Balancing sovereignty with humanitarian rights
The Trump administration has overtly tried to reset US foreign policy to focus on the principle of sovereignty. In September, Trump told the UN: “In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government’s first duty is to its people, to our citizens — to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values.”
US officials are hardly alone in their emphasis on sovereignty. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin frequently emphasizes the importance of sovereignty and non-interference in a state’s domestic affairs. Chinese President Xi Jinping also frequently highlights sovereignty. In a speech to China’s parliament earlier this month, he said: “We should safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and achieve full unification of the motherland.” Xi has also promoted the concept of “cyberspace sovereignty” — the idea that governments should decide how to control the internet within their borders.
There has long been tension between sovereignty — the right of states to govern themselves without interference from outside actors — and the need in some cases for outside intervention to provide humanitarian aid or to protect groups facing extreme violence. A few years ago, it seemed that the balance perhaps was shifting in favor of the need to intervene in extreme cases of genocide or large-scale atrocities, when either the government was incapable of protecting its people or was the perpetrator: A specific concept called “Responsibility to Protect,” which the UN formally adopted in 2005.
However, recently, the balance has leaned much more in favor of sovereignty. There are multiple reasons for this, including the negative impact that the Iraq War had on perceptions of military interventions, and the failure of the international community to apply Responsibility to Protect to the Syrian civil war. Another factor is the shift from a bipolar world during the Cold War to a unipolar world featuring the United States as the sole superpower, and now to a more multipolar world. Today, the US remains the most prominent player, but must increasingly contend with a resurgent China and a troublesome Russia.
The world’s most powerful advocates of this principle — currently the US, China and Russia — have a strong tendency to interpret sovereignty according to their own interests, rather than as a global concept.Kerry Boyd Anderson
There is nothing new about China and Russia prioritizing and defending the concept of sovereignty — at least their own sovereignty — in the UN and the global arena. What is changing is their growing influence on global affairs and a new emphasis on sovereignty by the US under the Trump administration. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations viewed sovereignty as an important building block of the international system but did not give it the level of priority that the Trump White House does. Today, US domestic politics are driving a shift away from a sense that Washington must act around the world to maintain security and certain principles toward a more transactional approach, in which each state independently strives to serve its own interests, only cooperating with other countries when doing so very clearly benefits the state in question.
Sovereignty is, in fact, a key part of the international system. The right of governments to govern their countries according to their own political systems, interests and values is essential to the structure of the UN and other post-Second World War institutions. Sovereign states are the recognized actors in the UN and other multilateral organizations — the ones empowered to decide how to cooperate or compete with other states and the ones responsible for their own people.
The UN and other institutions, however, try to balance sovereignty with concepts of the legitimacy of a government. Governments that do not represent their people, let alone governments that attack their own people, have questionable legitimacy. Furthermore, there are groups of people with shared national identities who lack sovereignty, such as the Kurds and Palestinians. Additionally, in an increasingly connected world, one government’s decisions on domestic issues sometimes also affect other countries. Balance between sovereignty and the rights of peoples and other states is necessary and requires frequent recalibration.
The current weight in favor of sovereignty suggests another problem. The world’s most powerful advocates of sovereignty — currently Washington, Beijing and Moscow — have a strong tendency to interpret sovereignty according to their own interests, rather than as a global principle. Russia defends Syrian sovereignty but has no problem violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and Georgia. China emphasizes sovereignty at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence, as it threatens the sovereignty of Taiwan and rubs up against the sovereignty of countries surrounding the South China Sea, let alone Tibet. The Trump administration talks about sovereignty while placing demands on other countries and leading a country with a long history of interventions in other states.
This raises the question: Do the modern defenders of sovereignty believe in it as an essential part of a functioning international system, or do they insist on it only when it makes their leaders feel powerful while trampling the principle when they choose?
- Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 14 years’ experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risks. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica and managing editor of Arms Control Today. Twitter: @KBAresearch
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