What do you mean by "people" and "self-determination". If 51% of the southerners decided to secede from the US, should they be allowed? What about the rights of the 49% southerners who want to remain with the US? Are they not people? What about the rest of americans? Do we not get a say? Besides, in the modern world, the supreme court has already ruled "self-determination" is illegal.
It's nice to say people deserve self-determination, just like it's nice to say universal human rights, but it meaningless in the real world.
Crimean people want to be part of russia. Eastern ukrainian people wants to be part of russia. Western ukrainian people don't want that. Which people deserve self-determination?
Native hawaiians want their islands back. Non-native hawaiians want to remain part of the US. Which people deserve self-determination?
10 million taiwanese want independence. 1.4 billion chinese want taiwan returned to china. Which people deserve self-determination?
At the end of the day, might makes right. And in a modern globalized world, it has never been more true. The modern globalization is the reflection of might makes right. Might created the modern globalized world.
You're welcome to your utopian view, but that is exactly what it is.
The alternative is that we have no category for "ought" or "should be" - that "is" is all there is, that there is no hope to improve the world, nor any way to suggest a direction to improve it in. That's a pretty hopeless outlook, and one that I reject.
But you're right that "should" or "ought" often needs to have some might behind it before it becomes an "is"...
For the last 20 years or so we've been living in a world where the US called the shots pretty much everywhere, and we were cool with it because (most of us here) were on the US 'side'. 'Globalization' during this period was and is a complete sham, meant to sell people on the idea that their countries were independent and not subject to the Pax Americana.
But make no mistake, they were absolutely subject to the Pax Americana.
And now, China is challenging that, Russia is challenging that, and we're back to the people with the biggest guns win, as it has always been.
If you had hope it was a false hope, an illusion, sold to you by Uncle Sam, who was secretly manipulating the policy of most of the governments on the planet while spruiking 'democracy' and 'independence' that only exists so long as you do what Sam wants.
To me it looks like this comment describes in detail how international relations work through realpolitik (which I agree is basically how it's done if you want any semblance of predictive power, as opposed to focusing on any stated moral values of players).
Often yes.
> it will always be so.
That's definitely not a certainty.
Sentences in passive voice always obscure the true meaning. For example when people say “everyone deserves healthcare” that means “taxpayers should pay for other people to have healthcare.” So what do you mean in this context, expressed as an active voice sentence?
The “people” here are purely passive; the sentence is an assertion about what an implicit actor should or should not do with respect to people.
NC makes good points if that's how you see the world but his opinions are outdated. People deserve to have self-determination now that it's a modern, globalized world (I mean they always did, but nation states matter even less now).