ABSTRACT
Prominent among its normative principles are the respect for national sovereignty and the Westphalian principle that forbids armed interference by one nation in the internal affairs of another. The right of national sovereignty is trumpeted by the governments and citizens of both autocracies and democracies, all of whom readily decry foreign intervention into their affairs on nationalist grounds. The liberal international order as a normative paradigm, which is centered on the respect for sovereignty, is ensconced in a slew of international laws and institutions, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and most notably in the Charter of the UN. The Security Council and General Assembly condemned the Israeli attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in 1985 and the US strike against Libyan targets in 1986, both responses to terrorist acts, as violations of the rules of national sovereignty upheld in the UN Charter.
