Un 1-1.3 Challenges to Sovereignty

8/13/2019 Un 1-1.3 Challenges to Sovereignty

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trends and looks at the coming context of public service.

When the nation states were founded, the city-states and the feudalism that

preceded them had become too small for the scale of operations required by

the Industrial Revolution. The political institution therefore was adapted to the

new industrial technology, to the roads, railways and canals. The nation state

was then a progressive institution. But now the nation state, with its

insistence on full sovereignty, has become, at least in certain respects, an

obstacle to further progress. It has landed us in several Prisoners Dilemma

situations: each nation acts in its own perceived rational self-interest, and the

result is that every country is worse off (Streeten, 1999).

The twentieth century has been notable in several ways with respect to the

concept of sovereignty, and its offspring, the nation stateso beloved of

Europe for the last two hundred and fifty years. We commonly accept

sovereignty as a pre-condition for the instruments of government and the

regulation of relations among comities of people scattered across the face ofthe globe. It is the wellspring for policy and law and the reference point for the

judgment of social and individual behaviour and controlincluding the

sanctioned use of violence. However, this century has seen the traditional

concept of sovereignty tested and tried in many different directions. This paper

reviews the trends that have emerged and are shaping events at the present

time. Some of these are without precedent and challenge the value of historical

model to the extreme. Other trends illustrate the questionable further utility of

possibly outmoded aspects of sovereignty and the nation state: often now far

from coincidental concepts, where outmoded constructs may pose more

problems than they provide a context for solutions.

Of course such fundamental change in the framework of our everyday life is of


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interest to everyone, but this paper is written with an audience of public

service employers and trainers in mind. In this context it is essential for those

of us preparing tomorrows public servants to consider the context in which

they will have to function. The conference, held at Oxford in April 1999, that

gave rise to this paper celebrated fifty years of Public Administration and

Development, a period that has seen the coming together of Europe, the end of

the empires, the fall of Communism (in Europe anyway), and other

paradigmatic changes. However, the American professional organization for

Public Affairs, NASPAA, said some years ago that MPA graduates have their

greatest impact approximately 8 to 10 years after graduating. It is salutary, if

not rather alarming, to consider the scope and depth of change during the lastten years, and ask how well anyone might have anticipated, or strategically

prepared for, that? From such an examination we may well then ask ourselves

how well public service training institutions are preparing graduates for the

next ten years. I think it fair to say that such speculative thinking features

almost nowhere in most curricula. Indeed, it is seen as "non-rigorous" and

"unacademic," and probably something better left to Nostradamus. It certainly

does not feature anywhere in the requirementsfor an MPA degree. Neither, for

that matter, does anythinginternational.

It appears that the task of analyzing the future is daunting. Even the vast

resources of the CIA did not (a) enable them to foresee the collapse of any of

the Communist governments or, (b) have any worthwhile strategy in place to

deal with such events when they happened. Perhaps bringing down the "Evil

Empire" was an end, or perhaps an industry, in itself.

Regrettably, the established forces, both inside and outside the academy,

ranged against "speculative" thinking are considerable. Imagine, for instance,

someone in 1988 standing up and giving this paper and, in the fashion so

beloved of economists, declaring some assumptions for 1998. Imagine also


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that this person was psychic. He would tell us of

The disappearance of the USSR

PresidentMandela

NATObombing a sovereign European nation

The end of the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War (with Warsaw joining NATO!)

The unification of Germany

The end of the Yugoslav Federation

25 or so new members of the United Nations

A common European currency

The World Wide Web, and so on

Most people would have left the room before the end of this list shaking their

heads and wondering what academia had come to.

In this paper I try to divine how the context within which public servants will

operate maychange over the next ten years. Without such an exercise,

however reckless it may appear to some, we are creating the conditions for

endless crisis management rather than strategic positioning. When Alvin

Toffler wrote his book Future Shockback in the 1960s, he touched on the

discomfiting influence of the quickening speed of change. That rate if anythinghas accelerated mightily since he wrote. But still we never seem prepared to

accept the extraordinary pace with which change moves in the modern world,

or the scale at which it eventually happens. Thepaceof change is as important

as any individual category of the nature of change that I have tried to isolate in


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this paper. It is worthy of standing alone as a separate element.

Although there is overlap and redundancy, I have selected the following

elements of change as being particularly critical for future public servants.

Though I had public servants in the United States most particularly in mind,

there is universality about most of the issues.

Critical Factors Affecting Sovereignty in the Next Decade

Globalization and the weakening of traditional sovereignty

New polities and ethnic and cultural resurgence

The issue of the viability of some states: residual post-colonial stress and the

phenomenon of "failed" states and "rogue" states

The size and reach of multinational organizations

The information revolution

Trade and economic reconfiguration

Globalization and the "Withering" of the State

Globalization implies the worldwide, virtually instantaneous interdependence

of a growing number of aspects of economic and cultural life. Streeten (1999)

summarized the components of this fundamental change in our lives as

follows:

In addition to economic interdependence (trade, finance, direct investment)


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there are educational, technological, ideological, cultural, as well as

ecological, environmental, legal, military, strategic and political impulses that

are rapidly propagated throughout the world. Money and goods, images and

people, sports and religions, guns and drugs, diseases and pollution can now

be moved quickly across international frontiers.

Streeten argues elsewhere in his paper that in the early years of this century

during the epoch of the empires, the world was, in fact, more inter-related.

However, at that time, the technology imposed serious constraints on how

rapid or direct that interdependence could be. At that time, it really mattered to

have viceroys and ambassadors. Today, they are rapidly pushed aside by

global communications.

This is the overarching paradigm behind this paper, encapsulating many of the

other variables and being composed of them simultaneously and

interactivelyAIDS, trade, terrorism, communications, environmental change

etc. It represents a dimensionof many changes rather than a process of change

in itself, but it is the greatest single challenge to the "traditional" post-

Westphalian model of the state. We have to consider incremental, but major,

adjustments of the state to this dimension, as well as possible radical

transformation of the whole context and meaning of the state as we have come

to accept it over the last few hundred years. At one end of the scale we see the

re-emergence of old regional (sub or transnational) identities within the

colossus of the European Union; on the other the resurgence of local cultures

in the poor world as a reaction to Western hegemony.

There is no absolute model of the state, though people in many places still

seem prepared to die for the current prevailing option. In discussing the state

and globalization we face the same dilemma as discussing the family in the

West. The fact is that the traditional Western model of the family and marriage


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has undergone enormous stress and change, and maybe irreparable damage.

We have no real understanding of what the future "family" willor should

be, and so we try to retain the folklore of the "old" or "traditional values,"

without actually being sure what they are/were, or whether they really worked

in todays terms. States, similarly, are seeing considerable elements of the glue

of "traditional" statehood being eaten away, and are left without any idea

where all this is really going, and so their captains tend to cling on to the

mythology of the past, while sailing on into uncharted waters. The European

Union seems to be the best example of this schizophrenia.

The operation of states in an ever more complex international system both

limits their autonomyand impinges increasingly on their sovereignty.

Sovereignty[is] divided among a number of agenciesnational, regional,

and internationaland limited by the very nature of this plurality. (Held

1995).

The sum total of the various elements of globalization has left the individual

sovereign state less and less a locus of policy and control as the WTO, the EU,

NAFTA and other supranational organizations become more significant

players. Indeed, it will be increasingly difficult for our future civil servant to

draw meaningful distinctions between "national" and "international"

dimensions of problems. It is interesting to look at, for instance, the economy

of Indianaa Midwest state far from the cosmopolitan corrupting influence of

the coastsand ask what is national, or even Hoosier about the states

principal economic props:


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Sector Characteristics

Agriculture Growth export-driven but has been battling the

problem of subsidized exports, particularly from

the EU. Now likely to change with the

incorporation of agriculture and the termination of

subsidies into the WTO agenda

Automobile Parts

and Manufacturing

Pace and incentive to restructure domestic auto

industry driven by (a) imports of Japanese

vehicles, and, later, (b) the location of Japanese

auto, and auto-part, manufacturing plants in the

state and surrounding states

Pharmaceuticals The enormous problem of piracy of "world-class"

drugs such as Prozac (an Indiana contribution to

society), thus undermining the ability to cover

R&D through revenues

Steel Complete transformation of traditional steel

industry as a result of Soviet-bloc and other

dumping results in death of old rust-belt steel

giants (Gary etc), and emergence of new, small,

homegrown steel manufacturing technology.

Retooled steel industry now threatened by below-

cost dumping from Japan and East Asia.

Trade Dramatic shift in trading partners so that second

partner is now Mexico, which barely featured ten

years ago. NAFTA induced resurgence


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New Polities:

What exactly isthe European Union? It certainly bears many of the trappings

of sovereignty such as binding legislation, a parliamentalbeit weak, a flag,

ambassadors (called Delegates), Treaties (called conventions) with other

states, and soon a common currency that will relieve many of the member

states of their key economic policy instrument. Social and labor policies

emerge from Brussels in the name of standardization, and diplomas achieve

common recognition. And yet, this is not a state, but an assemblage of states

"ruled" mainly by an unelected Commission of bureaucrats. It is true that the

term "shared vision" was used widely when the body was established, largely

at the inspiration of M. Monnet, but no one seems to be able to define, in terms

of sovereignty, the endpoint of that vision. Perhaps, more strictly speaking,

they will not come out and say itthereby letting the cat out of the bag once

and for all. Its political nature is defined more by the secondary implications

and consequences of economic, technical, and social standard setting, and the

necessities required to achieve the free "seamless" movement of goods,

services, capital and labor (which also takes care of that other beloved pillar of

sovereigntyimmigration). The EU represents the most advancedand

maybe onlyform of this nebulous suprapolity, but it must be remembered

that it started as anEconomic Communityor communities actually. It had to

be renamed a Union after Maastricht in 1993 made it clear that it had long

since passed that point. Does the same implication lurk with NAFTA, or its

proposed successor AFTA? From tiny acorns

But what sort of sovereignty is emerging from this process? Within the Union

we still have the trappings of flags, anthems, monarchs and the like, and a

strong and verbal resistance to the further sublimation of these ancient

national rights and privileges. The fact is that they are diminishing every day,

and it is hard for outsiders to see what, in substantial terms, will be left for, for


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instance, the government of the Netherlands to doin a few years if present

trends continue. But is the EU the embryo of a new form of federalism? This

issue confuses the United States mightily. It seems, to the outsider at least, that

Europe is headed on the path of Federalism, or Confederalismanyway.

A European Defense Force would involve the loss of sovereignty over British

armed forces since there would be multi-national units in common uniforms

loyal to their multi-national commandersUnder a Single European Currency

Parliament would lose sovereignty over currency reserves, the Central Bank

interest rate, the amount of currency minted...Others claim that medium-sized

nations like the UK no longer have any economic sovereignty anyway, having

lost it to the forces of globalization, and international capital(Lilico 1998).

For countries like the United States there will be an increasing problem of

whether one is dealing with a semi-sovereign entity orin diplomatic terms

just a grouping of sovereign states. This confusion has arisen repeatedly in

trade matters, and the confusion is wryly described in Richard Benedicks

account of negotiating the Ozone Treaty. (Benedick 1991). Some writers are

increasingly prepared to state the European situation "as it is," instead of

maintaining the pretence of an "economic" union:

Following this process of convergence [of the EU] it will be impossible to

unpickor even seriously identifythe features of the erstwhile national

economies. Europe will have become a United States; and in the construction

of this new nation the only question left to answer will be whether the new

system should be federal or confederal in designWhat Maastricht attempts

to add to the Common Market Treaty and the Single European Act is a

political dimension. It attempts to give supranational political expression to the

new economic realities and the loss of sovereign economic power by the

nationsThe fact is that a democratic Europe can hardly emerge without a


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strong European Parliament, one that would automatically challenge the

legitimacies of the national parliaments, reducing them to state legislatures.

(Hassler 1992).

So far, the discussion of new polities centers on the EU, not least because what

is happening there is so enormous. This is, after all, the birthplace of the very

nation state concept that is now being challengedor threateneddepending

on your point of view. On the other hand, the United States is bound by the

NAFTA agreements, and is committed to go "hemispheric" (AFTA) by 2005.

By aligning the various "economic" needs of that giant, who knows what

"erosions and compromises" may emerge for the sovereign members of that

entity? Of course, NAFTA has none of the dimensions of even the original

Treaty of Rome with respect to the movement of labor. With the rise of APEC,

the CIS and others, this question will be asked many times in many places:

"where is this process taking us?" This is especially true for Africa that

appears to be left out of this process. Currently it accounts for a mere 4 percent

of world trade, and with the rise of the "rich mens clubs" there is some doubt

about even maintaining that.

The issues of the viability, post-colonial stress and the phenomenon of failed

states and rogue states

This heading subsumes a diversity of circumstances bound together by the

issue of the continuing viabilityof some of the sovereign territories into which

the world has been divided. The conditions of their viability vary from internal

anarchy, through scale and geographical isolation, to external environmental

and financial menace.

An examination of the map of the worldthis weeks anywayreveals a host


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of what might be called "interesting conditions" challenging some of the long-

held conventions of diplomacy, international relations, and the general

management of interstate affairs. I have not gone so far as some writers in

seeing the seeds of global destruction in some of these phenomena. Kaplan, for

instance writing in theAtlantic Monthlyprovides this apocalyptic vision:

West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic,

environmental and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the

real "strategic" danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of

resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation states and

international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms

and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a

West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate introduction to the

issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our

civilizationthe withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and

regional domains, the unchecked spread ofdisease, and the growing

pervasiveness of war (Kaplan 1994).

He is basing his grim prognostications on what he saw in West Africa, and

extrapolating those observations to the rise of the new post-Soviet "mafias"

perhaps with nuclear capabilities, global electronic economic scams, a

desperate struggle for the worlds diminishing resources, and governments and

civic society yielding to "rogue" states. Indeed, the starting point of his article,

Sierra Leone, is an example of a state that has, effectively speaking, failed

completely. But that presents us with a problemwhat to do with countries

that have ceased to function? The problem is that this uncertainty and lack of

context or precedent lead to the sort of debacle experienced in Somalia by the

United States forces. Failed states create potentially serious problems for their


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neighbors, the power brokers, and the international organizations. We have,

through the Montevideo Convention of 1933, a formula for deciding when a

state deserves to gain recognition: (a) a permanent population, (b) a defined

territory, (c) a government and (d) a capacity to enter into relations with other

countries (Wallace-Bruce 1997). We do not, however, have any mechanism to

cope with the total collapse of a state such as Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone

and others. Helman and Rattner, to deal with this growing crisis, propose some

interesting "interventionist" models (Helman and Rattner 1992).

Many of the states that have entered this non-functioning category are the by-

products of the creation of spurious statehood as a result of the precipitate

ending of the colonial era. Probably the first failed state was the Congo (a.k.a.

Zare), and it maintains that condition to this day. The imperial epoch indulged

in a reckless ordering of boundaries with cavalier disregard for ethnic or

political realities on the ground. The end product of this "great game" is a

whole slate of states that have no legitimacy among their own people, whose

identity is, instead, to some older, ethnic or cultural tradition within the new

state orworse stillacross its boundaries, and becomes, therefore, a

challenge to the persistence of the empty shell of the "nation". The Kurds are a

classic example of this, as is almost the entire map of Africa. In the case of the

Kurds, or the Palestinians, the search for statehood threatens the integrity of

existing "sovereign" units, and so is ruthlessly and cynically set aside or

crushedthough why Iraq is more legitimate as a sovereign state than

Kurdistan is very hard to explain. In Africa the old ethnic order challenges the

very basis of post-colonial statehood everywhere. The breaking away of

Eritrea broke to mold of the Organization of African Unitys long-standing

adherence to the preservation of the colonial legacy, and so, now, almost

anything is possible.

This problem is particularly anAfricanone because the colonial epoch left in


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that continenttraditionally the playground of the imperial powersa

fretwork of "countries" having no legitimacy in the context of "real" African

history. Furthermore, a UN Decolonization Committee that had no thought for

viability, and ruled out such considerations quite explicitly, hurled these

countries recklessly into independence without the benefit of serious

consideration of their meaning or viability. The traditional institutions were set

aside in favor of the superior metropolitan administration, laws, religions,

language and culture and frontiers. The historical and legitimate states are still

there, of course, but they are tribal and are seen, irony of ironies, as a threat to

the "integrity" of the new chimerical nations. These same new "nations" have

been engaged in a spurious and largely empty process of "nation-building"where there is no nation to build. To the post-colonial fantasy of "nation-

building", tribalism (resuscitating the true nations) is an anathema and so the

history of Africa since the mid-1960s is the indigenous legitimization of neo-

colonialism under a new flag and facing a prospect of ceaseless inter-ethnic

rivalry. Nkrumah of Ghana and Nyerere of Tanganyika rightly foresaw this

dilemma when they wanted to delay independence to give Africa time to

reconfigure itself into something workable. But, imported Western sovereignty

won the day, and the continental shambles that we see today is the legacy of

thatcompounded by the relentless horror of AIDS.

The end of the Cold War has deprived many weak and vulnerable countries of

any strategic significance they may have had, and consequently aid and

budgetary subventions have diminished, and soon diplomatic representation

will start to thin out drastically also.

The map of the world is increasingly dotted with either non-functioning

"states," or "states" that exist de factobut not de jure. These present a

significant challenge to the order and interplay of the rules of diplomacy

among traditionally defined nationsas well as threatening to create explosive


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tensions among interested parties. Some of these "non-places", like the

Turkish Federated Republic of Northern Cyprus, have been around for a long

time, are recognized by almost no-one, but continue to exist in this

unacknowledged conditionthe new global Bantustans. Many of these have

arisen from the collapse of other "empires" such as that of the USSR and

Titos Yugoslavia. Transcaucasia and the Balkans seem littered with these

anomalous units, generally based on ethnic groupings. So, while the EU is

emerging from a turbulent past of nation-state rivalries into peace and

prosperity, parts of eastern Europe and the former USSR are moving swiftly

back into a history fully intelligible to Mazzini, Hitler, et al.

Within the EU, curiously, the open borders and the considerable diminution of

the "traditional" nation state are allowing for a resurgence of the "old regions"

such as Catalonia, Wales, Scotland, the Basque country (Padania?) into

functioning, cohesive units (The Europe of the Regions). This really does not

threaten anyone any longer since the state function is so diminished anyway

hence a Scottish parliament and a Welsh assembly without the need to blow

anything up or burn anything down. If only Africa or the Balkans could do

this. These regions are themselves, forming unions:

The fruits of this [decentralization] process are very rich, especially but not

only at the European "core". It has led to the direct collaboration between

regional governments and the world of university research institutions, and

other intellectual seedbeds of technology. The most famous example is the

"Four Motors" project through which Baden-Wurttemburg, Catalonia, Rhone-

Alpes, and Lombardy linked by fiber optics press ahead with their exchange of

data, research results, training, investment and cultural exchange. The shots

are called in Stuttgart, Barcelona Grenoble and Milan, not in Bonn, Madrid,

Paris or Rome (Ascherson, 1997).


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This is a very different process from that which produced Chechnya, Nagorno-

Karabakh and othersfor these latter are seen very much as still threatening

the integrity of "sovereign" nations such as the Russian Federation, or in

Kosovos case, the rump of Federal Yugoslavia, and the response is ferocious

and hateful. The problem with these "resurgent" nations is that their cause,

especially in the largely unresolved political space in which they find

themselves, has the potential to draw much wider forces into these conflicts,

viz. Kosovo and the irony of Sarajevos return to the international political

map.

The degree of confusion and fluidity on todays political map has probably not

been rivaled since the Middle Ages. We have seen in the past how small,

unstable (Kuwait) units with big friends have a terrifyingly large capacity to

create serious crisesso the potential for instability is great. The world to be

managed in the next ten years is replete with these situations. Some of these I

have summarized in the following table:

Anomalous Political Conditions

1999

Territorial Name Status

Turkish Republic of

Northern Cyprus*

Recognized by Turkey alone, following

invasion of the Republic of Cyprus by that

country. Situation frozen and unresolved but

relatively quiet. UN Peacekeeping presence


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for 25 years ( Turkish occupation: 20 July,

1974)

Republic of Serbia*

Republika Srpska

Not to be confused with Yugoslav Serbia, but

is the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Supposed to have been resolved by Dayton

Accord but still behaves like a state.

Bosnia-Herzegovina Federal state based on Sarajevo, but writ runs

de factoonly in the Moslem area. Part of a

loose entity looked after by an EU

administration pro tem.

Herceg-Bosna* The Croat state in Bosnia-Herzegovina based

on West Mostar. Supposed to have been

"tidied away" by Dayton Accord. Croatian

currency and seamless border with Croatia

Chechnya* Functions autonomously since 1996, though

supposedly still part of the Russian

Federation. Possible prototype for Ingushtia,

Buryatia, Ossetia and others.

Abkhazia# Breakaway ethnic Russian-dominated part of

the Republic of Georgia. Situation stabilized,

but unresolved by Russian peacekeepers

(since 1993).

Republic of Mountainous

Karabakh*

Now "autonomous" republic taken from

Azerbaijan in war in early 90s. Uses

Armenian currency recognized only by


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Armenia.

Nekicivan* Autonomous part of Azerbaijan physically

isolated from the rest of the state. Uses

Azerbaijan currency

Transdniestrian Republic

(PMR)*

The breakaway Russian ethnic eastern part of

Moldova based on Tiraspol. Wants union with

Russia though completely isolated from it by

Ukraine. Has own currency, flag etc. (1990).

The Palestinian Authority Governs geographically fragmented pieces of

the West Bank and Gaza. Status unresolved

after Oslo, Threatens to declare statehood.

Observer status at UN.

Republic of Somaliland# Erstwhile British Protectorate broke away

from collapsed Somali Republic. Recognized

by no-one but functions, which cannot be said

for Somalia

Lebanon* Still, nominally, independent, but essentially

dominated by Syria. Part occupied by Israel-

friendly South Lebanese forces. Peace

maintained by many zoned UN Forces.

Taiwan (ROC)* Still maintains its standing as the "Republic ofChina" (Kuomintang). No longer member of

the UN, no observer status either.

Independence unlikely to be recognized by

international community until PRC finds


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acceptable formula. Until then an

international myth.

The Falkland Islands *

(Malvinas)

Still center of a dispute between the British

crown and the Argentine Government over

sovereignty for the 1,800 people who live

there. Cause of disastrous war in 1982.

The Western Sahara Former Spanish colony occupied by Morocco

in the vacuum left by the abrupt departure of

Spain. Awaiting (seemingly everlastingly) a

UN referendum to determine its future status

East Timor Seized by Indonesia after precipitate departure

of Portuguese in mid-70s. Now seems that

self-government or complete autonomy a

possibility under new Indonesian government.

Still considered a Portuguese Non-Self-

Governing Territory by UN

Cuba* Slowly crumbling shade of Marxism in the

Caribbean. Deprives region of natural leader

while causing great confusion within the

Western alliance through Helms-Burton and

excitable exiles.

North Korea* The eternal enigma. Falling apart from the

inside, blackmailing the outside with

unspecified nuclear threat. Bargains from

strength while starving to death


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Tajikistan* So far failed to make it successfully out of the

USSR. Trimmings of statehood but long-

standing civil war held at bay by Russian

soldiers.

Iraq* International pariah state with unshakable

leader. Isolated by sanctions, periodically

bombed and at odds with its own minority

Sunni and Kurdish populations. Unlikely to

go away or fall apart, but testing the New

World Order to the limits.

Botswana* inter alia Around one third or more of male population

HIV positivewhat future under such

circumstances?

Kosovo Proto Bosnia. Albanians formed nine-tenths

of population and were considered a minority

by Yugoslavia. Serbs drove Albanians out.

Return of Albanians encouraged Serbs to

leave. Nominally part of Yugoslavia, but

administered by international military force.

Interesting example of western military

alliance, not individual countries, bombing

European sovereign state without declaration

of war.

Kashmir Listed by the UN as an Occupied Territory

whose final status is yet to be determined.

Administered by India though Muslim, and


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occasionally site of hot war, as in 1999.

Republic of Nauru* Former German, British, Japanese, Australian

tiny trust territory set to mine itself out of

existence. Wanted, at one point, to acquire

new piece of real estate over which to declare

sovereignty. No mechanism found for that.

Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda,

Afghanistan, D R Congo,

Sierra Leone, Lesotho?

Guinea-Bissau? Angola?

Haiti, Sudan, Cambodia**

Failed states without any serious or credible

form of national government control. Leave to

die? Ultimate challenge of sovereignty and

diplomacywhat to do with a state that has

"gone away".

*Issues postage stamps that, de facto, carry mail internationally

#Postal service has some internal validity only

**List of failed states based on Helman and Ratner. Some of these cases, in

the opinion of the author, are overstated.

Along with the trade, and perhaps political, reconfigurations of the next

decade there is also much fluidity in the cultural map. At the highest level of

resolution sits Huntingtons Clash of Cultures(Huntington 1993) in which the

world is resolving itself into a series of massive cultural domains based on

inter alia, resurgent Islam rejecting the dominance of "Western values," etc.

Through this century he sees us moving from the nation state, through

ideology to cultureall in the context of conflict. His broad sweep has,

nevertheless, some very practical implications, for those who accept his

hypothesis. For instance, it would argue against the inclusion of Russia, or

other Orthodox states such as Bulgaria, into the European Union since, in his


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feature in APEC? Will the Caribbean enter NAFTA? Should they? Can they

exist if they do not? Lurking in the background, if they should become

marginalized or left out, is the danger of the exploitation of their, albeit

miniscule, sovereignty by the forces of global crime. Criminals, these days,

come better equipped than the governments combating them, and are able to

take advantage of the global system. Whether it is the establishment of scam

banks in Antigua, or the running of drugs through the maze of islands of the

Bahamas, criminals may well be positioned to run rings around the

governments of small, vulnerable states. Arms, drugs, toxic waste, offshore

bankingthe opportunities are vast and profitable offering a real alternative to

slow impoverishment on the edge of the new world order. A strategy for thesesmall states and their relationship with their richer and more powerful

neighbors is essential in the next ten years.

Microstates are becoming increasingly vulnerable to forces outside their

control, resulting in their being manipulated by international big business;

being open to transit crime such as flows of illegal flight capital and money

laundering; and increasingly out-maneuvered by larger countries and

institutions (Hampton, 1999)

A third consideration with respect to vulnerability arises from the grave, but

indefinable, threat from environmental change. It is extremely difficult to

provein any strictly scientific sensethat we are encountering or causing an

epoch of accelerated atmospheric change. If, however, this turns out to be the

case, then the consequences could be catastrophic. The nature of climatic

change is that it normally manifests itself, not through slow incremental

changes in averages, but through the massive resolution of energy anomalies

by extreme events, such as droughts, floods, hurricanes etc. It seems that no


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matter which of these parameters one cares to choose, or where one chooses it,

anomalies abound suggesting very strongly that systemic change is afoot.

For many parts of the world this is going to move countries onto a crisisor

even triagebasis. The atoll states such as the Maldives, Tuvalu etc., would

simply disappear from the face of the earth (and we have no experience of

dealing with that either). Bangladesh and other extremely low-lying monsoon

countries and regions face double catastrophes from the failure of rains and the

damage of storm surges. Rich countries can, to some extent, insulate

themselves and their citizens from this, but a country like Bangladesh with

tens of millions of people threatened with the total loss of their habitat, simply

does not have the resources to deal with the threat. When confronted with the

possibility of a link between CFCs and the depletion of the upper-level ozone,

we did something remarkable, and that was to place risk ahead of the absence

of proof in the Montreal Protocol. CFCs is one thing, carbon emissions

requiring radical life-style changes for the richis something else totally as

the follow-up to the Kyoto meeting has shown.

The growth of multinational institutions

As Ramonet observes, we live in a time of shrinking state responsibilities and

the explosive expansion in the size and global reach of the private sector. Part

of this is due to privatization and the shedding of state functions worldwide in

service provision, distribution and production. On the other hand, this

phenomenon also results from the dynamic of the private sector itself. In 1997

mergers and acquisitions were running at upwards of $1,600 billion, mostly in

banking, pharmaceuticals, media, telecommunications, food and agro-industry.

More recently the automobile industry, a bastion of state intervention, has

fallen prey to global mergers: Volvo and Ford, Chrysler and Daimler

Ramonet observes that between 1990 and 1997 globally, governments have


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Mozambique, El Salvador, and in essentially rebuilding the state apparatus in

Cambodia. On the other hand, Somalia, Bosnia Iraq and, Kosovo, show that

there is some way to go yet.

The real challenge of globalization, whether it is the UN, the WTO, NAFTA,

NATO (!) or privatization, is to what extent the sovereign state can define a

new role for itself relative to international regulation, including real sanctions.

The whole murky area of "international law" will need definition and

acceptance on a much more serious basis than at present if real multilateral

activity is envisaged. Streeten has rightly observed:

Globalization has proceeded at a rate faster than global government. The

power of national governments and their ability to make national policies and

pay for social services has been reduced without a corresponding increase in

supra-national government or effective international cooperationThe result

of this lag of political institutions behind globalizing technology and

liberalization is a loss in the capacity to governWhile global forces reduce

the power of people to influence policy democratically at the national level, at

the global level, where the need is now greater, there are no democratic

institutions, and in many areas no institutions at all, that would enable people

to control or even influence their destiny.Corporate managers, not citizens

are the new policy makers. But the spread of these companies and of

international financial capital has led to the complaint that national economies

are no longer governable, while the global economy is ungoverned (Streeten,

1999).

Towering over this multilateral question are the global nature of most issues,


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and the rapidly emerging global nature of the private sector. The astonishing

extent of this process of the relative size of the state and the corporation is

shown in the following table:

States and Transnational Companies Compared

Name Revenues $Bn Year

The United States 1,258 1994

German Federal Republic 690 1994

Japan 595 1995

United Kingdom 389 1994/5

Italy 339 1994

France 221 1993

Mitsubishi 184 1995

Mitsui 182 1995

Itochu 169 1995

General Motors 169 1995

Sumitomo 168 1995

Marubeni 161 1995

Ford Motor 137 1995


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South Africa 129 1998

Wal-Mart 119 1998

Greece 119 1998

Toyota 111 1995

Exxon 110 1995

The Netherlands 110 1992

Royal Dutch Shell 110 1995

Sweden 109 1995/6

Nissho Iwai 98 1995

Spain 97 1994

Australia 96 1995/6

Canada 94 1995

Sources: For Corporations: FortunesGlobal 500: The Worlds Largest

Corporations in Fortune, August 5, 1996

For State Revenues: The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency

Website.

Currently about 75 per cent of the worlds trade is carried out by transnational

corporations and their affiliatesand one-third of this trade is among these

firms (UNRISD 1995). It is interesting to note that, for instance,Royal Dutch

Shell, which we normally think of as a "Dutch" company ranks in earnings


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right up there with the Netherlands government itself! On both sides of the 49th

Parallel there have been outbursts of concern and alarm at what the global

economy and the multinational megacorporations are doing to the old polities.

Pat Buchanan recently published a bestseller called The Great Betrayal: How

American Sovereignty and Social Justice are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of

the Global Economy, while in Canada, Albertas Western Reportobserved:

"The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of so-called globalization,

which in Canadas case means Americanization and gives huge, massive

powers to foreign corporations that are accountable to no-one in this country"

(Western Report 1998)

With the inclusion of agriculture, services and subsidies within the remit of the

World Trade Organization we can only speculate where the pursuit of global

concordance in these areas will take us. We have already mentioned the case

of bananas, but the implications of, for instance, a serious determination to end

agricultural subsidies would have dramatic effects on small-farm communities

in many parts of Europe, and in the American farm states in general. In

Europe, at least, many of these state-underwritten "marginal" farmers are often

representative of older, isolated cultures like the Welsh hill farmers for

instance. Their economic demise has not only regional, but cultural

dimensions. Then again, there is the entire question of what constitutes a

subsidy and "unfair intervention" in the area of liberalizing trade. The strict

interpretation of the writ of the WTO has enormous implications for even

more of those remaining, residual economic instruments of the old nation

states. In terms of developing nations in particularthough not exclusively

the area of sovereign policy-making has long been compromised by

"conditionality" imposed by lenders of last resort, most notably the IMF. Of

course the IMF does not "impose" its policies on these countries, but if you are

a lender of last resort you really do not have toyour status does that for you.


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So, many economic policies and the regulatory role of the state vis a vis the

private sector are compromised, or at least constrained.

As the state shrinks, and its powers diminish, so grow the great corporations,

and so grows the privatization of more and more of the states "traditional"

functionseven prisons in some parts of the USA. But what are the

implications of having the enormous economic power of the multinationals

operating, essentially, "outside" the traditional world of sovereignty? "Where

does a company belong? The new order eschews loyalty to workers,

products, corporate structure, businesses, factories, communities, yes, even the

nation" (Morris 1998). Peter Drucker observed some years ago that "In a

transnational company there is only one economic unit, the world. For this

company, national boundaries have largely become irrelevant". What, for

instance, makes the Ford Motor Company an American company? As

countries race into new multi-national configurations like the EU and NAFTA,

so the private sector is merging and scaling up. But, where is it all going? Are

these steps to global free trade and government, or are they the formation of

megablocs forming gigantic rivals like the divisions of the world in Orwells

1984?

The World of Information

It is almost impossible to believe that the last decade has seen the explosion of

the Internet and the birth (1993) and rise of the WorldWide Webit simply

was not there. Already it has shaped the way we communicate, shop and file

our taxes. And yet, unlike any of its predecessors, it is almost totally

anarchicor democratic if you prefer. There are no press barons to control it

and railroad us into the Spanish-American Warthere is the ultimate

democracy of being able to put your point of view before the court of the

world, instantly. Such anarchy makes it extremely difficult for states to deny


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Again, Peter Druckerthe seer of so many thingswrote that "Knowledge

has replaced the economists land, labor and capital as the chief economic

resource". "It is going to be very hard to maintain the old "cultural differences"

that have essentially defined the old nation states for so long: "The

communications revolution has promoted the dissolution of the sovereign

state. E-mail, the Internet, the satellite dishherald the end of our cultural

sanctity"(Howell 1998).

Conclusion

The old map of states is being shaken by the rootssome states have fallen to

pieces, some have formed massive trading alliances, most in the west seem to

be yielding sovereignty to the world of globalization and market forces, and all

are yielding large areas of social and economic responsibility to the private

and not-for-profit sectors. Much, maybe most, of this change is incremental

rather than in the pursuit of any new model of the state or society. Much of it

is subsumed under the fiction that it is "economic," as in European EconomicCommunities. Boundaries are becoming porous in terms of information and

money flowsand fund transfers, by 1999 have reached the astounding figure

of one trillion US$ per day(Streeten, 1999). At the same time across recently-

collapsed or vanished empires in Africa, the former USSR and Yugoslavia, we

may observe the very worst aspects of nineteenth-century nationalistic

chauvinism and intolerance, the resurgence of ethnic animosities among, for

instance the Kurds, the non-Moslems of the southern Sudan or the Chinese in

Tibet. The disappearance of the Cold War has left the non-viable shells of

collapsing states such as Cuba, parts of Central America etc. New

organizations, such as the WTO lurk in the wings with enormous capacity to

pull the rug out from many small states in alliances with bigger neighbors,


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from poor regions within developed democracies, and from substantial areas

of domestic economic and social policy that were never seen as having much

to do with "trade".

In short, the world is changing so fast and so profoundly that I cannot decide

whether a paper like this is an act of bravado or downright stupidity. How

would one teach this? In short you cannot in any definitive way. But, we are

duty bound to present the implications of the trends that we already see around

us, to those who will reap the whirlwind, or possibly ride the storm to new

worlds and new opportunity that the war-ridden, chauvinistic and really rather

nasty world of the nation states prevented us from attaining.

[U]topians should not be discouraged from formulating their proposals,

and from thinking the unthinkable, unencumbered by the inhibitions and

obstacles of political constraints, in the same detail that the defenders of the

status quo devote to its elaboration and celebration(Streeten 1999).

References

Ascherson, Neil. 199?. "Local government and the myth of sovereignty".

Charter 88 Sovereignty Lectures. (website)

Benedick, Richard. 1991. Ozone Diplomacy: New directions in safeguarding

the planet. Harvard.

Dorff, Robert H. 1997. "Democratization, failed states, and peace operations:

The challenge of ungovernability".American Diplomacy.

www.unc/depts/diplomat/Amdipl_2/Dorff.htl


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Drucker, Peter. 1997. "The global economy and the nation state". Foreign

Affairs. Sep.-Oct. Vol. 76, Issue 5. P.159.

Hampton, Mark. 1999.

Hassler, Stephen. 1992. "Is the nation state over? European integration and the

issue of sovereignty". World Affairs. Summer 1992, Vol. 155. Issue 1. P.23.

Hassner, Pierre. 1993. Survival.

Held, David. 1995.Democracy and the global order: From the modern state

to cosmopolitan governance. Stanford University Press. P264.

Helman, Gerald B. and Steven Ratner. 1992. "Saving failed states". Foreign

Affairs. Volume 89. Number 3.

Howell, Llewellyn. 1998. USA Today Magazine. Volume 27. Issue 24. P23.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. "The West and the World". Foreign Affairs. Vol.

75. Number 6. Summer.

Kaplan, Robert. 1994. "The coming anarchy". The Atlantic Monthly. February.

Karliner, Joshua. 1997. The corporate planet: ecology and politics in the age

of globalization. Sierra Club Books.

Lilico, Andrew. 1998. "Sovereignty, currency unions and trade agreements".

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Mooney, Stephen. 1998. Political Notes No. 122. The Libertarian Alliance.

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Morris, David. 1998. Western Report (Alberta). Vol. 25. Issue 34. P6.

Ramonet, Ignacio. 1998. "Giant corporations. Dwarf states".Le Monde

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Un 1-1.3 Challenges to Sovereignty

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