Going Deeper
Limits to sovereignty
THROUGHOUT history, wars have been fought in the name of saving sovereignty when the people or the ruler of a country felt that external interference in their internal affairs had gone beyond the tolerance limit. Such interference has had undesirable effects and affected the cohesion necessary for a peaceful international order.
The Treaty of Westphalia and the one signed in Utrecht brought awareness among the European monarchs of the 17th century of the limits of their authority.
In the 20th century, the League of Nations undertook "to protect and preserve the territorial integrity and the existing political independence of all members," which was again reiterated by the UN Charter.
The Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the promise made by the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, the US and European Union's insistence on respect for territorial integrity when the Soviet empire and Yugoslavia broke into pieces, had recognised the immutability of sovereignty of member states of the United Nations.
The very fact that de-recognition is not included in the lexicon of international law indicates that recognition is a final act, which once accorded cannot be taken away. The world, however, has travelled a long way from the days of the Treaty of Westphalia and, consequently, so has the definition of sovereignty.
The articles of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Privileges and Practices, breach of which is regarded as breach of sovereignty of the receiving country, have acquired new meanings as concepts of responsibility to prevent, and protect people from, genocide and other brutalities by the government in power in any country, and have crept into international conversation.
Naturally, many developing countries, victims of colonialism in the past, which gained independence and became "democracies" in the second wave of democratisation in Samuel Huntington's estimate, were cautious and reluctant to embrace these new concepts, which they regarded as attempts by the developed countries to recreate their influence over the developing countries in the form of neo-imperialism.
Such reservations, however understandable in the light of past experience, could not have been more naïve as the developed countries had already bypassed the developing world in economic growth and technology, and created a gap that would be impossible for any group of developing countries to close.
From the time the West learnt to rule the waves, the fate of the developing countries had been sealed, and the dependence of the latter on the former became a constant factor in the lives of both groups.
The victory of the allied powers in the First and the Second World Wars, coupled with the modernism ushered in by the European renaissance, hoisted their flags on the combined flagpole of the developing countries.
Barring a few economies, most of the developing countries are bound in servitude to the international financial institutions because their fragile economies cannot survive the shocks of earthquakes and floods, and these countries have to go around with begging bowls to feed their teeming millions who are half-fed and half-clad in the best of times.
One may, therefore, feel amused at the Quixotic reaction of some of the leaders in developing countries at the aberrant behaviour of the diplomats who should have read Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice more intensively; to prevent their inadvertent interference in the internal affairs of the host country.
The belief that all countries are equal is a false belief, and sovereignty remains mutable till a country can demonstrate that it can sustain its economy and democratic institutions without external advice and interference. But then, if one were to put trust in Harold Laski's contention that war is a product of a country's exercise of unlimited sovereignty, questions may arise as to whether complete and immutable sovereignty is a good thing for humanity.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, when many believed that the US has come to enjoy uni-polarity, some of the major powers banded together to instill multi-polarity in order to replace bi-polarity that had vanished with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jacques Chirac was the most determined in that group.
But the members of the New American Century, or the neo-cons who rose to power on the wings of George W. Bush's acquisition of the White House, felt that the Americans were from Mars while the Europeans were from Venus. They further argued that Europe had lost its centrality after the Cold War, while de-colonisation was the single biggest case of loss of power in the history of mankind.
One may quote Robert Kagan, one of the neo-cons, who wrote in his very controversial thesis Power And Weakness that "Americans generally see the world divided between good and evil, between friends and enemies, while Europeans see a more complex picture. When confronting real or potential enemies, Americans generally favour policies of coercion rather than persuasion, emphasising punitive sanctions over inducements to better behaviour, the stick over the carrot."
President Bush's conversion to such philosophy has landed him and the Americans in the Iraq quagmire, and has certainly lessened security of the West from the terrorists both in their homelands and for the people in the countries in which these errant Islamists would like regime change from the hands of the moderates to their brand of "purists."
To fight this scourge, limits have to be put on the sovereignty of nations, not to garland the American brand of "war on terror" but to prove the point that terror can only be defeated by democracy as reflected through the expression of true will of the people, as Pakistanis have demonstrated recently, and not through a servile dictator who would only wage the war on the military front.
In the ultimate analysis, since many events have shaped evolution of mankind since the Treaty of Westphalia and the writing of Satow's Guide to Diplomacy, professional diplomats of both the host and the sending countries should analyse whether so-called interference of foreigners will hasten the re-establishment of democracy in the country or bind the country in more severe servitude.
Emotional response and empty threats can only lower the image of the country, instead of bringing about socio-economic development of the country.
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