Week 6: Post Debate

The class debate this week was instructive and interesting. The debate itself mirrored how I would bet that this debate and other critical debates happen on the international scale. Two opposing parties come to the table with the desire to be “right,” terms and concepts aren’t clearly defined from the outset, and events are seen through the eye of the beholder- what is fundamental change for one side is another rational choice for another side.

One of the critical pieces we missed was defining terms. What constitutes the international system? What is change? What counts as fundamental? If we had taken the time to do this, we may have been able to answer each other’s points and assertions more directly, rather than each talking from our own script. I can only imagine that this is a common challenge in other international negotiations. Myths and misconceptions abound when terms are not defined, and people act from a place of suspicion and mistrust when things are unclear.

Until Professor Shirked asked me this in class, I hadn’t realized that the debate had centered on the idea that fundamental change is the change of sovereignty. I think that made my team’s pro side a bit weaker, as we could have talked about other areas of international relations where change is seen more easily than in the concept of sovereignty. Economic cooperation, human rights law, humanitarian intervention (aid) and military cooperation for humanitarian purposes are all examples of changes in the system. Whether or not these are fundamental is up for debate, but they are changes indeed.

One of the arguments that I presented for our team which I would have liked to see answered was about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). This to me seems like a fundamental change in the international system, and a limiting of sovereignty that hasn’t been done before. (You can tell this in part by how many American realists flipped their theoretical lid as the UN discussed the idea.) R2P gives the international community the right (and the responsibility) to intervene in a country for humanitarian purposes when the state is not protecting its people. This has been invoked in many cases (mostly on the African continent- a book could and probably has been written about that) such as Darfur, Sudan, Libya, and CAR. Underlying the R2P is that sovereignty is not unconditional and can be revoked or impeded upon when a state is denying it’s citizen’s protection. Sovereign territoriality in particular is not a given. While sovereignty remains, the conditions on which its granted have fundamentally changed.