HOW often have we heard it, the cries of a people oppressed, maimed and murdered by their own governments? It’s a clamorous, painful sound, heard more often and on higher rotation in a world saturated with the output of the communications revolution.

And, yet, how often have we heard, during and soon after these cries, a silence from something called “the international community”, even as cool celebrities and the great unwashed of our generation – social media millions – rally for action, push for answers and agitate for the people?

We have, of course, seen this gap between expectation and delivery in world affairs before. The UN was founded in a context of war-exhaustion and a search for solutions. But it has struggled to come to grips with the fundamental flaw in international diplomacy: state sovereignty. Dating back to the 17th century, the notion that national borders, no matter how artificial or porous, are sacrosanct, and that national interest, no matter how narrowly defined, trumps global collectivism, has undermined virtually every effort to unite the world in a common international polity, notwithstanding a few celebrated successes…(more)…