Category: sovereignty
The Birth of Kabylia
On December 14th, a government in exile declared the independence of Kabylia, a Berber region in Algeria. Of course, the region has existed for time immemorial, but it has not had an independent political existence. And it still doesn’t. But this is the first step that might lead in that direction. Tensions between the Arab …
Somaliland Gets First Official Acceptance
I mentioned Somaliland in an earlier post. It stands out as one of the few de facto independent countries in the world that no one will recognize. Well, that has finally changed, as Israel has officially recognized it. My default inclination is to support the independence of any region that wants it and is capable …
Tonga
From Western Sahara we go to the other side of the world, to the Pacific, where a scholar is concerned about Tongan sovereignty and specifically the sovereignty of women. Since “sovereignty” is a concept that is applied to nations and not to individuals, I’m not sure what she means when she says that “we aren’t …
The Church Against the State: On Subsidiarity and Solidarity
I discovered this book by Andrew Willard Jones through a review by Jon D. Schaff called “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” The principle of the book is a Christian critique of liberalism in the sense of the politics of individualism and freedom (more closely associated with libertarianism today, but a major force in Western politics …
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How Many Countries Are There?
Yesterday I watched a video called “There are NOT 195 countries.” (195 is the number of countries represented in the U.N.) I thought it might have an interesting discussion of what constitutes a country, but I was disappointed. Their definition of a country is “one that is recognized by other countries.” This is a circular …
Nagaland and Sovereignty
What a curious coincidence that my first introduction to Nagaland came in the past few months as I have been reading about the Japanese offensive in Burma in 1944, and now I should come across an article about Nagaland and sovereignty. I learned about it in an interesting article about Naga’s relationship with India (“Basic …
Palestine and Sovereignty
Today’s article concerns the problems with creating an independent, demilitarized Palestinian state. I found out about it because it makes a ritual obeisance to Westphalia as the origin of the state system, going so far as to footnote the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück with the explanation, “Together, these two treaties comprise the ‘Treaty of …
Westphalia, raison d’état, and the United Nations
Our focus article for today makes the usual mistake of associating Westphalia with sovereignty, but it is interesting in other respects. It is the first article I have seen in a long time to use the term “raison d’état,” meaning “reason of state.” This was a popular term originating in the late 16th century and …
Westphalia and Colbertism?
I read a lot of articles that only mention the Peace of Westphalia as a throw -away line about the origins of sovereignty, so I was excited to get to this one that went into considerable depth on the history of the treaty. Surely, I thought, the author would have something interesting to say. I …
The Holy Roman Empire and the EU
Our article for today posits a fundamental similarity between the Holy Roman Empire and the EU; and, moreover, predicts the demise of the EU because of recent proposed changes (see this document). Although the author asserts that comparisons between the HRE and the EU are commonplace, I see very little in common with them. The …