nated in the attack on Pearl Harbor.nOnly a few years later, the communistsnseized power in China, where,nfollowing the Opium War of 1839,nWestern powers had attempted to imposentheir conceptions of law and diplomacy.nForced to submit, the Chinesenwere never converted—witnessnoutbreaks of xenophobia such as thenBoxer Rebellion and, more recently,nthe “Cultural Revolution.” Nor werenthe British able to exercise a transformingninfluence on India, as GopalnKrishna’s defiantly anti-British essaynindicates. There he takes JawaharlalnNehru to task because the Indian leader’snalleged hatred of war had itsn”source not in Gandhian influencenbut in the British tradition of radicalnrationalism.” And although James Piscatorinis eager to reassure us that Muslimsnare sincerely committed to Westernnprinciples of internationalnconduct, he cites numerous reservationsnof the kind that served to alienatenIranians from a Westernizing Shah.nIn retrospect, it is diiEcult to seenhow all of this could have been otherwise,nfor as Bull and Watson point out,nthe “European-dominated internationalnsociety presupposed a Latin andnChristian culture from which its rulesnand institutions derived and with thenhelp of which they were reinforced.”nExcept for some members of the elites,nmost of whom were educated in thenWest, few non-Westerners proved willingnor able to adopt Christian-nEuropean culture; they had their ownnhistorically rooted religions, ways ofnthinking, and standards of behavior.nAs Watson himself observes in an admirablenessay on Russia and Europe,nPeter the Creat’s herculean efforts tonWesternize his country met with onlynlimited success. By the 19th century,nRussia had become a member of thenConcert of Europe, but the Great Warnand the Bolshevik Revolution soonnchanged that. The wartime governmentnof Nicholas II renamed SanktnPietersburg “Petrograd” and, aftern1917, “the deep feelings of the Russiannsoldiers and peasants who [overthrew]nthe Romanov regime . . . rejected thenWest.” To be sure, Russia too boastedna Christian culture, but its faith was ofnthe East and it inspired an insistentlynanti-Western “Slavophilism” to whichneven Alexander Herzen, that remarkablen19th-century “Westernizer,”neventually paid tribute. And so, in hisnown way, did Lenin, despite his debtnto Marx and Engels. His Marxism wasnprofoundly anti-Western and peculiarlyncompatible with oriental forms ofndespohsm.nNor did the Bolshevik challenge tonWestern dominance remain an isolatednphenomenon. The catastrophic warnundermined European self-confidencenand opened the door to an anticolonialnrevolution that exploded in full furynafter World War II, when Europe laynin physical and spiritual ruins. In thenspace of only two decades most of thenpeoples of Asia, Africa, and the MiddlenEast gained their independence,nwith, it is well to remind ourselves,nrelatively little European opposition.nOut of this hasty decolonization therenemerged what Elie Kedourie, in one ofnthe most intelligent essays in the book,ncalls the “new international disorder.”nBull and Watson, while concedingnthat Kedourie has a point, do notnaccept his pessimistic conclusions.nThey insist that international society,nwhatever its troubles, continues tonexist and that a “cosmopolitan culturenof modernity” is in the making. Unless,nhowever, they have in mind anculture rooted in some vague form ofnpantheism, they can only be referringnto secular culture. And even if wenentertain the unlikely possibility that angreat culture may be established onnnonreligious foundations, it is still notnobvious that secularization will prevailnuniversally. In any event, the willingnabandonment of Western, Christiannculture is too high a price to pay fornthe mere appearance of internationalnsociety.nFor appearance is precisely whatnremains of the old European order.nThis must be evident to readers of PaulnSieghart’s breathtakingly ingenuousnbook on “human rights.” Beginning inn1945, when memories of Nazi inhumanitynwere still fresh, the UnitednNations and other international organizations,npromulgated nine “instruments”—ndeclarations, covenants,nconventions, and charters — that,ntaken together with some 20 treaties,nconstitute what Sieghart, “an internationalnarbitrator and consultant,” describesnas an international legal code ofnhuman rights. Like the several instrumentsnthemselves, he appeals for philosophicnsupport to the problematicnnntheory of natural right, having learnednnothing from Maurice Cranston’snWhat Are Human Rights?, an insightfulnwork he cites in his bibliography.nSieghart refrains from commentingnon the important distinction Cranstonnmakes between positive law and moralnaspiration. He is, however, outspokennin his refusal to rest content with suchnfamiliar inalienable rights as life, liberty,nand the pursuit of happiness, becausenhe has persuaded himself that allnof us have an inborn “right” to satisfynour appetites, material as well asnmoral. Non-Western states, he assertsnwith confidence, possess a “right tondevelopment” just as all men—and,nneed I say, all women—have a rightnto an “adequate” standard of living andn”periodic holidays with pay.” Towardnone claim only does this rights peddlernevince any skepticism—Locke’s rightnto property. The assertion of such anright would embarrass socialist countries,nand so, in the spirit of give andntake, Sieghart suggests that property bentreated as a qualified “regional humannright,” an absurd notion that could benadvanced only by someone undisturbednby contradictions in terms.nThe documents that Sieghart hasnappended to his mercifully brief textnare replete with articles and provisionsnthat bear little relationship to realitynanywhere but in the West—wherenthey are superfluous. According to thenUN’s Universal Declaration of HumannRights (1948), for example, “no onen[Sakharov?] shall be subjected to arbitraryninterference with his privacy,nfamily, home or correspondence, nornto attacks upon his honour and reputation.”nWith a perfectly straight face,nSieghart informs us that the USSRn”thought it prudent to abstain” fromnvoting for or against the Declaration.nBut in a less guarded moment, ornperhaps I should say a more contemptuousnmood, the Soviets did initial thenInternational Covenant on Civil andnPolitical Rights (1976), according tonwhich “no one [Solzhenitsyn?] shallnbe arbitrarily deprived of the right tonenter his own country.” Still worse,nthe International Covenant on Economic,nSocial, and Cultural Rightsn(1976), which was designed to accommodatensocialist countries, identifiesn”the right of everyone [the Poles?] tonform trade unions and join the tradenunion of his choice.” Even in thisnSEPTEMBER 1986 / 27n