ABSTRACT
This chapter considers self-determination in the various guises it assumed after: the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War. It argues that self-determination was the big idea of the twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson is generally credited with being the father of self-determination in its first twentieth century phase. National self-determination is a belief, which became a principle of international justice, that a people should have the right and opportunity to determine their own government. The argument here is that a group of related ideas, which include national self-determination, rights observance and humanitarian intervention, is gaining salience. For the decolonization movements, political reality excluded the idea of nation as a fundamental element of self-determination. Claims for decolonization succeeded because the moral support for colonialism was destroyed. With their focus on negating European dominium, the newly independent states faced an enormous task in assuming self-determination.
