Well, I said I would weigh in here if Saen presented a lucid OP, so here I am.
To the OP: is this really the question we want to ask? Why should the UN “trump” the rights of nation states? That was not its charter or purpose; it was designed by those selfsame nation states to provide a quasi-governmental framework in which all of the nations in the world could participate. Period. As I stated in the other thread, it is not a “government” in that it has no means of enforcing its will on the collective. However, it has the ability to make policy, and was given a structure that would allow it to provide benefits to its members; being a member is still arguably better than not, even though the organization is weakened considerably when unilateral actions are taken by its constituents.
While the US Constitution and the UN charter may have similarities (we did help draft the charter, after all), no one has stated that the charter suborns the constitutional basis of any of its members; so, there is really no way the UN could “trump” the sovereignty of any of its member states. It was never meant to do so, nor was it given the power to do so.
Now, on to some other comments in the thread: I see a definite tendency by Saen to deny that there is some sort of global community
. Do you really live in a cave? There are many ideas of a global community; though there is no global governance, per se, there is no denying that what one nation does affects the others. If a member of the global community makes a unilateral move that in some way affects its neighbor or another state, it usually indirectly affects others in the community as well; if Brazil were to invade Ecuador out of concern for the defense of its sovereign rights, those two countries would not be the only members of the global community to be affected, right? If a larger member, such as the US, changes the way in which it trades with any other country (through the manipulation of tariffs, for example) it has an effect, to a lesser or greater degree, on the world economy as a whole. The world realized this when the League of Nations was created; its failures and weaknesses were obvious, but the world community could not ignore that some body needed to exist on an international level. The UN was created as a realization that a world body needed to exist, to reduce the amount of unilateral actions that had lead to WWII (and even WWI, as the League of Nations was found to be extremely wanting in this regard).
The fact is (and evidently it is a painful one for some): the world is not as “big” as it once was, and unilateral actions on the part of one nation towards others can create serious repercussions for all. The UN is not designed to interfere in the internal activities of the sovereign nation state: the state’s constitutional and governmental frameworks exist to serve the citizenry of the state, and the UN does not infringe upon that sovereignty, unless asked to do so. The UN is there to provide a framework when one sovereign state deals with another, or when a dispute between nation states arises; in other words, in the international, not the national, arena.
Obviously, Saen sees neither a reason for the existence of the UN, nor for any need for sovereign nations to respect the rights of other sovereign nations; for, at heart, this is what the conversation is about. No one can dispute that sovereignty gives a nation the right to do what it pleases within its own boundaries; somehow, Saen and others have extrapolated the right of the nation state to govern itself within its boundaries as the right to impinge upon other sovereign states. As stated in the previous thread: though you may feel that historically it is still might makes right, there have been two world bodies created (the LoN, and the UN) to dispel that idea, and to allow the smaller and developing nation states to grow and prosper. In 2000 years of history, the world has progressed, one would hope, to a better understanding of the rights of other peoples to enjoy the same freedom of self-determination that made us such a great nation; though the imperial nations colonized and annexed other countries and peoples for their resources, we don’t in this day and age admit that what they did was inherently right. The US was founded on the basic right to self-determination; we fought off the British Empire, and ourselves never actively became a colonial power (remember, we were against the idea, considering we were a colony at one point), though one could argue that some of our actions could be construed by the international community as such. Unfortunately, it seems that even in this day and age there are those that want us to be imperial and colonial, just because we have the might to do so; only now the justification is for defense of our sovereign rights. Sorry to be vulgar, but this is, simply put, bullshit: we, as the world’s champion of freedom, have no inherent right to push our form of governance off on any other nation state. More to the point: our sovereign rights should not “trump” those of any other state, no matter how small or much we disagree with them, unless that state poses a direct threat to our sovereignty. By doing so, we invalidate all that we have striven to give meaning to; we become the “Imperialist”, the “Colonial Power”, whose chains we threw off over 200 years ago. We have the might to do whatever we choose, and damn the consequences; where is it our “sovereign” right to trample the sovereign rights of other nation states? Who are we to determine whether one sovereign country has the right to retain its sovereignty, its identity? If, as others state, the case is that all countries have sovereign rights, where is the case that one country’s sovereignty is more important than that of any other country? Sorry, denying that there is no world community, and that we therefore can act in any way we choose, is an ignorant position; there are reactions for every action, and the effects can and will create changes that affect every single person on the planet. Just like individuals, each state must be responsible for the actions it takes and the decisions it makes, in regards to others in the community. To act unilaterally, without regard for others, is irresponsible; presumably we were all taught that as children. It is no less irresponsible for a nation to behave in the same manner.
Greco