Many people have commented on our ideas about sovereignty and intervention (e.g. particularly thoughtful examples are here, as well as the comments on these two posts). One of the difficult things with taking any kind of political position these days is the strange bedfellows problem. Contemporary defenders of sovereignty - nationalists like Buchanan and Le Pen, old Stalinists and Keynesian statists, or just liberals nostalgic for the welfare state – are either nostalgic for a golden age of democracy and self-determination that never existed, or downright reactionary. But instead of focusing on that, it is more important to look at what today’s attack on sovereignty entails. Contemporary alternatives to sovereignty work against the possibility of self-determination. UN protectorates, humanitarian interventions, just as much as the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, prevent people in those states from making decisions about their own societies. It’s not like anybody’s really talking about a world democracy, or as if there is a real movement that could make that a reality. Even democratic politics at the national level is in a pretty sorry state. And foreign policy adventurism doesn’t just undermine self-determination abroad, it also weakens democratic controls at home.
Of course we can imagine more positive, universal alternatives to sovereignty, and there is no reason to stop thinking about those. But in the meantime, we have to resist the really existing alternatives to sovereignty, and defend the arena where people can most easily exercise their political agency.
6 Comments:
If your use of the words "sovereignty" and "political agency" is to gain any critical edge and political efficacy, you need to be more explicit about their content and the assumptions that underlie your usage. For many American citizens, for example, the recovery of political agency will inevitably involve efforts to curb their own government's claim that the sovereign right of self-defense justifies all manner of foreign interventions. Conversely, while it is true that interventions "may prevent people in [affected] states from making decisions about their own societies," it is perverse to pretend that in the absence of intervention "self-determination" is a reality. Yet this is what your un-nuanced language implies.
I'm confused by Goldie's comment above - as I see no contradiction between a defence of sovereign self-determination and curbing one's own government. Indeed, learning to curb one's own government is critical to a recovery of political agency - and this is fully consistent with the idea that the people are sovereign and not the government. Curbing one's own government does not nullify sovereignty, rather it exemplifies the practice of the general will. In addition, in itself, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the sovereign right of self-defence either. As I understand AWOT's purpose, it is to contest a) the particular foreign interventions that the Bush administration has chosen to pursue; and b) to contest the politics of security and fear embodied in the war on terror - and the way that these are used to justify 'all manner of foreign interventions'. Neither of these goals necessarily contradict a defence of sovereign self-determination.
One way in which citizens of the United States tried to curb their own government's assertion of a sovereign right to self-defense was to insist that national sovereignty be subject to international oversight. In the Iraq dispute, it was perfectly consistent to argue that Iraqi sovereignty ought not to be absolute, because Iraq was bound both by considerations of human rights and by agreements to which it was a party (such as the agreement that followed the first Gulf War), AND that the United States was bound to subordinate its claims to appropriate international supervision and adjudication. To insist on the inviolability of OTHER sovereignties is only to license the American invocation of American sovereignty. To speak of the "practice of the general will" is to look to a figment of the imagination for salvation (not an uncommon reflex). What is wanted is procedures and institutions, not will- o'-the-wisps. If the discussion were to shift from "political agency" in the abstract to concrete means of action, perhaps we could avoid tilting at windmills.
In the post above, Goldie has solved the problem that he put forward in a earlier post on this blog - how do we move from defending the right of other peoples to self-determination, to the recovery of political agency at home?
Precisely the way that he puts it above: invoking the inviolability of other sovereigns is to license the invocation of American sovereignty, i.e., the assertion of collective will and self-determination.
Goldie is also right to say that the 'general will' is little more than a 'will-o'-the-wisp' - and this is nub of the political problem that currently confronts all societies in a 'post-ideological age'. But the point about political agency / general will is that it can only come into being through a process of self-creation, by acting politically.
And this is precisely what AWOT is doing - making concrete political arguments in concrete circumstances, in place of the apolitical, moralising rhetoric and legalese that passes for opposition today.
What 'concrete' means of recovering political agency does Goldie offer in place of 'abstract' calls to agency and 'will-o'-the-wisps'? 'Procedures' and 'institutions' - 'international oversight', 'appropriate international supervision and ajudication'. In other words, I'll let Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac make the arguments for me. But political agency won't be recovered by arguing for undemocratic international strictures to be imposed on the state from above. Rather the state has to be curbed by the people's will, as Goldie put it previously. The arguments have to be won in the public sphere, not at the ethereal level of international bureaucracies.
I agree with pc that "arguments have to be won in the public sphere, not at the ethereal level of international bureaucracies," but in order to win arguments in the public sphere, something more than theoretical critique is necessary. Alternative courses of action have to be proposed. My proposal was not to refer the concrete issue I (retrospectively) raised to "international bureaucracies" or Jacques Chirac. It was to persuade American voters that their security would not be compromised if the United States showed greater deference to international institutions and opinion.
So what "concrete" action would give the people a true understanding that political agency does matter?
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