005); Alala-edition Spanish-(El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2005). Founder and Editor of Poetry & Literature Isla Negra.

http://www.vialetrastevere.org/newpage39.html

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Señores de Avaaz,

solicito con firmeza que mi mail sea retirado de vuestras listas de distribución de mensajes, solicitud que reitero una vez mas.

Ustedes hacen circular información parcializada, manoseada por intereses espúreos, convocan por iniciativas amañadas y tendenciosas que representan los intereses de la garra colonialista, hablan de paz y cuando hablan de paz hablan de sometimiento a la codicia unipolar, cuando hablan de paz hablan de ocupación y dependencia, cuando ustedes hablan de paz hablan con el idioma del terrorismo que azota a los pueblos y pretende imponer modelos “democráticos” que no son otra cosa que gerenciamientos estratégicos para el sometimiento y la avidez de las alianzas imperiales.

La violencia en Siria cesará cuando las fuerzas que actúan para la desestabilización de ese país se embarquen de regreso a sus bases imperiales. El horror que vive el pueblo sirio es el horror de la intervención imperial, del selecto mundo del capital.

La autodeterminación de los pueblos es el primer concepto que ustedes violentan con sus campañas maquilladas de buenismo pacifista.

La información al servicio de las causas de la codicia es tan aberrante como los grupos sediciosos infiltrados en las sociedades que caen bajo la mira de la perversidad.

La primavera Siria brota en el trabajo, en la educación, en la cultura, en la soberanía, en la dignidad, en la autodeterminación del pueblo sirio, no existe primavera en los tableros geopolíticos imperiales, es imposible diseñar primaveras en los salones del capital y la industria armamentista. Aquello que ustedes llaman primavera siria es infierno sirio y los intereses que mueven esos salvajes círculos del azufre y el lucro tiñen vuestros comunicados y evidencian el despliegue de la perversión y la mentira.

Otros pueblos del mundo seguirán en el listado de sus campañas de paz?

Convocarán en vuestra gesta domesticadora a la acción por los pueblos de Irán, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Vietnam del Norte, Corea del Norte, China….?

Se sumará Sudamérica entera? Les dictarán hacer lo propio por Centroamérica?

Jamás harán la mínima alusión al cincuentenario bloqueo a Cuba que mantienen sus patrones del norte?

Las bombas israelíes, inglesas, norteamericanas en Irak, Afganistán, Libia, que desgarran la vida y dejan excelentes resultados económicos a vuestros patrones no entran en sus campañas por la paz de los pueblos?

La hipocrecía, la perversión del manoseo informativo, a veces remiten directamente a un apellido que pertenece a lo peor de la especie humana: Goebbels. Ustedes van por ese camino de “miente, miente que algo queda”.

Los pueblos del mundo despiertan, comienzan a entender el macabro juego de los mandones. La paz se construye sobre la verdad.

Tal vez ustedes jamás lo entenderían.

Les deseo un reparador baño de conciencia, les deseo que puedan estrenar el ojo de frente al prójimo, les deseo que la primavera de la verdad les haga la vida más humana

atte

gabriel impaglione

poeta, Argentina

+++

Gabriel Impaglione (Morón, Bs As, 1958), Argentine writer and journalist. He published: Echarle Pájaros the mundo (Panorama, Bs As, 1994); Breviary of cartography Magica (El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2002); Poemas Quietos (front Mizares Editorial, Barcelona, ??2002) Bagdad y otros Poemas (El Taller the Poet, Galicia, 2003); Letrario de Utopolis (Linajes, Mexico, 2004); Callejera Prensa (The Moon Que, Bs As, 2004), Song to a Prisionero (Editorial Poetas Antimperialistas, Ottawa, 2005); Alala-edition Spanish-(El Taller del Poeta, Galicia, 2005). Founder and Editor of Poetry & Literature Isla Negra.

http://www.vialetrastevere.org/newpage39.html

The KONY 2012 Campaign: A Tool to Advance the Call from “Civil Society” NGOs Who Have Urged Obama to Send “Military Advisors” to Uganda

http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/11/11/letter-president-barack-obama-civil-society-representatives-lra-affected-areas-democ

FLASHBACK TO OCTOBER 20, 2011: The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels

On 20 October, 2011 award winning journalist Jon Pilger published the article titled “The Son of Africa claims a continent’s crown jewels”. Excerpts:

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way. …

 

In Africa, says Obama, the “humanitarian mission” is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s resistance Army (LRA), which “has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa”. This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.

 

Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the “national security of the United States”. The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has few than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US “national security” usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s “president-for-life” Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military “aid” – including Obama’s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories. …

 

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the “scramble for Africa” at the end of the 19th century.

 

Like the “victory” in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified “pro-Gaddafi” fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, “celebrate”. According to General Petraeus, there is now a war “of perception… conducted continuously through the news media”.

 

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo,  provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s “defence strategy” plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.

 

That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the  “Son of Africa”, is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in ‘Black Skin, White Masks’, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.

 

Read the full article here.

For more information on the Kony 2012 campaign, Libya and Syria, and the scramble for Africa, follow Libya360

LIBYA Humanitarian War: The Role Of NED-Linked NGOs Using Fake Evidence For War Now Targeting Syria:

http://youtu.be/JIRM4j63_0M

Background Information on Kony 2012

RESIST AFRICOM

Sostenere il governo USA senza saperlo: il grave esempio di “Avaaz”

Sinistra.ch | Blog di informazione e critica sociale della Svizzera Italiana

18 febbraio 2012

“Responsibility to Protect” as Imperial Tool

The left should support an active peace policy through international cooperation, disarmament, and non-intervention of states in the internal affairs of others. … Moreover, the left should strive towards strict respect for international law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide US empire of bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use of force, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in particular all operations of “democracy promotion”, “color” revolutions, and the exploitation of the politics of minorities.

February 20, 2012

The Case for a Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy

by JEAN BRICMONT

Louvain-la-Neuve

The events in Syria, after those in Libya last year, are accompanied by calls for a military intervention, in order to “protect civilians”, claiming that it is our right or our duty to do so. And, just as last year, some of the loudest voices in favor of intervention are heard on the left or among the Greens, who have totally swallowed the concept of “humanitarian intervention”. In fact, the rare voices staunchly opposed to such interventions are often associated with the right, either Ron Paul in the US or the National Front in France. The policy the left should support is non-intervention.

The main target of the humanitarian interventionists is the concept of national sovereignty, on which the current international law is based, and which they stigmatize as allowing dictators to kill their own people at will.  The impression is sometimes given that national sovereignty is nothing but a protection for dictators whose only desire is to kill their own people.

But in fact, the primary justification of national sovereignty is precisely to provide at least a partial protection of weak states against strong ones. A state that is strong enough can do whatever it chooses without worrying about intervention from outside. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States.  Nobody is going to bomb the United States to force it to modify its immigration or monetary policies because of the human consequences of such policies on other countries. Humanitarian intervention goes only one way, from the powerful to the weak. →