Codification of State Sovereignty Led Inexorably to the Holocaust and Atomic Warfare - Essay Example

Topic: Do you agree that the codification of sovereignty ‘led inexorably to the Holocaust and atomic warfare’? Two major historical traumas that occurred in the 20th century – the Holocaust and atomic warfare, both involved countries that exercised its full sovereign rights which led many nations to the Second World War. Around six million Jews died in the hands of the Nazi, a political party which represented the legal government of Germany in 1933 (Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2011). On the other hand, over 200,000 Japanese civilians died when the United States aircraft dropped atomic bombs in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- a decisive action of the United States to put an immediate end of war and prevented further loss of lives (The Atomic Archive, 2011). Looking back at the scale of atrocities done by totalitarian and militarist governments over the past century, the role and obligation of the world community to intervene in the state affairs during humanitarian crises confronts a crucial challenge to the idea of state sovereignty. In today’s globalized community, the act of a state or group of states to use force in order to protect the lives of people other than their own citizen defies the main tenant on the codification of state sovereignty – that is the right of a state to exercise its ultimate authority within its territory. Viewpoint & Assumption Can the catastrophic events of the Holocaust and atomic warfare be attributed to the absolute exercise of state sovereignty? To examine this position, a careful analysis of the sovereignty principle and an exploration of the historical events are needed in order to establish the claim. This is rightly done so, because to say that the concept of state sovereignty contributed to the escalation of these catastrophic events of the Second World War is to recognize the justification of humanitarian intervention – the deliberate action of the international community to prevent human rights abuses of governments to its citizen. In this regard, the paper argues that while humanitarian intervention during the Second World War could have prevented the violence of authoritarian states, most nations could not readily commit to wage war because of its social, political and economic cost. The intervention itself can be rightfully justified; because the moment both Japan and Germany entered to war, it already submitted its sovereignty and challenged other nation’s sovereign rights. However, the international community is hesitant in intervening with authoritarian states not only because of social and economic implications of war, but also because no interest was at stake for these nations. The same issue persists on the humanitarian intervention or the lack of it, done in Libya, Syria, and Rwanda. To establish this viewpoint, a historical background of the Second World War events and the prevailing belief about the exercise of sovereignty will provide a better context for the argument. Then, a detailed discussion on the basic principles of state sovereignty will establish a clearer understanding for the idea of sovereign right. Following this discussion is the careful examination of the social, political, and economic reasons for the indecision and delay to intervene with German and Japanese powers. The Parallel Events of WWII While it may be argued that the holocaust and the atomic warfare are two distinct events that led to the loss of millions of lives, the main idea is that Germany and Japan were both authoritarian states that touted its some of its people to commit human rights violence during the Second World War. Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally challenged while the Imperial Japanese Army under Emperor Hirohito committed killings against millions of civilians and prisoners of war in China, Korea, and other Asian countries. While these atrocities were committed, it must be noted that the social and economic conditions of major nations such as the United States, France, and the UK had just been recovering from the economic upheavals of the First World War. According to Grobman (1990), Britain and the United States were aware of a declassified document about Hitler’s “Final Solution” plot to exterminate the Jewish population in Europe (Grobman, 2011). In fact, a document from the National Archives of the US Coordinator of Information (COI) on March 20, 1942 specifically discussed the state-backed murders by the German government. It can also be assumed that the intelligence agencies of major nations know about the atrocities that Japan committed while expanding its power in Asia. However, it must be taken into account that these major nations remained indifferent to the systematic murder of Jewish population and the war crimes committed by Japanese officials during the earlier Sino-Japanese war. Raising Questions & Probable Answers Because government officials knew about the state-planned mass murders of Jews and East Asians by authoritarian powers, the question now raised is why there was lack of response from major nations such as France, US, and UK? To put it simply: why did they not intervene early on and have potentially saved millions of lives? There can be two responses to this question: 1.) the politically-charged reason and 2.) the hard and indigestible truths about the interest of nations. The politically-charged response is backed by the concept of state sovereignty, while the hard truth answer is presented in the underlying circumstances that prevailed in the international scene during the 1940s. These two reasons will provide a better understanding why it is not the codification of state sovereignty concept that 1. The State Sovereignty Concept First, the legal and political concept of state sovereignty is raised when the question of humanitarian intervention is brought up in the international community. State sovereignty, as defined by Clunnan (1988), refers to the “set of rules about institutional boundaries that divide territorial and political space and determine who can do what to whom and for what reasons”. Though the term has varied meanings across history, its core principle remains that it is the ultimate exercise of the state’s authority within its territory. During the Second World War, the common defence on the lack of response or delayed intervention in the human rights violation of Japan and Germany is the codification of state sovereignty exercised in international politics. Many nations were under the impression that the actions taken by Hitler were under the German law and, through its exercise of state sovereignty, carried out genocide with impunity. Likewise, the systematic slaughter of civilians by the Imperial Japanese Army left the victims with no authorized agency to report such atrocities. Moreover, the claim that it was only after the Second World War that nations realized the grave brutality of these human rights abuses and, as a result, these events had forever changed international politics towards humanitarian intervention by the world community. To refute this common justification on the lack of intervention by allied powers, it is important to carefully examine the state sovereignty concept and look at its different application. 1a.) – International Legal Sovereignty Excuse First and foremost, the codification of state sovereignty has been used in different ways. Krasner (1999) pointed that there are four main ways that sovereignty is used in international politics: international legal sovereignty, Westphalian sovereignty, domestic sovereignty and interdependence sovereignty (Krasner, 2009). Specifically, the author highlighted how international legal sovereignty (refers to the practices associated with mutual recognition between territorial entities with formal juridical independence) and Westphalian sovereignty (refers to the political organization based on the exclusion of external actors from authority structures within a territory) involve issues of authority and legitimacy but not control. And so, these become the bases the different ways sovereignty is used by different countries to justify either the intervention or the lack of it of a state with human rights abuses, depending on the nation’s interest. For instance, in the case of the atrocities of German and Japanese abuses during the Second World War, the allied powers exercised the Westphalian sovereignty to justify its indifference toward the abuses mainly because of the social, political, and economic costs of waging yet another major war on these countries. On the other hand, the use of international legal sovereignty in Libya but not in Syria by the U.S. and NATO is a fine example of the different ways sovereignty is used to cover the interest of the powerful state groups. This illustration of state sovereignty intervention was pointed by Bresnahan (2011) as he wrote that while both countries have almost the same suffering and abuses, Libya is strategically located near Europe and an oil-rich state (Breshanan, 2011). In this case, it can be said that formulating the excuse of sovereignty is mainly an excuse for a nation or group of states whether or not an intervention should be made to nations with escalating human rights abuses. 1b.) – Refuting the Westphalian Sovereignty Going back to the holocaust and atomic wars, it can be argued that even if the allied nations were indeed looking at the Westphalian Sovereignty when it decided to delay its intervention in Europe and Asia during the Second World War, this reason can still be easily refuted by questioning the concept itself. For thousands of years, even before the major world wars, nations have fought each other regardless of the sovereignty principle. The treaty of Westphalia, which was now popularly dubbed to have allowed the formation of European sovereign states in 1648, was more of an agreement to end religious rather than inter-state intervention. Philpott (2010) argued that the treaty of Wesphalia certainly did not “create a sovereign states system ex nihilo, for components of the system had been accumulating for centuries up to the settlement”. With this, the Wesphalian sovereignty cannot be directly attributed as a reason not to intervene in the human rights abuses done by the German and Japanese authoritarian states. Now, even if the allied nations insist on the misconstrued understanding of Westphalian sovereignty, their non-intervention still cannot be justified because the German and Japanese states have surrendered their sovereign rights the moment it decided to spread its abuse on neighbouring states. Even the leading nations such as the United States and Soviet Union violated the Wesphalian principle on the autonomy of states when, after the Second World War, it “influenced and determined the constitutional structures of many states within their respective spheres of influences”. To borrow the phrase from Krasner (1999), the justification of non-intervention through the use of sovereign rights is an “organized hypocrisy, not embeddedness or taken for grantedness has characterized the Westphalian model”. 2. Self-interest and Indigestible Truths To further understand the impassiveness of allied nations with the rise of Germany and Japan, it is important to exam the prevailing sentiment of the international community during that time. There are two contentions raised: 1.) the hesitation of major nations to go through another war because of its economic upheavals; and 2.) the prevailing self-interest of nations to reach out to people beneficial to their state. First, it can be noted how after the First World War, various nations were preoccupied in rebuilding its respective nation and, as much as possible, prevent another event that would lead to a major war. During that time, Germany had started rebuilding the nation after its defeat in the war. However, while this is happening all over the continent, Germany also continued to break the important Treaty of Versailles wherein countries are forbidden to enter demilitarized zones of their own nation. The international community watched and did nothing as Hitler and his party occupied Austria in 1938 (Flurry, 2002). No allied nation ever wanted to go to war because economic and social conditions were still weak. With this, it might be logical to point out that no country could risk a military intervention or a wage war on a nation, in defence of another state if other countries cannot benefit from it. A case in point is an examination of the first genocide of the 20th century – the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turkish government during and after the First World War. There were over 1 million Armenians who were killed and yet this was not recognized by major powers at that time. In short, not a single allied country raised a concern about it in part because most nations were rebuilding their states or also because some countries were just apathetic to these concerns. And so, looking back at the violations of Treaty that Hitler’s Nazi Party did after the First World War, it seemed that Germany continued provoking other countries for yet another war to build up its power within the European continent. Allied states feared that standing up to Hitler could again cause the collapse of the socio-economic situation in these countries. As such, Churchill dubbed the second world as “unnecessary”, as he cited that European democracies could have prevented Hitler in his plans to expand power across Europe and murder millions of Jews. Moreover, while allied nations did not want to involve itself in war, it also partly neglected the plight of the millions of Jewish people dispersed by the Nazi persecution. The United States, France, and the UK did not initially allow Jews to get an asylum during the onset of the holocaust persecution. They could not just commit on the entry of Jewish refugees into their nations. In fact, the Jewish Virtual Library documented how the Nazi offered the British a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks to which a British diplomat replied, "What would I do with one million Jews? Where would I put them?" (Grobman, 1990). It is these kinds of international indifference that made the horrific events of holocaust and atomic warfare to an extreme level unimaginable to the rest of humanity. Conclusion For thousands of years, even before the concept of a sovereign state was made, tribal groups and nations have already waged war at each other and killing one another. The idea of sovereignty came in the form of the Wesphalian Treaty or ultimate exercise of supreme authority within a territory. Overtime however, the sovereignty idea was viewed and utilized by state leaders either to defend its extreme authority over its people or to remain impassive about the human rights abuses by other states. However, this paper presented substantial reasons and detailed account on how the idea above is considered baseless and hypocritical. As such, debunking the concept that the codification of sovereign state led to the non-intervention of human rights abuses against other states was necessary in order to present the “organized hypocrisy” brought about by the sovereignty argument against humanitarian intervention and human rights protection. To answer the question: do you agree that the codification of state sovereignty ‘led inexorably to the Holocaust and atomic warfare’? The author outlined the following points in order to negate the state sovereignty as the primary cause of the Holocaust and atomic warfare: 1. After World War I, most nations could not readily commit to wage war because of its social, political and economic cost. 2. Allied nations only watched Germany as it broke the Treaty of Versailles and occupied Austria. 3. Initially, allied nations were not able to immediately offer asylum to Jewish populace and remained impassive to the Nazi atrocities. 4. The concept of sovereignty was used as an excuse for other nations not to concern itself with its human rights responsibility. Indeed, the world has many things to learn from the wars that have shaped the international community of today. Sadly, with the recent examples raised in this paper regarding the Syria – Libya intervention and the denial of Armenian genocide, it is still a major challenge for the international community to protect the rights of an individual, regardless of religion, state membership, race, and gender. The belief held in this paper is that there is actually an absence of humanitarian intervention in the course of world history. Such phrase remains non-existent until a nation or group of states that wishes to prevent human rights abuses in a country genuinely do it without hidden political and economic interests. Today, the horrific situations in Sudan, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia and other rights-deprived nations only proved that there is still long way to go before the intervention done by governments become genuinely humanitarian. References Florida Center for Instructional Technology. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. Florida: University of Florida Press, 2005. Web. 5 December 2011 http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/nazirise.htm The Atomic Archive. The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Total Casualties. California: National Science Digital Library, 2011. Web. 5 December 2011 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml Grobman, Gary. World Response to the Holocaust. In Jewish Virtual Library. New York: American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 1990. Web. 5 December 2011 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/worldres.html Clunan, Anne L. Negotiating Sovereingty and Human Rights. In Negotiating sovereignty and human rights: actors and issues in contemporary. Shawki, Noha & Cox, Michaelene (ed.) Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1988. Print. Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy? New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999. Print. Bresnahan, Brian. Libya vs. Syria. Nebraska: York News Times. 24 August 2011. Web. 5 December 2011. http://www.yorknewstimes.com/articles/2011/08/24/editorials/doc4e544d48acf35569439671.txt Philpott, Dan, "Sovereignty", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Edward N. Zalta (ed.) 2010 Web. 5 December 2011 http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/sovereignty/ Flurry, Geraly. WWII: The Unnecessary War. Trumpet Print Edition, September/October 2002. 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