Is the notion of state sovereignty a political reality or polite fiction?
It is a territory, preferably coherent and demarcated with frontier lines from its neighbours, within which all citizens without exception come under the rule of the territorial government and the system under which it operates.
Hobsbawm’s (1996:1065) definition of sovereignty highlights the ultimate importance of one of the most poorly understood concepts in international relations. The notion of state sovereignty is the central organising feature of the modern international relations system. Without it, there would be no structure to foreign affairs. Indeed, one state’s attempt to breach another’s sovereign borders is in fact the very definition of war. State sovereignty must therefore remain a key feature of any discussion pertaining to international affairs because it is at the basis of all international disputes.
The concept of sovereignty
Much like politics itself, the concept of sovereignty has evolved over time, enjoying periods of relative fluidity and rigidity. Important timeframes like the one that witnessed the zenith of European imperialism in the nineteenth century and the worldwide battles that constituted the Second World War necessarily altered the function and notion of sovereignty, alternately decreasing and increasing the value ascribed to it in international affairs. The contemporary reason for the significance of the broader debate relating to sovereignty has been the US sponsored concept of ‘globalisation’ that aims to transgress sovereign borders and national identity with the gradual emergence of a single, global free market economy. Like sovereignty, globalisation is a misunderstood phrase that trades on its very ambiguity. Yet Friedman (1999:9) views it much more simply: globalisation means the spread of free market capitalism to virtually every corner in the world.
The result has been a complex contrast between Third World nations that are actively encouraged to erode national identities by dominant Western powers - each of which simultaneously pursue their own protectionist policies with regards to sovereignty and independent national interest as the ongoing arguments relating to farming subsidies between Britain and France testify. Sovereignty is unlikely to suffer a crisis of purpose for as long as the traditional ruling global powers continue to display such raw nationalism in economic and political affairs. However, to understand the implications of the concept of sovereignty, an analysis of its various interpretations is necessary.
A study of sovereignty is an examination of theory every bit as much as political fact, best understood through left and right wing international relations doctrine. Realism, for instance, as a conservative interpretation of international affairs, states that sovereignty is the basis of all foreign diplomacy, especially as it is a notion organically connected to the birth of the modern European nation state.
Indeed, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that set the boundaries for all current dealings within international relations, marked sovereignty as the key boundary to be observed in all intra state activity with the suggestion that smaller nations must accept the political reality that a larger state holds more sway in international affairs. Donnelly (2000:9) underscores why realism and sovereignty are in this way interlinked, the underlying issue of state power acting as the glue that has hitherto bound them together.
Realism emphasises the constraints on politics imposed by human nature and the absence of international government. Together, they make international relations largely a realm of power and interest.
This dominant realist doctrine in Western international relations is fundamental to contemporary American incursions into sovereign states in the Middle East. The lack of a cohesive international system (in spite of UN claims to the contrary) has bequeathed the current state of flux that is discernible in the region whereby realism ensures that the major global power may by pass the issue of sovereignty in pursuit of broader, unilateral aims. As Chomsky (2003:13) simply explains, the goal of the imperial grand strategy is to prevent any challenge to the power, position and prestige of the United States.
Conversely, Marxism views the discussion in a different light. Sovereignty is secondary to the primacy of socialism in pure Marxist doctrine, although in practice Soviet imperialism has historically been little different to Western imperialism with a scant disregard shown for sovereignty and national independence. Sovereignty was certainly not an important issue for the imperialist Russian aggressors of the twentieth century and the notion only appears to have become adopted by the Marxist agenda in recent times.
Of the three most popular strands of international relations theory, liberalism is the one that most strongly advocates a resurgence of sovereignty or ‘national self determination’. Imperialism and power concentrated in the hands of a privileged few goes very much against the grain of liberalism, as Chris Brown (2002:62) suggests. Liberal internationalism consists of the application of broadly liberal principles to international affairs.
Again, the contemporary example of the United States has frequently been cited as the chief motivating factor behind the significance of the notion of the state and sovereignty in a belated liberal bid to halt twenty first century American neo imperialism, the likes of which is described by Gill (2004:13). At the turn of the millennium there is a movement involving a type of counterrevolution of the powerful against the weak, intended to reconstitute the state and capital to reorder social relations on a world scale.
Defeatist liberals and socialists alike would no doubt state that, at present, sovereignty is an ideology available on discount in large swathes of the world as the United States maintains a hawkish stance to international affairs with little sensitivity shown for the notion of sovereignty of, for example, Afghanistan or Iraq. Yet, more progressive liberals would see the United States not as a permanent fixture of international relations but instead as a transient imperial power whose heyday has already come, as Peter Calvocoressi (1991:3) explains. The Cold War was not an episode like other wars, which have beginnings and ends, winners and losers.
Certainly, the widely predicted accession of China as an industrial and economic superpower during the twenty first century will necessarily imply that America must modify its international stance to sovereignty, certainly with regards to the Middle East and Asia.
However, it is true that the contemporary period holds more questions than answers for many students of international relations as the concept of globalisation attempts to bring the world together on a scale and in a manner the likes of which has never been witnessed before. Because the USA and the West use economic symbolism and cultural imperialism to break down sovereign borders, as well the traditional tools of military might and political prowess, globalisation is armed in a geo political way that is inherently very difficult to detect. The Internet, for instance, does not recognise international borders; neither does the commercialisation of the world’s media that America is currently overseeing. As Will Hutton (1997:26) succinctly concludes, international affairs can no longer be viewed solely in light of official, centralised intra state co operation.
Private interests have too easily slipped the national leash and have used the ungoverned world beyond national frontiers to undermine what they regard as tiresome, inefficient and bureaucratic efforts to assert the moral and social dimension in human affairs.
In the final analysis, therefore, the most sophisticated contemporary interpretation of state sovereignty implies a need to recognise the essential fusion that exists between state and non state actors whereby the notion of sovereignty is constantly being re negotiated by dominant political and economic players. Yet this is not to state that sovereignty has devolved into political fiction; the very existence of protectionist super states such as the United States of America underlines the verity of sovereignty and the final significance of realism within all international relations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Beneria & S. Bisnath (Edtd.), Global Tensions (Routledge; New York, 2004)
C. Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Polity; Cambridge, 2002)
S. Burchill et al, Theories of International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan; London, 2001)
P. Calvocoressi, World Politics since 1945: Sixth Edition (Longman; London & New York, 1991)
N. Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival? : America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Hamish Hamilton; London, 2003)
J. Donnelly, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 2000)
R. Foot, J.L. Gaddis & A. Hurrell (Edtd.), Order and Justice in International Relations (Oxford University Press; Oxford, 2003)
M. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; New York, 1999)
W. Hutton, The State to Come (Vintage; London, 1997)
M.B. Steger, Globalism: the New Market Ideology (Bowman & Littlefield; Boston, 2002)
Journals
E. Hobsbawm, Language, Culture and National Identity, quoted in, Social Research Journal, Vol. 63, No. 4, (Winter 1996)
Selected Articles
S. Gill, Toward a Stark Utopia? : New Constitutionalism and the Politics of Globalisation, quoted in, L. Beneria & S. Bisnath (Edtd.), Global Tensions (Routledge; New York, 2004)
Tags: globalisation, Marxism, realist doctrine, sovereignty
