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August 10, 2005
Towards a New Understanding of National Sovereignty, and the Utility of the UN
Pakistan does not control its northwestern provinces. Mexico does not control Nuevo Laredo or most of the rest of the US border area, nor does Mexico control Chiapas. In what sense can Pakistan or Mexico be said to be sovereign over these areas? Well, in a legal sense, but that only. The modern definition of sovereignty dates from after the Renaissance, and was more or less formalized in the Treaty of Westphalia. I don't believe that the issue has been addressed in formal international law since the Montivideo Convention in the 1930's.
This definition and its implications has been taken as a given for centuries, but since the end of the Cold War has been under challenge, particularly in Europe. As Daniel Philpott wrote (prior to 9/11):
We still take it for granted that virtually all of the earth's land is parceled by invisible lines that we call borders. Within borders, supreme political authority typically lies in a single source--a liberal constitution, a military dictatorship, a theocracy. This is sovereignty.Or take John Roberts' view:
Hobbes and Bodin and Grotius first wrote of the modern version of the principle in the 16th and 17th centuries; a generation ago, the sovereign state captured nearly the entire land surface of the globe when European colonies achieved independence. Sovereignty has come closer than any other political principle in history to enjoying universal, explicit assent.
National sovereignty - the claim of a state (that is to say by its government) to be judge and jury in its own cause - has been an assumed right in Europe for over 350 years. It was for centuries the bedrock of accepted international law and text-books explained how its workings established the system of relations between different countries. Upon its theoretical inviolability the states of Europe, with one or two exceptions like Poland, had a continuous history of independent existence. It was considered to be the natural basis for international order and diplomats, politicians and others were usually ready to defend it as God-given or at least unchallengeable as the sole way of organizing that order.Yet its whole basis was the ability of a state to maintain itself by its own power or, if that was lacking, by the tacit consent or written agreement of its neighbours and perhaps of the other states. When this was lacking, permanently or temporarily, as in the cases of Catalonia or Poland, the state disappeared; and other groups, such as gypsies, that were insufficiently powerful, never had a state. In those countries where a state existed, the claim to national sovereignty was usually made, although some formerly independent territories, like Wales and Ireland, were conquered.
While most of the challenges to sovereignty come in the form of transnationalism - that is, most of the challenges have been attempts to tear down nation-state structures and replace them with broader and generally less representative structures. The ultimate end goal of this would be a single government encompassing the entirety of humanity - there is no requirement that sovereignty be understood in that light. It is equally plausible (and far more sane in view of the various horrors visited upon humans throughout history in the name of centralization of power) to devolve sovereignty onto each individual person, and have governments obtain their sovereignty explicitly from the individuals who form them.
But more urgently than such philosophical musings is the nature of sovereignty in current, practical terms and how it should be understood and acted upon. That answer will be somewhere between the radical individualists and the radical global statists, but I think it is clear that the current understanding of sovereignty has to change. In particular, areas in which a de jure sovereign country is not de facto sovereign need to be considered anarchic, and thus open to all comers without prejudice.
It has always been the case that areas without strong government tend to bring out warlords, pirates, terrorists and the like - people need social organization, and in the absence of it, or where it is weak, strongmen inevitably arise. The reach given these miscreants by modern technology, which they could not produce, but can use to destroy, makes such groups more of a threat then they ever were before, even during the heyday of the Barbary Coast pirates. Because of this new capacity for destruction, married to the ancient will to destroy, it is no longer possible for target states - that is, any modern state - to tolerate these areas.
Yet under the current system, were the US to go into Nuevo Laredo and the other border areas to roust out the bandits, this would be seen as an invasion, even though when the Mexican federal agents go into Nuevo Laredo, they are attacked and killed as invaders themselves into territory de facto controlled by drug lords and coyotes - often one and the same people, actually. But why should it be? In what way is Mexico other than nominally in control of the border area? The same situation exists in Pakistan's NorthWest Frontier, where Osama bin Laden apparently is holed up in quite the fortress, and where Pakistan's army dare not venture. Yet were the US to intervene in the area - even if it were to do so to restore de facto sovereignty to Pakistan - this would be considered an invasion.
I believe that it is time to redefine sovereignty specifically to de facto sovereignty, unless all sides in a particular dispute agree to accept de jure sovereignty in defiance of reality (for example, this might be a possible compromise with China and Taiwan), at least as regards international conventions on where the use of force from another state constitutes a violation of sovereignty, and thus (theoretically) requires the approval of the UN or some other international body. But I do not think that such a definition would be agreed to by current states or international bodies - all of which are founded on the current understanding of sovereignty. For example, the UN is entirely concerned with de jure sovereignty - de facto sovereignty has no place in any UN undertaking. This is why the UN is incapable of dealing with truly failed states: it needs a state structure within which to work, and the agreement of the very "states" that it seeks to reform.
I do not know if the UN, for example, could be reformed so as to create the conditions necessary for approaching the world as it is today. I suspect it cannot, as it is too bureaucratically, organizationally and philosophically embedded in a dead world order. I believe that, instead, it will be necessary to create a parallel organization, a conference of free states, whose membership is based on requirements for representative government, relatively open economies (particularly, alienable private property with minimal limitations), and true respect for human rights. This would probably not cover 50 countries today, while the UN contains something like 190. But in such an organization, it would be possible to work towards bringing all countries into the organization by reforming them, in the process making them free and prosperous, or to control the threats of those who can't or won't be reformed by actively intervening where necessary.
The best thing about such an organization is that it would allow multiple axes of attack on a given problem. For example, in Darfur, it might be necessary for the US to intervene, but then countries like France and Canada could transition in to do the nation building necessary to reform the Sudan for the long-term. This arrangement would make use of the best capabilities of each of the member countries, avoid overtaxing any of them, and dramatically improve the world situation both in terms of security of the member states, and in terms of the lives of those in the areas being freed.
The UN would, for at least some time, continue as a forum for all of the world's unfree and de jure states, as well as the free states, but I believe that over time it would fade. This would be better than the likely alternative, which is that a crisis will arise that will shatter the UN as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia shattered the League of Nations.
UPDATE: Mark Safranski has extensive and insightful comments.
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» The Slow Death of Westphalia from Conjectures and Refutations
Between the two of them, Jeff Medcalf and Mark Safranski have written the post on the concept of national sovereignty that I’ve been meaning to write for a while now but kept putting off. I have quibbles, but they are minor. Go read.
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Tracked on August 12, 2005 12:57 AM