Myth of Sovereignty

[Michael Hoover]

> picked up a copy of Foreign
> Affairs. The lead piece is by Michael Glennon of the UC-Davis law school, a
> former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Glennon says the
> Yugo war means the effective - and welcome - abandonment of the UN
> Charter's rules "in favor of a vague new system that is much more tolerant
> of military intervention but has few hard and fast rules." It illustrates
> "America's new willingness to do what it thinks is right - international
> law notwithstanding." 
> The UN mechanism - which never prevented any wars anyway - is just too
> unwieldy. 
> the new
> interventionists must not be daunted by fears of destroying some lofty,
> imagined temple of law enshrined in the U.N. Charter's anti-interventionist
> proscriptions.
> Doug

myth of sovereignty is key characteristic of modern state...concept 
in int'l relations and int'l law came to be based on equality of 
all states - none could rightfully dictate to another...onset of 
modern nationalism was important because of its value to state-
makers in fostering a solidarist "us" and an alien "them"...

persistence of unequal states acting as if sovereignty were a reality 
has given concept political significance...but so-called "great" 
powers have always asserted the political right to interfere in any 
issue anywhere in the world at any time..."small" powers may be 
permitted to exist but cannot maintain interests in opposition to 
larger powers...conditions of their political activity, in effect, 
could always be imposed by more powerdul states...

(maybe there's something to the myth of the non-interventionist 
state in both domestic and international realms given their 
historical correspondence with the emergence of liberalism)

Yugoslavia is in unenviable position of defending the ostensibly 
sacrosanct concept of sovereignty as it is stated in the UN 
Charter: "the organization is based on the principle of the 
sovereign equality of all of its members"...specifically, 
inviolability of national borders - wasn't that a stated reason 
for Bush's Gulf War?...right to protection against domestic 
violence (hey, this one's in Art IV of US constitution) - there 
is a civil war going on and KLA controlled 40% of Kosovo at one
time...right to protection against external aggression - US/NATO 
air attacks...

as M&E wrote of the bourgeois epoch: "All that is solid melts into 
air, all that is holy is profaned..."    Michael Hoover