resend? I do mot understand your point.
That is because I suck at using the English language. You have not ability to rescind an foreign state's sovereignty. It is not within your proper power as you cannot have any jurisdiction over that State. That's what it means to be sovereign.
Correct, we are not the sovereign. Nor is the current government, given their abuses. Nor is the people since they are not in control of the state.
The People are the base source of all sovereignty, and it is that sovereignty which is lent to a State. The Government is the sovereign until the People (the governed of that government) rescind that sovereignty and take it back themselves. That is the right of the governed, the right of the People. However, foreigners possess no such power over a State. You CANNOT rescind their sovereignty as they are sovereign and thus beyond your control. Only the people of that land, only the governed, have proper say in the matter.
I am asserting that we CAN revoke the sovereignty of another state, if that state violates the rights, freedom and safety of its people. This violates the only current international law/treaty of the land,
The Peace of Westfailia.
Did Libya sign that? There are tons of places which violate the rights, freedom, and safety of its people. Most notably almost every country in Africa. But we still have no legitimate power as all government derives its legitimacy and power from the governed. If you are not part of the governed, you have no proper say in the matter.
I TOTALLY agree with you that it is not in immediate defense of the US, therefore the War Powers Act does not apply (or rather the executive right to commit military action without approval of Congress is not available). Therefore, whether or not we actually make it a "declaration of war", Congress MUST be consulted.
Given our standing army (we had none when we first started out), I'd say we need even more restriction and thus war against other nations can only be waged with an official declaration of war from Congress.
It is absolutely our right and, furthermore, our duty, to say yay or nay on other people's governments. Whether or not we act on that duty is a separate issue.
Although I think that in some ways the rules governing interaction between states is different than interactions between people, a clear analogy can be made. If your neighbor is severely abusive to hTis wife and children, in the absence of police, you have the right and duty to intercede. Since there is no police internationally, we have the right and duty to intercede in another state.
We absolutely do not have the right. Nor is it our duty. No where in the Constitution did we authorize our government to be the world's police. In fact, it was most definitely meant the other way around. A sovereign is sovereign, sovereignty means that there is no law above them. That is the definition. We cannot hold other nations to our laws and culture because they are sovereign and we have not the rightful power to do so. Only the governed has that power. That is that absolute.
Imperial is such a bad and loaded term to describe this. We are NOT talking about installing a puppet government and acquiring the territory, becoming the sovereign. We may well be interested in favored trading status and economic deals, but that is not imperialism.
Stopping the sales of arms to these countries would be a GREAT start, but may not be sufficient. Also, we cannot force Russia and China to agree to this.
You talk about creating western style democracies which are friendly with the US. That is most definitely a puppet government. You do not allow the People free reign to create their own government. We guide it and tell them what they must have. You want us running around overthrowing governments which may be hostile to us to create for ourselves "foreign" governments which will then be friendly to us. We don't have a strong track record with that. This is a form of puppet government. If you were allowing the People in total to choose their own government, you would allow them total freedom to do so. You can say "oh well that's not good" or whatever, but you could not force the change. In short, you would have
no guarantee that they would create a "friendly" government. But we don't, we monkey with things we don't like, come up with excuses like we have the right to overthrow other foreign nations, particularly without declaration of war against the sovereign in the first place, and to establish for ourselves a government in the area which will be friendly with us. We absolutely do not have that right or duty. We are not the governed, nor has our government been empowered with that ability.
And of course you can't force Russia and China to agree, they're sovereign nations. Or maybe we can rescind their sovereignty by saying their actions violate the rights and freedoms of people. I mean, so long as we're making stuff up.