Category: Links

Timothy Burke is an excellent historian and writer whose postings always deserve a close reading. I recommend that everyone read some of his comments on sovereignty in his posting Rentiers of Sovereignty

Angola is the kind of situation that made me think very differently about sovereignty, and about the kinds of politics, both conservative and leftist, that mark the achievement of sovereignty as the initial and necessary condition of achieving prosperity and freedom. Sovereignty is the material resource that the Angolan elite controls and sells, not oil. They are rentiers who extract wealth from selling permission for extraction. But they are no different than a car thief who hotwires a car parked outside a suburban home, drives it fifty miles, and then sells the car on eBay. The difference is not in what they do, but in the legal and governmental mechanisms that permit what they do. The car thief is going to run into trouble establishing a title that can be transferred legitimately. The Angolan elite has no such difficulty.

All the international institutions which exist recognize them as possessing title to sovereignty. They are the ones who send representatives to the United Nations. The are the ones who fill embassies around the world. They are the ones that the World Bank or NGOs speak to and reach agreements with. That as not a conservative or liberal thing, not a failure of the United Nations or of the Bush Administration. It as an indictment of the entire interstate system built up over the course of the 20th Century, in all its parts and particulars. That system gives titles and ownership to thieves, and allows thieves to sell their goods to supposedly legitimate businesses.

I think Burke is very well aware of the fact that any careless attack on the concept of sovereignty (and my own broader attack on nation-states in general) without thinking about alternatives. However, I fully agree with him that we must all make a call to action. In his conclusion, Burke says:

I think that the beginning of a new era of action involves a steady contempt for sovereignty and the claims made in its name, and the construction of a new international system that reflects that contempt. Let as call Angola as elite what they are: thieves. Let as call the companies pumping oil out of Angola what they are: the purchasers of stolen property. Let as make it as difficult as we can for thieves to fence stolen sovereignties, and for purchasers to buy the same.

I agree, but with one qualification. In so far as I hope the challenge of the 21st century will be to create a less violent and divisive home for humanity, I would rather not see any kind of inter-national system at all. The serious exploration of alternatives to the nation-state must be done hand in hand with the exploration of alternatives to the modern conception of sovereignty.