Abstract

The right to national self-determination is a peremptory norm of international law since 1945 and the UN Charter’s ratification. Its interpretation has focused on the principle of uti possidetis juris, which in effect means that it applies to colonial communities with established borders. The incongruence of these borders with the national aspirations of peoples reflects the political context that established these borders. These political systemic factors included the political parochialism of the predominantly traditional peoples over which the great powers negotiated these borders. Regime authorities created internal borders partly to facilitate acquiescence to their control along with the utilization, to varying degrees, of coercion and utilitarian incentives in authoritarian systems. In the current political systemic context of near-complete political awareness and mobilization of the world’s adult population, maintenance of these borders is often antithetical to the maintenance of liberal democratic political regimes. Suppression of national self-determination movements involved significant reliance upon coercive silencing of them, as applied in the Soviet Union and socialist Yugoslavia. Their political liberalization congruently led to the disintegration of these heretofore authoritarian multinational states. Irredentist wars in the former Yugoslavia and USSR indicate that a human rights-focused international peace strategy should include national self-determination and alteration of borders. In this ideal-typical context, an international human rights worldwide movement would visibly display such political efficacy that state leaders engaging in humanitarian intervention appear to be acting due to irresistible political pressure. Otherwise, target communities will remain suspicious of universalistic appeals as propaganda for ulterior particularistic motives.