Sadly, the world has many tyrants and many brutal regimes. They range from the merely repressive to outright murderous. They typically share some characteristics – an authoritarian leader, a powerful military that wields too much political power, a political and business class that becomes fabulously wealthy by stealing and squandering most of the resources and riches the country produces, a total control of the media, and a police state security apparatus that obliterates all opposition.
After World War Two, the USA led an effort to create a rules-based order of nations with the express intent of avoiding future catastrophic conflict between nations. The result, the United Nations was created and given the task and the prerogative to act to prevent war. But understandably, it was expressly forbidden to interfere in domestic affairs of sovereign nations. The only exception to this is when domestic issues threaten the security or peace of other nations.
There are sovereign nations that most of the world would agree are horribly dysfunctional and repressive. Their people are suffering and their leaders are tyrants and criminals. Individual nations and the UN can attempt to influence these rogue states through economic and diplomatic actions, but the international community cannot intercede militarily unless that nation is threatening world peace.
This is the sad dilemma of regime change by the international community. As tragic and horrible as many world regimes are, they must ultimately be toppled or reformed from within. There is a certain logic to this. Regime changes from outside a nation are ultimately invasions and have rarely resulted in a stable democratic government. One has only to look at Afghanistan and Iraq after the interminable wars and attempted nation-building by the USA and other NATO allies to see the folly of this type of meddling in other nations’ affairs.
Where would one start? Myanmar is a horror show. The whole Sudan area is in desperate need of new government. Multiple African nations are disasters. North Korea has both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles besides being an incredibly repressive regime.
In theory, if a rogue regime is acting to endanger world peace, the UN could assemble an international military force to confront that threat under the principle of collective security. This was done in the case of Korea and in Iraq in 1990. (An asterisk must be assigned to Korea, as the Soviet Union, a security council member, was absent from the UN at that time in protest of the Peoples Republic of China not being admitted). But the interpretation of what poses a threat to collective security varies dramatically among UN members and it is very difficult to gain consensus for such actions. This is frustrating, but consensus it is at the heart of a rules-based order and actions without it pose a huge risk of future conflict.
When the USA acts unilaterally to depose or assassinate the head of a regime, as it has recently done in Venezuela and Iran and is threatening to do in Cuba, or undertakes large scale military action without any support of the international community, it sets a precedent that can only lead to other flagrant violations by other nations. Indeed, Russia must be delighted at recent events.
The USA may be powerful enough both militarily and economically to impose its will in the short term, but other nations are fast approaching the point where they too may decide to act unilaterally in what they see as their best interests. China, India, Russia, Pakistan and others all have their scores to settle. The Trumpian future looks rather grim.
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