CHAPTER
XX
THE
PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY IN
ERROL
E. HARRIS
THE
NATURE OF SOVEREIGNTY: JURIDICAL AND ETHICAL
Despite the appearance in international affairs of organizations such as
the League of Nations and the United Nations, up to the present time, relations
between states, have not really changed in principle from what they were said to
be by Hobbes and Spinoza in the 17th century, or by Hegel and Clausewitz in the
19th, I propose to demonstrate in what follows that as long as the several
nations claim to be, and are recognized as sovereign this cannot be otherwise.
My thesis will be that national sovereign independence is a persistent obstacle
to the rule of law in international affairs, to the maintenance of world peace
and to the conservation of the global environment. The problem which it presents
is rarely recognized, yet unless it is faced, the prospect for mankind in the
21st century is likely to be extremely bleak.
In the western world, theories of sovereignty were propounded by
political theorists at much the same time as the rise of the nation-state in the
16th century. The relevant pervasive theoretical concepts and devices used were
Natural Law and Original Contract, ideas inherited from the Middle Ages and
derived from Roman Law. But they were not used by all thinkers to produce the
same conclusions. There were two main types of theory: one which was espoused by
the Royalists in the English Civil War was inspired by the Catholic tradition of
Divine Right and embraced by the inheritors of the Holy Roman Empire; the other
was the fruit of the Reformation and was advocated by those rebelling against
the despotic rule of Spain in the Netherlands and the autocracy of the early
Stuarts in England.
The first, typified by the writings of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes,
stressed the supremacy and absolute power of the sovereign; the second,
exemplified by the work of Althusius, John Milton and John Locke, insisted on
the rights of the subject and the need for the consent of the governed. Each
theory drew attention to an essential factor of government in modern civilized
society. The first stressed the indispensability of a supreme authority with
unchallengeable power to enforce the law. The second stressed the requirement,
if the rulers of the state were to retain the ability to govern, that the
exercise of sovereign power be legitimized by its service of the common interest
and authorized by the consent of the governed. These two aspects of sovereignty
I have elsewhere referred to as the juristic and the ethical.1
Theorists who insist upon the juristic aspect of sovereignty all agree
that the sovereign government of states under God are subject to no higher law,
and thus in relation to one another are "in the state of nature," that
is, mutually hostile, in a condition of potential or actual war. Hobbes
maintained that:
In all times, Kings and Persons of Sovereign authority, because of their
Independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of
Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another;
that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdoms;
and continual Spyes upon their neighbors; which is a posture of War.2
Spinoza3 likewise contended that "states are enemies by
nature." Hegel was of the same opinion:
Since the sovereignty of a state is the principle of its relation to
others, states are to that extent in a state of nature in relation to each
other. . . . It follows that if states disagree and their particular wills
cannot be harmonized, the matter can only be settled by war.4
As
Clausewitz expressed it, war is simply international politics conducted by other
means. More recent theorists have maintained that international relations are
always power politics5 (i.e., war conducted by other means).
Thinkers of the other school, who gave precedence to the ethical aspect
of sovereignty, limited the power of the state by what they saw as the natural
rights of the subjects, as prescribed by Natural Law; and this, some considered,
could also govern the relations between independent sovereigns. Hence, writers
like Grotius, sought to formulate a system of law above and outside the state's
authority. This is the origin of what, we, today, call International Law.
Unquestionably, any form of social organization implies the regulation of
the conduct of its members by laws tacitly recognized or publicly promulgated,
customarily observed or administratively enforced. In every such society there
will be those who in their perception of their own interests seek to break the
law, so some method of enforcement is essential to the good order of society.
Moreover, laws are liable to different interpretations and resort is needed to
an impartial authority whenever disputes arise. The maintenance of order and the
settlement of disputes thus require a supreme authority to whom final appeal can
be made and who has power, unchallengeable by private individuals, to enforce
the law. This is the legal sovereign, and this is the rationale of the
juristic theory. Sovereignty, so conceived, is indivisible, because if it were
shared by different agencies there would have to be a superior body to
adjudicate between them when their actions came into conflict -- and that would
be the ultimate sovereign. It is also inalienable, because whoever is so vested
is the supreme authority above whom there is none capable of transferring it to
another.
On the other hand, power to govern a community always exceeds the
physical capability of mere individuals, and those who wield it can do so only
with the cooperation and consent of a large body of the people over whom it is
exercised. What authorizes their rule over the social group must be their
ability to maintain the welfare and retain the confidence and loyalty of their
subjects. Political power is always derived from the community over which it is
exercised and is justified by its protection of their rights as citizens and
their welfare as persons. Even rulers who rely solely on military force can do
so only as long as their soldiers remain loyal to them which will not be long if
they are treated merely as cannon fodder and as long as their armaments and
supplies can be provided by the industry of their subjects -- which can be
ensured only if the majority are contented with their lot. The ethical aspect of
sovereignty, therefore, cannot be overlooked, and the theories which highlight
it must have a strong measure of truth. In fact, both aspects of sovereignty are
combined in practice, and the soundest theories are those that reconcile them,
as do Spinoza, Rousseau, and Hegel in a doctrine which sees the will of the
people expressed through the organization of political institutions as absolute.
Not much has been written about sovereignty since the 1920s and 1930s.
Contemporary writers, such as there are, have done little more than reaffirm in
principle, one or other of the main theories, stressing either of the two
aspects. The practice of states, meanwhile, bears out very closely the
principles enunciated by the major thinkers. Governments claim an absolute right
to legislate and administer their own laws free from outside interference; even
where individual liberties are demanded and conceded, they can be made effective
only as recognized and protected by the law enforced by sovereign institutions,
executive and judicial. Yet those who govern can retain power only as long as
the people over whom they rule acquiesce and, in sufficient measure, submit. If en
masse the citizens resist the party in government, it will forfeit its
power: in democratic regimes this happens at election time; in totalitarian
regimes by bloodless or violent revolution. The events of the 1980s in the
Soviet Union and her satellite countries in Eastern Europe have borne witness to
these facts, as have those in South Africa and Latin America.
Because sovereignty is indivisible, the allegation is fallacious that
today the sovereignty of nations is limited by their treaty obligations under
International Law and by the United Nations. Observance of International Law and
deference to the United Nations are always conditional upon the policies and
sovereign decisions of the governments in power.
In international relations, the juristic aspect of sovereignty
predominant. Each nation claims independence, the recognition of which it
demands from others. Each protests in the strongest terms against interference
in its internal affairs and seeks to defend itself at all costs against
interference of whatever kind. Over internal affairs each claims absolute
jurisdiction; and all pursue exclusively and assiduously what they regard as
their vital national interests. The common pronouncements of politicians daily
confirm this assessment. One has only to read, listen to the radio or watch on
television the speeches of British cabinet ministers regarding European
integration, to say nothing of the Euro-sceptic members of Parliament, to be
assured that British national interests, equated with the maintenance of British
sovereignty, are uppermost in their minds. The same is true of politicians in
all countries of Europe, even those who are in favor of closer unification. The
statements of the American President and of members of Congress leave one in no
doubt of their singleminded defence of American interests, be they national
defence or economic prosperity. The developing nations are equally insistent
upon being recognized as sovereign and independent; and the troubles in the
former Yugoslavia, in the Commonwealth of Independent States, in the erstwhile
Soviet Union, and the less menacing tensions in Czechoslovakia, have all been
the result of claims to sovereign independence of the emergent states.
The ethical aspect of sovereignty is mainly confined to internal matters,
where alone the common interests of the people seem to lie. In international
relations these are referred to as the "vital interests" of the
nation, the efficient protection of which is what entitles the government in
office to exercise sovereign power. Whether nowadays the common interest of the
people in the several nations actually coincides with what those states hold to
be their national interests is a matter for further consideration; but in
practice governments invariably behave as if they do. Independent nations seldom
see their vital interests as coincident, and when they do it is within only a
very restricted range. Over the world as a whole there is little consensus.
In international relations the deference given to the ethical aspect of
sovereignty is confined to the doctrine of recognition, whereby a state is
internationally recognized as sovereign only if, and as long as, it can command
the loyalty of its subjects and exercise effective authority over them -- which
(as we have seen) depends on their acceptance in practice of its government as
maintaining civil rights and common wellbeing and on their consent to its
supremacy.
SOVEREIGNTY
AND INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PRACTICE
The definition of sovereignty in International Law is unequivocal. In the
words of Dr. H. Lauterpacht, "The sovereign State does not acknowledge a
central executive authority above itself; it does not recognize a legislator
above itself; it owes no obedience to a judge above itself."6
In the judgement of the Palmas Case in 1928, Judge Huber asserted that:
Sovereignty in the relation between States signifies independence.
Independence in regard to a portion of the globe is the right to exercise
therein, to the exclusion of any other State, the function of a State. The
development of the national organization of states during the last few centuries
and, as a corollary, the development of International Law, have established this
principle of the exclusive competence of the State in regard to its own
territory in such a way as to make it the point of departure in settling most
questions that concern International Relations.
The Permanent Court of International Justice advised the League of
Nations in the East Karelia Case in 1923 that recognition of the sovereign
independence of states "was a fundamental principle of international
law." Repeating a similar clause in that of the former Permanent Court, the
Statute of the International Court of Justice stated that only sovereign states
can be subjects of International Law. If sovereignty is defined as it has been
by Dr. Lauterpacht, the authority of International Law is immediately cancelled
out; the sovereign state cannot remain sovereign and acknowledge a superior
legislation to its own and cannot, therefore, be subject to international law.
Similarly, if the state owes no obedience to a judge above itself, it owes none
to the International Court of Justice. In actual practice, this court can only
deliberate on cases where the parties have consented to accept its decision;
then, its judgement can in practice be rejected by any of them who consider it
contrary to its national interests.
Consequently, the authority of International Law is fictional, even in
theory, and its precarious nature is even more apparent when one notices that it
is the product of no established legislature, but rests only upon treaties, such
as the Hague Conventions, usually referred to as law-making treaties. Treaties
are said to be sacrosanct and lawyers lay down the principle pacta sunt
servanda, "treaties ought to be kept"; yet in practice they are
kept only as long as they are believed by the states that have entered into them
to be in their national interests. When "vital" interests are not
served by the observance of their terms, treaties are invariably renounced or
ignored. In any case, states being sovereign are at liberty to interpret a
treaty in whatever way that best suits them, as they are also free to retract
their commitments whenever they deem the circumstances warrant it. Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both maintained that a nation could
renounce a treaty at any time it thought fit; and W.E. Gladstone, speaking in
the House of Commons in 1870, denied that "the simple fact of the existence
of the guarantee is binding on every party of it, irrespective altogether of the
particular position in which it may find itself at the time that the occasion
for acting on the guarantee arises." Numerous other statesmen have
expressed similar views, and the prevailing conduct of states bears them out.
The pages of history are littered with accounts of broken treaties. A few
examples may be cited. In 1668 Charles II of England concluded a treaty of
alliance with Sweden and the Netherlands, but four years later he joined with
Louis XIV in war against Holland, having signed the Secret Treaty of Dover with
France in 1771. In 1818 the Quadruple Alliance, of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and
Britain, solemnly declared an "unchangeable resolution never to depart,
either among themselves or in their relations with other states, from the
strictest observation of the Principles of the Law of Nations." But in 1831
the Czar suppressed the Kingdom of Poland which had been set up at the Congress
of Vienna by a treaty of which Russia was a signatory. Later Britain destroyed a
Turkish fleet without any declaration of war, and Prussia overran the Duchies of
Schlezwig and Holstein without pretext or title. The subsequent history of the
19th century is a catalogue of similar breaches of International Law and treaty
obligations which culminated early in 1914 with Kaiser Wilhelm's tearing up
"the scrap of paper" which committed him to respect Belgian
neutrality. Neither the Treaty of Versailles nor the League of Nations could
prevent Adolph Hitler from reoccupying the Saar, or from annexing Austria; nor
could the agreement he had signed in Munich with France and Britain restrain him
from overrunning Czechoslovakia in 1938.
The reason for this catalogue of perfidy is plain. It is that nations are
sovereign and always exercise their sovereign prerogative of acting in what they
perceive to be their national interests. As sovereign they are subject to no
higher authority, and there is no way of enforcing the observance of a treaty on
a sovereign government except the threat of force majeure. Hegel, therefore,
made no mistake when he maintained that the fundamental principle of
International Law that treaties ought to be kept, "does not go beyond an
ought-to-be (bleibt daher beim Sollen).
Some may contend that since the Second World War and the establishment of
the United Nations all this has changed, but it has not. The Charter of the
United Nations is itself no more than a treaty, and in Article 2 it commits the
organization to the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.
Consequently, the resolutions of the Security Council have been ignored time and
again, by South Africa, Israel, North Korea, and Iraq -- to mention only these
-- while the Permanent Members have been able to veto resolutions which did not
seem to them compatible with their national interests and policies. Decisions
agreed to in the General Assembly are never binding; neither these nor any
resolutions of the Security Council can be imposed on individual members, should
they defy or ignore them, because they are sovereign states and cannot be forced
to comply except by some form of military threat.
Any such coercion is ultimately military, because economic and other
non-military sanctions cannot be made effective unless they are backed by
military force. If they are to have teeth, they must be universally applied.
Some form of pressure is needed to persuade UN members in general to impose
them; yet sanction-busting commonly occurs if no military provision is made to
prevent it. Frequently, as was recently the case with Haiti, a naval blockade
has to be mounted, and forcible measures are needed to counter attempts by the
country on which the sanctions are directed from using its own military might to
break them. In short, the only effective sanction is ultimately war in one form
or another. However, international order requires the maintenance of peace, and
its condition is the rule of law of which military conflict is a practical
breach. Incidentally, economic sanctions, as commonly applied, cause hardship
and suffering among the innocent population, while the offending government
tends to remain unscathed, as has happened in Iraq.
It follows that the United Nations is not equipped and is not competent
to maintain world peace. It can enforce the resolutions of its Security Council
on its members only in the last resort, if at all, by waging war, as it has done
in the former Congo, Korea, and Kuwait and Iraq. Its attempts at pacification in
cases of civil war: in Somalia, Bosnia, Kavorno-Karabach and Chechnya have been
hopelessly frustrated by its obligation, imposed by its Charter, to respect the
sovereign rights of its members. In cases of dispute it cannot adjudicate
(witness the futility of its efforts to mediate between the warring parties in
the former Yugoslavia) if the disputing states refuse to abide by its decisions,
for its judgements cannot be enforced without breaking the peace that they are
intended to establish. Its agencies are obliged to observe strict neutrality and
are dependent on the consent of the belligerents in order to function, so that
their operation is constantly nullified. Add to this that the sovereign members,
always giving precedence to their own national interests, are chronically
reluctant to supply sufficient funds, so that the frequent failure of UN
agencies, despite the skilled and devoted efforts of their employees, is hardly
surprising.
The inadequacy of the United Nations, moreover, is only symptomatic of
the endemic disease of international relations, infected by national
sovereignty. Because every nation is fully aware that there is no superior power
to protect its sovereign rights and that its independence can be ensured only by
its own military strength, the primary "vital" interest of every
national state is that of security, which of necessity comes to take precedence
over all others when national interests are considered. Accordingly, the first
and most insistent demand on its resources is defence. It seeks to maintain such
military capacity as it can and to augment it by means of alliances with other
nations whose national interests are compatible with its own. Those, whose main
interests are opposed, see one another as potential enemies. The result is that
rival blocs are formed, and there is a persistent effort to maintain a balance
of power.
But this balance is very precarious; nothing more is needed to upset it
than a technical breakthrough in weapon efficiency on either side; and, as each
bloc, suspicious of possible build-up by its opponents, is constantly seeking to
strengthen its own potential, an arms-race is inevitably generated. In
consequence, tensions intensify and crises intermittently recur, threatening or
actually breaking out into armed conflict. All this has repeatedly been
reflected in the history of diplomacy and in the proceedings of the United
Nations, the overall results being periods of so-called peace, interrupted by
frequent crises and minor wars, even threatening to escalate into major warfare.
The destructive capacity of modern weapons makes this pervasive threat an
intolerable prospect. Yet, as we have seen, the United Nations is incapable of
countering or mitigating it; and there is no other means to remedy the
inevitable effects of rivalry between sovereign states whose competing interests
in national security cannot be reconciled.
The history of the past three centuries nicely illustrates this pattern
of recurring warfare. After a succession of European and colonial wars in the
eighteenth century, the Napoleonic wars engulfed Europe and had worldwide
repercussions. The nineteenth century, despite expressed intentions by the great
powers to maintain peace, was marked by a succession of minor wars and major
crises ultimately culminating in the First World War "the war to end all
war." Alas, the Peace of Versailles might more appropriately have been
described as "the peace to end all peace." The League of Nations made
little if any difference to the succession of crises and minor wars during the
next twenty years (the twenty years of crisis,7 as E.H. Carr called
it in his book of that name) which led to even greater and more devastating
conflagration, World War II. Since 1945, the establishment of the United Nations
notwithstanding, there have been more than 200 wars, some of them waged in the
name of supposedly peace-keeping organization. The Cuban missile crisis brought
the world perilously close to a third world war, and the succession of crises
continues to the present day without prospect of final settlement, even though
the Soviet Union has collapsed and the Cold War has allegedly ended.
The oft-repeated opinion that the policy of so-called nuclear deterrence
has prevented a major war for the past fifty years is both misled and
misleading. Nuclear deterrence is nothing other than the contemporary pursuit to
maintain a balance of power. It has now become a balance of terror, the strategy
the appropriately acronym MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), the instability of
which until recently was rather augmented than decreased by the continual
buildup of nuclear arsenals. American strategists at one stage were entertaining
the idea of possibly winning a nuclear war, and may even have been projecting
plans for a preemptive first strike. President Reagan's "Star Wars"
plans were seen by the Russians as preparation to carry this strategy into
operation and led to greater suspicion and tension between the superpowers,
until Gorbachev's statesmanship persuaded the governments to greater prudence.
With the end of the Cold War, the major blocs have agreed to destroy their more
obsolete nuclear weapons, but this alone has created new problems: not only the
difficulty of disposing of nuclear waste, but also the possibility that the
states of the former Soviet Union, to acquire much needed hard currency, might
sell materials and know how to smaller nations aspiring to nuclear capability;
or that organized crime might succeed in supplying the means of manufacturing
atomic bombs to terrorists. Israel, Pakistan, India and China all seek or have
already attained nuclear capacity, not to mention Iraq, and the United Nations
can do little or nothing to stop nuclear proliferation. The menace of nuclear
war has by no means been averted.
Almost a hundred years elapsed after the Battle of Waterloo before Europe
was plunged into the Great War, which the so-called balance of power did nothing
to prevent. Since the end of the Second World War we have enjoyed little more
than fifty years of unstable and somewhat spurious "peace," and the
possibility of another major conflict is still with us, increased rather than
diminished by alleged "nuclear deterrence."
This prevailing state of affairs and the universal awareness that
independent states have no assurance of security apart from their own and their
allies' military power ensures that disarmament and arms control are in
principle impossible. They could be brought about only by international
agreement -- by treaties. But treaties (we have shown) are not habitually
observed and are commonly renounced or broken when vital interests are at stake
(none being more vital than security); and the observance of treaties can be
enforced, if at all, only by military threat. To agree to a disarmament treaty
therefore would be to abjure the only means of ensuring that it would be kept.
However, if it were not observed the security of all its signatories would be
undermined. Disarmament and arms control, therefore, become contradictions in
terms.
THE
ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE
Over and above the difficulty of maintaining peace and of averting
nuclear destruction, mankind is faced, as the 20th century draws to a close,
with enormous and even more daunting problems arising from the destruction of
the environment and the planetary ecosystem. The inordinate growth of population
and the consequent demand for food and industrial products the world over have
generated widespread interdependent and mutually exacerbating problems. The
earth's resources are being exhausted; consumption of fossil fuels in vast
quantities is polluting the atmosphere and increasing the greenhouse effect
which threatens climatic change of dramatic and catastrophic proportions. The
resulting loss of food crops is likely to cause starvation in many areas on a
disastrous scale. The uncontrolled destruction of rain forests, the main source
of atmospheric oxygen, is removing a major means of reducing atmospheric carbon
dioxide, which is the chief greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.
Deforestation is also a contributory cause of desertification, the effects of
which are cumulative, putting at risk the survival of wildlife, livestock, and
people. Continuing destruction of the ozone layer is exposing both humans and
crops to ultraviolet radiation, which is directly detrimental to the health of
the former and lethal to many of the latter, as well as to plankton in the
oceans, the basis of the entire foodchain. Add to all this is the accumulation
of toxic and hazardous waste from industrial processes and nuclear power
production, the disposal of which (some of it remaining lethal for thousands of
years) poses a problem for which no solution has been found, and it is evident
that the future of mankind is fraught with the utmost danger.
Associated with many of these destructive processes is the current
atrocious loss of living species, both vegetable and animal, depriving human
beings of the medicinal benefits from numerous herbs and of foodstocks on which
they have relied for centuries. Overfishing has depleted a number of species to
an alarming extent in many fishing grounds. Along with the ravaging of the rain
forests, the draining of wetlands for "development" and the concurrent
loss of wilderness are depriving innumerable species of their natural habitat.
As a result birdlife, reptiles and mammals, as well as plantlife and insects are
threatened with extinction. Hunting and poaching are so widespread that the
extermination of tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses and other such animals is
imminent, while the damming of rivers (for hydro electric power and water
supply) is isolating salmon and other species of fish from their natural
spawning grounds. The pollution of the oceans (from oil spills and the like) is
endangering the plankton, on which most species of fish ultimately depend for
their survival. Thus the entire terrestrial ecology is being disrupted, and, as
the biosphere is a single biocoenosis, every species of life, including our own,
is under threat.
This erosion of the environment is not a natural process but is the
direct result of human activities in the industrial age. It is proceeding at
such a pace that, scientists tell us, if it is not checked soon (if not already)
it will become irreversible. By the end of this century we may well have passed
the point of no return. Yet international agreement, even such as could be
reached in 1992 at the Rio Summit, has achieved nothing adequate. Non-binding
decisions indicate only failure to resolve; to limit C02 emissions to
present levels by the year 2005 is lamentably insufficient. The reason for
reluctance to act resolutely and adequately, the so-called lack of political
will, is clearly this sovereign nations give precedence to their national
interests over global requirements; and agreements either cannot be reached at
all or, when they are made, they are nonobligatory, (at best) half-hearted --
and, in any case, unenforceable.
The problems are global in scope and only global remedies will suffice to
solve them. The necessary measures cannot be effectively taken by private
individuals or non-governmental organizations, which have no legislative powers,
because the necessary action must be compulsory for everybody. Action by
separate nations will not serve because what one nation may do, however
effective locally, will inevitably be frustrated by neglect or counter-action in
neighboring (or even far distant) countries. What will suit the national
interests of one people may not suit those of another, and global requirements
may well conflict with national demands. International collaboration is
therefore essential and must be made obligatory upon all; but that cannot be
achieved by treaty agreement, for reasons already set out. Even if agreement
could be reached, its observance could not be enforced, except by military means
which would defeat the objective of the exercise. Nothing can be done by the
United Nations to ameliorate the situation because it is committed by its
Charter to respect and preserve the sovereign independence of its members and so
to perpetuate the impasse.
The same obstruction impedes respect for human rights. The Charter of
Human Rights has only the status of a treaty, which in numbers of countries
throughout the world is not observed. Amnesty International and other
non-governmental organizations do all they can to publicize and protest against
violations, but almost invariably the offending governments reject their
accusations or ignore them. The United Nations can and does take little action,
in part because the national interests of its members dictate otherwise, and in
part because it would involve interference in the internal affairs of the
offending country. There is no genuine legislation protecting human rights and
no means of enforcing such existing international law upon sovereign states
apart from military pressure, economic measures avail nothing without it, and
the cost and risk of far outweigh the concern of governments for the victims of
infringements.
BEYOND
SOVEREIGNTY
National sovereign independence, thus, has proved and continues to prove,
inimical to the solution of world problems. Yet it is upon the resolution of
these problems that the welfare of all peoples -- the very survival of humankind
-- depends. The national sovereign can no longer effectively ensure the security
of the commonwealth or the welfare of its citizens, neither can it prevent the
deterioration of the quality of life consequent upon the devastation of the
global environment. The insistence by national governments on their sovereign
rights cripples the ability of the United Nations to achieve either world peace
or environmental conservation. In short, the national state now lacks the one
and only justification for the exercise of sovereign power, the fostering of
national prosperity and the maintenance of national security. The ethical
character of sovereignty has been globally undermined, and its claim to juristic
supremacy is accordingly no longer valid.
This fact is seldom recognized or acknowledged either by politicians or
by the general public. Scientists and others, who see the predicaments and
recommend measures to counteract them, fail to realize that such measures
require political action which, if taken by national governments, will
inevitably be insufficient in scope and which will not be taken if they are
thought to conflict with "vital" economic and security interests. For
the same reason, the necessary, concerted international co-operation will not be
forthcoming and, even if it were, could not be relied on for lack of pacific
means to enforce treaty obligations. The scientists and nongovernmental
organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth may protest and
demonstrate, but they cannot legislate; so they can draw attention to the evils
but can do nothing to remedy them. The action of national governments is
insufficient if only because their jurisdiction is limited to their own borders;
and the United Nations is hamstrung by the sovereign independence of its
members. Unless this problem of sovereignty is squarely faced and addressed, the
prospect for civilization and human survival will be bleak in the extreme.
Professor George Keeton wrote as long ago as 1939, that "the fetish
of national sovereignty assumes the shape of the evil genius in the . . . forest
of international intercourse."8 The national sovereign state has
become obsolete in the circumstances of the present-day world. The ethical basis
of its right to supreme power has been eroded, and its legitimacy has been
undermined by its loss of competence to protect its citizens either from nuclear
destruction or from environmental calamity.
If the decline and fall of civilization, not just in the western world
but the whole world over, is to be averted, some new form of world government is
essential. Of this form the United Nations falls short, because its professed
objectives are constantly obstructed by the sovereign rights that its members
claim, rights which its Charter endorses and protects. This fundamental
contradiction has somehow to be removed; but current efforts at reform, whether
recommending increase in the number of members (permanent or other) of the
Security Council, or popular election of a new Assembly to advise the General
Assembly, are futile as long as the provision remains in the Charter that the
sovereign independence of members is to be upheld. Any new Assembly or Council
would have no legislative power as long as sovereignty is retained by national
governments. Even the abolition of the right of veto in the Security Council
would be unavailing as long as states are able to defy that Council's
resolutions with impunity or can be forced to respect them only (in the last
resort) by military means. If any path to salvation is to be found, something
more radical and more far-reaching than such so-called reforms must be
contemplated. The primary problem to be tackled must be that of national
sovereignty, which most thinkers today seem loath to face or even to recognize.
Nations must consent to share their sovereignty and to submit themselves to a
World Legislature, representative of the whole world's population and empowered
to act in the common interest of all peoples, while assuring autonomy in local
matters to separate nationalities. This may not provide automatic solutions to
world problems, but at least it would remove the current obstacles to them.
Without this new government, there can scarcely be an affirmative answer to
Bertrand Russell's question, "Has mankind a future?"
NOTES
1. Cf. E.E. Harris, The Survival of Political Man (Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press, 1950), p. 35f; Annihilation and Utopia (London:
G. Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 37; One World or None: A Prescription for
Survival (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993), p. 44.
2. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. III.
3. Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus Ch. III, 13.
4. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, 333-334. T.M. Knox's
translation: Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
1942, 1949, 1953), pp. 213—214.
5. Georg Schwartzenberger, Power Politics (London: Stevens and
Sons Limited, 1951).
6. H. Lauterpacht, The Function of Law in the International Community (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press, 1933), p. 64.
7. Philosophie des Rechts, p. 333.
8. George Keeton, National Sovereignty and International Order (London:
Peace Book Co., 1939), p. 35.