The international community is a term used in geopolitics and international relations to refer to a broad group of people and governments of the world. [1]
Aside from its use as a general descriptor, [2] the term is typically used to imply the existence of a common point of view towards such matters as specific issues of human rights. [3] [4] It is sometimes used in calling for action to be taken against an enemy, [5] e.g., action against perceived political repression in a target country. The term is also commonly used to imply legitimacy and consensus for a point of view on a disputed issue, [4] [6] e.g., to enhance the credibility of a majority vote in the United Nations General Assembly. [3] [7]
Several prominent legal figures and authors have argued that the term is more often used to describe a small minority of states, and not literally all nations or states in the world. [1] [3] [8] According to International Criminal Court jurist Victor P. Tsilonis, it refers to "the interests of the most powerful states" or "seven to ten states". [8] President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Paik Jin-hyun and co-authors Lee Seokwoo and Kevin Tan argue that it could refer to "some 20 affluent states", giving the example of those not members of the Non-Aligned Movement, [3] while Professor Peter Burnell of the University of Warwick suggests that a number of very important states, such as China, Russia and those of the Arab and Islamic worlds, are often distant from the concept of the "international community" and do not necessarily endorse every initiative associated with it, for example, by abstaining from key votes in the United Nations Security Council. [1] Noam Chomsky states that the term is used to refer to the United States and its allies and client states, as well as allies in the media of those states. [9] [10] [11] British journalist Martin Jacques says: "We all know what is meant by the term 'international community', don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the west, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral, and high-faluting." [12] According to American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, the term is a euphemistic replacement for the earlier propaganda term "Free World". [13]
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory. Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations. There is no universal agreement on the number of "countries" in the world since several states have disputed sovereignty status, limited recognition and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly called countries.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
A plutocracy or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. Unlike most political systems, plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy.
"Rogue state" is a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace. These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian or totalitarian governments that severely restrict human rights, sponsoring terrorism, or seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The term is used most by the United States ; in his speech at the United Nations (UN) in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated this phrase. U.S. politicians have used the term to describe countries such as Iran, Israel, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba and Venezuela. The term has been applied by other countries as well.
Wage slavery is a term used to criticize exploitation of labor by business, by keeping wages low or stagnant in order to maximize profits. The situation of wage slavery can be loosely defined as a person's dependence on wages for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility.
The legitimacy under international law of the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been questioned. The UN Charter is the foundational legal document of the United Nations (UN) and is the cornerstone of the public international law governing the use of force between States. NATO members are also subject to the North Atlantic Treaty.
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies, both foreign and domestic, is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured creates an inherent conflict of interest and therefore acts as propaganda for anti-democratic elements.
The Faurisson affair was an academic controversy following publication of a book, Mémoire en défense (1980), by French professor Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier, and the inclusion of an essay by American linguist Noam Chomsky, entitled "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression", as an introduction to Faurisson's book.
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a book about the United States and its foreign policy written by American political activist and linguist Noam Chomsky. It was first published in the United States in November 2003 by Metropolitan Books and then in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books. It was republished by Haymarket Books in January 2024.
Edward Samuel Herman was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a frequent co-writer. He held an appointment as Professor Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Green Line or 1949 Armistice border is the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It served as the de facto borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967, and continues to represent Israel’s internationally recognized borders with the two Palestinian territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Humanitarian intervention is the use or threat of military force by a state across borders with the intent of ending severe and widespread human rights violations in a state which has not given permission for the use of force. Humanitarian interventions are aimed at ending human rights violations of individuals other than the citizens of the intervening state. Humanitarian interventions are only intended to prevent human rights violations in extreme circumstances. Attempts to establish institutions and political systems to achieve positive outcomes in the medium- to long-run, such as peacekeeping, peace-building and development aid, do not fall under this definition of a humanitarian intervention.
The right to exist is said to be an attribute of nations. According to an essay by the 19th-century French philosopher Ernest Renan, a state has the right to exist when individuals are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the community it represents. Unlike self-determination, the right to exist is an attribute of states rather than of peoples. It is not a right recognized in international law. The phrase has featured prominently in the Arab–Israeli conflict since the 1950s.
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the United States.
The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.
In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people.
A pariah state is a nation considered to be an outcast in the international community. A pariah state may face international isolation, sanctions or even an invasion by nations who find its policies, actions, or even its very existence unacceptable.
Several scholars have accused the United States of involvement in state terrorism. They have written about the US and other liberal democracies' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the Cold War. According to them, state terrorism is used to protect the interest of capitalist elites, and the U.S. organized a neo-colonial system of client states, co-operating with regional elites to rule through terror.
Occupy is a short study of the Occupy movement written by the American academic and political activist Noam Chomsky. Initially published in the United States by the Zuccotti Park Press as the first title in their Occupied Media Pamphlet Series in 2012, it was subsequently republished in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books later that year.
Anti anti-communism is opposition to anti-communism as applied in the Cold War. The term was first coined by Clifford Geertz, an American anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study, who defined it as being applied in "the cold war days" by "those who ... regarded the [Red] Menace as the primary fact of contemporary political life" to "[t]hose of us who strenuously opposed [that] obsession, as we saw it ... with the insinuation – wildly incorrect in the vast majority of cases – that, by the law of the double negative, we had some secret affection for the Soviet Union." Stated more simply by Kristen Ghodsee and Scott Sehon, "the anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote that you could be 'anti anti-communism' without being in favour of communism."
The media may declare, for example, that the nuclear programme of this or that developing or non-aligned country is opposed by the 'international community', whereas of the non-aligned, comprising some 122 Stares, the majority, if not all of them, support the right of their membership to carry out such programmes, opposition being manifest only among a relatively small proportion of the total number of States, which now stands at 193. Vagueness is a pervasive feature of media reporting and of political discourse. But use of the term 'international community' as implying 'all States' in full knowledge that it could only cover some 20 affluent States, is more than merely vague. It amounts to failure to take due account of the basic Charter principle. ... While it is clear that the term 'international community' does not comprise all States, or even a majority of them, there is no indication to which States that term, as used in the World Summit Outcome, is intended to refer.
Through the expansion of peacebuilding and related practices, the term international community has been modified. It refers still primarily to the collective of states. More recently, it is often used to describe world society. Yet as world society cannot constitute an actor, the latter meaning seems to serve mainly as a legitimating term for the former. ... The international community is a group of actors that claims to employ a common consensual perspective.
Those who believe that resolutions have become or are becoming an effective modern tool for rule-creation in an expanded international society often explain this phenomenon by reference to the fact that they manifest 'the general will of the international community [that] has acquired a certain legislative status.' Generally, a more cautious attitude prevails in state practice.
As analysed in more detail below, the term 'international community' does not have the meaning one would expect, i.e. the representation of the majority of States; on the contrary, the term skilfully implies the representation of the interests of the most powerful states. [p. 7] ... Nebulous concepts such as 'attracting international interest' or 'international community' need to be avoided at all costs [p. 23] ... A term through which the author attempts to imply all the recognised States in the world, and not simply the seven to ten states implied by the common but "misty" term "international community". [p. 173]
