A liberal hawk lowers the bar …

Sebastian Mallaby has a rather hypocritical column today whining about how China's Hu Jintao only pays lip-service to human rights while cutting deals with oil-rich human rights violators like Sudan. Mallaby says that by doing so, the Chinese leader "demonstrated his contempt for the Western understanding of the world-- and for Western policy toward his own country," when, in fact, it looks like he gets both better than Mallaby does.

Anyway, Mallaby goes off the tracks in the middle off the column, pulling international law from his rectum with this statement …

But since the end of the Cold War, the Western view of sovereignty has grown increasingly contingent. If a nation slaughters its civilians (think Rwanda, Kosovo), harbors terrorists (Afghanistan) or refuses to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors (yes, Iraq), it forfeits its right to sovereignty. It may not be invaded, but it certainly can expect to face sanctions.

What utter nonsense. By this standard, even the United States has forfeited its right to sovereignty. And note how he talks about refusing "to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors" rather than with UN Security Council Resolutions; that lets countries like Israel of the hook but keeps Iran on it. Inspectors are just the verification arm for the Security Council and their authority is drawn from the Security Council's. With that statement Mallaby is, of course, just covering his own ass in that he supported the illegal invasion of Iraq -- as Stephen Zunes pointed out during the lead-up to the war, "There are over 90 UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by countries other than Iraq."

Using nebulous interpretations of international law to justify their aggression is part of a mendacious pattern adopted by liberal hawks. While it's true that "Western" thinking about sovereignty has evolved since the end of the Cold War, people like Mallaby habitually distort that thinking to suit their own ideological ends.