ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of multilateral action to promote the legitimacy of regimes. Some regimes practice aggression, genocide, and other activities far more firmly fixed among the grounds justifying forceful intervention than the denial to their people of a fragile right to democratic governance. Nations may be on the verge of recognizing a right of all citizens of every state to participate in democratic governance and to enjoy freedom from totalitarian oppression. The general nature of such a democratic entitlement is already spelled out in international instruments, in particular the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which may now be regarded as having entered the process of becoming customary international law. John Stuart Mill said with conviction that the moral fiber of a nation is weakened if the intervention of outsiders spares its people the trouble of liberating themselves.
