Comments on: Bye Bye Sovereignty

By: bp32

bp32 — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:19:09 +0000

Sovereignty can come into existence in one of two ways:

1) the community of states in existence can agree that you are sovereign, or;
2) you can enforce that sovereignty through force if necessary

If there is neither the agreement by other sovereigns nor the ability to enforce your freedom through your own means (e.g. military force) than by definition you are not sovereign.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:03:13 +0000

Nice thing, though, is that laws can and are adjusted to make such maneuvers harder. Witness this UNSC resolution as an example of that: by targeting trading vessels, the Somali pirates got onto the shitlist of all the permanent UNSC members. The only restrictions left for dealing with the pirates are those the World’s navies put on themselves.

By: ArloRay

ArloRay — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:50:18 +0000

So called ‘western culture’ is crumbling away. At the least, it is definitely being forced to examine itself and its purpose. It seems to me that there are an over abundance of people’s (how you define them as nation states or radical ideolagy groups is up to you) who specificaly rely on ‘western “LAW”’ to protect their own ‘lawlessness’. At the same time we bring them into our culture and ‘add’ more laws to opress ourselves to accomodate them. Why they put a six month time frame just shows that in the end the pirates (thieves and murderers) are fixing to only go on vacation and the UN will have once again proven to be useless.

By: Kirk Sowell

Kirk Sowell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:09:49 +0000

The main problem here – especially from the point of view of the West – is that by asking the UNSC for permission you are implicitly granting that body the right to deny you the right to intervention. France recent did undertake military action in this region without UNSC permission because its citizens and property were abducted. A wise state will engage in such actions only when necessary – as is clearly the case here, since Somolia doesn’t have the power to enforce its sovereignty – but sovereign states have the right to take action to save the lives of their citizens regardless.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:32:24 +0000

Maybe sit down with the other effected trading powers to hash out an agreement on Somalian sovereignity? I figure a workable solution WE agree upon wouldn’t be welcomed by the Somalis and other Africans—but it would at least get them off their tails and into serious talks.

By: von Kaufman-Turkestansky

von Kaufman-Turkestansky — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:16:54 +0000

Chirol, Elambend, you’re right, but let me be more precise – of course commerce and geopolitics are linked. That is obvious. The replies above also hold that it is obvious (and not interesting) that these interests are the ones that get the whole security council together to make the move to suspend the sovreignty of a state. Indeed Adrian rightly points out that it if the nation state is failed (it’s only on paper) then there is not much to annul. But what we have been seeing in these “gaps” lately is conflicting geopolitical interests playing out at the faultlines, leading to anything but accord at the SC in many other situations of lawlessness. It is interesting that in this part of the world it happens that everyone on the SC’s commerical interests gel, and that one or two powers are not in a position to advance a different agenda. The question that comes to my mind is whether there is no way to develop, encourage, advance or just “rig” these interests somehow to effect change in different situation where a lot of people are in need of protection – Darfour for example (this is not in any way to suggest a parallel with Darfour in the piracy situation; I am just wondering whether commerce can be advanced in such a way as to create equitable SC resolutions in general.)

By: ElamBend

ElamBend — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:30:43 +0000

Commercial interests are what put food on the table, absent any commercial interest, you are a poor starving nation.

By: Chirol

Chirol — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:08:05 +0000

Adrian: I completely agree.

von K: I don’t think its particularly interesting. The entire world has a huge stake in the safe transit of goods via the oceans and everyone’s ships from the US to EU to even North Korea have been hijacked and attacked there. It’s simply a rare instance of an issue being that clear cut.

By: von Kaufman-Turkestansky

von Kaufman-Turkestansky — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:51:52 +0000

That’s actually how the security council is supposed to work. Unanimous, a threat that everyone agrees on, measures that don’t go so far as to scare off any one member but that seem to have enough “teeth” to be at least somewhat effective.

It is interesting, however, that we seem to get “accord” among major powers such as the US, China, EU and Russia (and even Libya!) when everyone’s commercial interests are threatened. I see an IR thesis coming…

By: Adrian

Adrian — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:58:19 +0000

Sovereignity belongs to states. If a specific country has a ‘state’ only on little pieces of paper but it is actually powerless, it’s better for the UN to be basing policy on reality than convenient fictions.