"""I suppose a rebuke to this point would be to question whether any nation is truly governed by a sovereign people, or if this is merely another form of Western projection?"""
Exactly that.
Also: even if there is "rampant electoral fraud" how do we know this?
I don't think mainstream western reports on the matter are to be trusted, in the same way as reports on Iraq's WMD weren't to be trusted (and they also appeared on places like the NYT).
Also, wasn't the Bush/Florida thing also "electoral fraud"?
And furthermore, I find the whole representation/voting thing a travesty as it currently is done, mainly allowing just two parties (Reps and Dems) that are much alike, and presenting huge barriers to entry. I also remember a list of murdered presidents/candidates (Kennedy?), major police interference in politics (McCarthyism), Watergate, etc.
Why not directly analogous representation/seats to the overall numbers of votes a party got US-wide? Why not ban political advertising of any kind (which favors the one with more spending budget), and only let the influence of each party's program/ideas to determine voter turnout? Why not force free TV time for every party/candidate with more than x% on the previous vote? Why not disallow lobbying altogether (if you want influence for matter X, get it through public->voting->representation) not through Washington corridors).
So, for one, the issue "sovereign people's" vs "sovereign societies" is a muddled one. So, who get's to decide which is which?
Second, I'd say that even in the blatantly obvious case of non sovereign people, one doesn't get to intervene in a sovereign nation. If the people want their government/dictator toppled, they can do it themselves. If another nation doesn't like it, they can stop doing business with the dictators, etc, but why should they invade or anything?
By invading you don't "bring democracy", you bring your idea of democracy (which might not be what the locals would have chosen given the chance), and your influence over local politics. Not to mention that you also de-stabilize the society to supporters of your action or not (like it happened in Iraq and elsewhere) --and when a country is being bombed, enemies of the one's bombing is not the same as friends of the dictator. If you kill my brother in order to get to Saddam, for example, I'd hate you, even if I was against Saddam in the first place. Which complicates things a lot.
And all of these without taking "national interests, natural resources" of the intervening country on consideration. Which, because those can always be a factor, and if often the deciding one, should make us even more suspect re: intervention on sovereign countries.
I say, as long as they don't go invading any other sovereign country, let them fix their mess for themselves.
I also take offense to the "they build/have the bomb" line, when it comes from countries that ALREADY have the bomb. But do people believe this is something more than the moralizing country defending their monopoly on nuclear terror? And why should we trust one that, say, already dropped two of those on civilians? I'm all for EVERYBODY disarming their bombs.