Westphalian sovereignty

expanding frontiers” (Hardt, Negri xii). There is no territorial centre of power and it does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. This post-modern understanding of nation-state sovereignty attempts to explain international relations between state actors. The political organization of states has changed…

imperative of humanitarian intervention is foolish. The primary contestation is between the importance of sovereignty and basic human rights. The violation of sovereignty, especially of weak and historically exploited states, is an important concern. However, firstly, our notion of sovereignty needs to be adapted to the African/Asian context and progress beyond its current, out-dated, Westphalian conception. Secondly, when undertaken through the principles of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P),…

Rwanda Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s that threaten and even infringed upon human rights. The questions that stood out was whether states had absolute sovereignty over their own affairs or if the international community can intervene in a sovereign state affairs for humanitarian reasons. According to Westphalian Sovereignty a state has absolute power within its own territory persons of necessity have no legal standing against a sovereign state. Therefore, intervening in a…

The treaty recognizes the independence of sovereign states and set the contours of governance within each geographical area. Hence, governance of population health is fragmented under the Westphalian system. There is no international government in place to respond to emerging infectious diseases. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) emerged as a branch of the UN system from the ashes of WWII. It is the main directing and coordinating…

Issues in Liberia and Sierra Leone had different conditions and root causes. Liberia was founded and declared as a state and a republic in 1847 by freed black American slaves, commonly referred to as Americo-Liberians. Most Liberians, especially the indigenous people, initially greeted Doe’s coup with euphoria and enthusiasm, but he basically practiced his predecessors’ ethnic and class politics. The crisis in Liberia largely reflected the internal factors outlined above, but one should not…

The human impact on the environment is undeniable; according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), from 1880 to 2012 the average global temperature increased by .85 degrees Celsius. This temperature increase may not appear noticeable or extensive; however, when considering detrimental worldwide effects there are many clearly correlated drawbacks to uninhibited climate increase. Each one degree increase in temperature leads to about a five percent decrease in grain yields.…

Subsequently, as stated in the last resort principle, reasonable alternatives and non-military means, such as political diplomacy, negotiations, economic sanctions, and legal adjudication, ought to be pursued and exhausted prior to resorting to military intervention (Brough, Lango & Linden 2007, p. 245; Higgins 2012). Minimally, States ought to employ reliable measures necessary to protect their citizens from any forms of aggression, as human rights is a pivotal factor in the conditions in…

The world’s reaction to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 is widely considered as one of the biggest failures of humanity and the UN, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were lost over the course of the 100 day mass killing. The response has been described as” too little, too late” as an earlier intervention could have saved many more lives, which brings the question why did the world wait? Why did we fail all of these innocent people? The answer lies within the structure of our world’s political…

Opposing Viewpoints The United Nations was built on the Wilsonian vision of how international order should be organized around a global collective body in which sovereign sates would act together to uphold a system of territorial peace (Ikenberry 2009). Wilson was a world leader throughout the early decades of the 1900s and was president during the first world war. His experiences led him to believe that there was a need for a single overwhelming powerful group of nations who shall be the…

the second order of liberal internationalism, Ikenberry mentions several issues that has, and still is, leading to its failure. He mentions issues such as, the alteration of the hegemonic logic after the cold war, the rise of unipolarity, state sovereignty leading to powerful states being able to intervene in domestic problems of weaker nations, struggle over the sources of authority in the international community, changes in the sources of insecurity, and growth of world economy creating new…