ABSTRACT
The apparent opposition between the two superpowers during the Cold War, the United States and the USSR, masked a disastrous agreement made by the Allies. The Allies’ consensus was to break the world down into small and weak units of nation-states. The right to self-determination and the right to safe boundaries (what the Atlantic Charter described in 1941 as “dwelling in safety within their own boundaries”) – along with the right to use violence to enact both – became the ultimate justification for parceling the world. Human rights discourse served as the mechanism for distinguishing state violence from other kinds of violence, and the establishment of the United Nations was instrumental in making the nation-state the only desirable and acceptable political model.
