Athena Rebirth
Whose Sovereignty?
Whose Sovereignty?
http://beta.project-syndicate.org/commentary/whose-sovereignty-
MADRID – Despite the huge sums expended to write down Greece’s foreign debt, there has been an outcry ofcensure against “interference” with the country’s national sovereignty. True, in exchange for considerable European aid, Greece’s ability to maneuver independently will be limited. But are complaints that Greek sovereignty has been severely impaired justified?
The idea of a nation-state’s sovereignty is rooted in the seventeenth-century Treaty of Westphalia, which embraced non-interference by external agents in states’ domestic affairs as the guiding principle of international relations. But, taken to its logical extreme, national sovereignty would require the complete physical and social isolation of states from one another. Indeed, an excessive emphasis on national sovereignty leads to serious problems: after all, any international agreement, whether political or economic, entails a certain transfer of sovereignty....
Indeed, the dynamics of interdependence have become well established – so much so that they cannot be reversed. To adhere to a narrow Westphalian concept of sovereignty in this world is an unwise anachronism at best, and a dangerous gamble at worst.
The poet Jose Angel Valente might call this a desire “…to wait for History to wind the clocks and return us to the time in which we would wish everything could start.” But, in the prosaic world of the here and now, the concept of sovereignty has already moved on.
