Excerpt

Everyone has a claim to the legal behavior of the other, but not to his acting morally. —Johann Gottlieb Fichte

In recent years, core concepts of international relations like sovereignty and security have been redefined, contributing to what can be called the liberal transformation of world order.¹ Traditionally, security has been understood as national security referring to state properties like sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nowadays, security increasingly refers to individual entitlements like human rights and civil liberties. While the liberal focus on basic human needs is laudable, it often comes with an interventionist agenda that reveals certain contradictions in the…