Self Determination In The New World Order

Foreword, by Lloyd N. Cutler

The errors - military, political, and not least diplomatic - in the continuing unfolding of the Yugoslav tragedy over the decade since the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the final ending of the Cold War, offer certain lessons. It had been confidently predicted that the complex, multi-national Yugoslav state created by the World War I victors at Versailles in 1919, and continued by the post-World War II peace settlements, would not long survive Marshal Tito's death. As it happened, when the moment of truth arrived the concert of Western European powers had no clear and coherent plans ready for a rational brokering of the resulting problems of State Succession, including renewed federal or confederal structures, and peaceful and orderly transfer and relocation of civil populations if fragmentation and independence were to be the immediate policy options. The rush to a 'premature' State Recognition by one or more leading Western European political players, without having any congress of Berlin-style game-plan ready to guide and direct this, may have triggered the on-rush of political and military events that led, in quick succession, to the Bosnian and then the Kosovo tragedies of the 1990s. The author, currently President of the Institut de Droit International and a jurisconsult and advisor, over the years, to international and national governmental authorities, examines consequences and challenges for International Law and Law-making, as we enter the new Millennium. Taking note of the antinomies and contradictions inherent in Classical International Law Categories like Territorial Integrity and the Self-determination of Peoples, the Non-Use-of-Force and Collective (regional) Self-Defence, the author considers, in particular, the direct conflict, in the case of both Bosnia and Kosovo, between the United Nations Charter principle of Non-Intervention and the claimed 'New' International Law principle of Humanitarian Intervention. The legally permissible modalities and structures and processes for exercise of Humanitarian Intervention, in accord with the United Nations Charter and also general International Law, are canvassed and weighed.

Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world. Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order. Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order.

Dov Ronen proposes in this interpretive essay that ethnic nationalism is simply the newest form of a basic human drive for self-determination that has been manifested in four other movements since the French Revolution: nineteenth-century nationalism, Marxist-Leninist class self-determination, self-determination for minorities as espoused by Wilson, and decolonization. Ronen's intention in this book is to explain what self-determination is, why people fight for it, and what the implications of the struggle may be. Though Ronen's approach is primarily analytical and philosophical, he uses four cases (the Scots, Biafra, the Palestinians, and South Africa) to illustrate the application of his thesis to current events.

This book examines the conceptual and political history of the right of self-determination of peoples.

TABLE OF UN DOCUMENTS.

"Modern Law of Self-Determination" examines the significance of the right to self-determination in the new world order. For decades, self-determination was seen as a right of colonial peoples. Now the decolonization process has come to an end, its scope and meaning need to be re-examined. Increasingly, the ethnic groups within established nation States claim some separate political status. In extreme cases of persecution of an ethnic group by a ruling majority, secession may provide the only viable remedy to resolve the conflict. However, international law cannot promote a general Balkanization' of the globe. The legitimate interests of all ethnic groups should be accommodated within the framework of existing States. Self-determination, which today is predominantly understood as implying a right to independent statehood, may have to be re-interpreted as conferring no more than a right to autonomy or federal statehood. Such a conception is in line with a modern tendency that highlights the necessary internal dimension of self-determination. "Modern Law of Self-Determination" is based on papers delivered at a conference in Bonn in August 1992 which have been updated and reviewed by the authors in light of the discussions following their presentation.

This book tells the neglected story of non-Western peoples at the time of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, showing how Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of self-determination helped ignite the upheavals that erupted in the spring of 1919 in four disparate non-Western societies--Egypt, India, China and Korea.

"Among the most influential models in contemporary behavioral science, self-determination theory (SDT) offers a broad framework for understanding the factors that promote human motivation and psychological flourishing. In this authoritative work, SDT cofounders Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci systematically review the theory's conceptual underpinnings, empirical evidence base, and practical applications across the lifespan. Ryan and Deci demonstrate that supporting people's basic needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy is critically important for virtually all aspects of individual and societal functioning."--Jacket.