The principal of non-intervention in international order

Abstract

What provoked this enquiry was the prevalence of the view that the contemporary world is not a world in which a principle of non-intervention can obtain in international relations. The argument supporting this view takes two forms. One is that developments in international law in the twentieth century - the admission of the individual into international society as a subject of the law of nations, the progressive civilization of the state by law, and the emergence of international organizations as authorities, in embryo, above the state - either have undermined or are in the process of eroding the order of sovereign states in which the principle of non-intervention had meaning. A second form of the argument draws attention not directly to the erosion of the law of sovereign states, but to changes in the political environment in which international law is formed. This argument has it that the polarization of power in the international system after the Second World War, and the ideological conflict between the principal powers, has put an end to that international system of balance among many which incorporated a principle of non-intervention as an integral part of its working. The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to reply to these arguments, to demonstrate not merely the persistence of the principle of non-intervention in the vocabulary of international relations, but its continuing contribution to international order. Show more