Defining Sovereignty

Dr. John Hemmings/PACIFIC FORUM INTERNATIONAL

Sovereignty is one of the most important concepts in international relations — perhaps as important as power for its central role in guiding state relations and setting the baseline for a rules-based order. The Treaty of Westphalia, signed in Europe in 1648 after the Thirty Years’ War, established the concept of the sovereign state. In doing so, it also created the framework for modern international relations, many scholars contend. Although today it is taken for granted, the concept of the sovereign state — a building block for the current global order — was created by the treaty and translates into an entity that is responsible for peace within its own borders, for practicing diplomacy, enacting treaties and, ultimately, for making war. 

Prior to the treaty, European principalities had limited sovereignty, with much of the legitimacy of their rulers conferred by the papacy, which exerted control over its followers. Likewise, in the Indo-Pacific, a historic Sinocentric order prescribed sovereignty, with many rulers subject to the legitimacy conferred by China’s emperor in exchange for accepting the principle of Chinese hegemony, or Tianxia (translated as “all under heaven”), scholars say. In many ways, therefore, sovereignty as defined after 1648 was not merely one that established territoriality, but one that created nominal equality.

Enduring Relevance

While security practitioners might view the concept of sovereignty as peripheral to their everyday jobs, it is more important than might first appear. The United Nations Charter, in Chapter 1, Article 2, asserts that the U.N. is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” This centrality is no less important in the Indo-Pacific, where post-colonialism, territorial conflict and human rights issues highlight its importance. 

Nearly every speaker at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June 2022 mentioned sovereignty at least once, including Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Some speakers at the international security forum went further, with Sebastien Lecornu, France’s minister of defense, and Gen. Phan Van Giang, Vietnam’s defense minister, each using the term seven times. Not only is the concept of sovereignty important because of its foundational impact, but it’s also behind some of the fissures and flashpoints in the region, from the South China Sea to the East China Sea; from debt-trap diplomacy to Sino-Indian relations; and from economic coercion to influence operations. Arguably, at the heart of these tensions is not merely a different conceptualization of sovereignty but a different concept of order. It is the nominal equality, included in most definitions of the concept, that is most at risk in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) hierarchical approach toward order. It is only by addressing topics such as sovereignty at the level of principle that the core areas of alignment among the U.S. and other regional states can be found.

Consider the PRC’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) scheme — sometimes called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — which received a great amount of attention from the global media in the past decade and which encouraged states to accept Chinese loans for infrastructure development. While the PRC sought to portray itself as a benign provider of public goods and development, the strategic nature of these efforts was viewed critically across the region. In 2017, Indian scholar Brahma Chellaney voiced the fears of many when he coined the phrase “debt-trap diplomacy,” arguing that China’s largesse was designed to make states dependent on Beijing and thus subject to its policy preferences. This concern also extended to India’s sense of territorial sovereignty: “Our position on OBOR/BRI is clear and there is no change. … No country can accept a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement in April 2018.

Sovereignty Defined 

Sovereignty rests on the principles of territoriality and noninterference in the domestic affairs of states, according to the Westphalian definition. Despite many states using language supporting that description, the region has three nuanced approaches to define sovereignty.

Traditional or Strict Sovereignty 

The first is the historic notion of sovereignty derived from the Treaty of Westphalia, adhered to most closely by many states of the Indo-Pacific. Given the history of Western imperialism and conflict in the region, this makes a certain amount of sense. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), for example, prides itself as being a model of Westphalian sovereignty, because the organization was founded on principles of noninterference and self-determination, according to its charter. The reluctance of ASEAN states to get involved in the Rohingya humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, for example, stems from a lack of cohesion over how far the principle of noninterference applies. In the immediate aftermath of the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, Indonesia attempted to devise an ASEAN response but only gained support from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, while Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam called the situation an internal affair, the BBC reported.

Responsible Sovereignty 

The second definition, mostly held by nations such as Canada, the U.S. and many Western European countries slightly alters the original Westphalian definition by making sovereignty conditional. According to the U.N., the right to protect strengthens the concept of sovereignty, arguing that it is a responsibility. By this definition, which draws from the U.N.’s social contract tradition, states must provide for the welfare of their citizens, and that responsibility exists with the “broader community of states” when a particular state is unwilling to protect its citizens or is the actual perpetrator of human rights abuses.

It is important for Westerners to understand this different view of sovereignty when seeking support from ASEAN states over human rights violations in Myanmar, for example. On the other hand, it is notable that the principle of responsible sovereignty was accepted by a resolution passed by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2005 at the World Summit. 

Hierarchical Sovereignty 

Finally, there is a variant promoted and pursued by the PRC that is somewhat inconsistent. On one hand, Beijing prioritizes territoriality among its core issues and noninterference as enshrined in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence introduced in 1954. On the other hand, its territorial claims are arbitrarily applied. For example, it claims self-governed Taiwan, dating to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), but not parts of present-day Mongolia, which was ruled by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). With regard to responsible sovereignty, the PRC has always insisted on the notion of the sole rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and that a country’s development, culture and values must be taken into account, while also steadfastly opposing external powers intervening in the affairs of others. Then, there are its notions on sovereignty of ethnicity. For example, it demonstrates an extraterritorial claim over foreign nationals of Chinese heritage, as both agents of influence and in its pursuit of opponents of the CCP. Finally, the PRC has not readily accepted agreements on sovereignty such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The PRC has attempted to expand its rights and jurisdictions in ways that “reflect a desire to reshape the concept of sovereignty,” as Peter A. Dutton, a lawyer and professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College, testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in February 2008.  

Shared Modern Notions

While the U.S. and ASEAN differ on the question of responsible sovereignty, they are in broad agreement on the territoriality and rights of states defined by UNCLOS. The PRC’s expansionist outlook has still not matured into a coherent or universal approach and is, rather, a slipshod attempt to provide post-facto support to strategic Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Similarly, the U.S. and other regional states conduct diplomacy and foreign policy that accept the principle of equality of states. The PRC, by contrast, is less consistent in how it applies its own conceptualization of sovereignty, with different applications for itself. 

This inconsistency is most likely due to a foreign policy culture that draws heavily from China’s imperial culture and Marxist-revolutionary ideology. The PRC’s Sinocentric political traditions, such as the previously mentioned concept of Tianxia in which the Chinese emperor was at the center of world events, can be seen in Beijing’s hierarchical approach toward smaller states, which it views as holding fewer sovereign rights. In 2010, then-Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a group of diplomats that “China is a big country; other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” While the phrase has been enshrined into the history of diplomatic gaffes, it is at essence an assertion of hierarchical sovereignty, which places the PRC at the core of the international system, with its sovereignty having more weight than the sovereignty of other nations. 

Ultimately, the modern concept of sovereignty — drawn up by war-weary nations so many centuries ago — is foundational to the current political order, a benchmark for a rules-based society. In this order, states have sovereign control over their borders and populations, but it’s also an order that makes normative demands over those states in how they treat their citizens. It is an order that enshrines the equality of Pacific Island Countries and, while recognizing their significant differences in power and weight, nonetheless insists on a nominal democracy of diplomacy: that the minister of a superpower has the same rank as the minister of a smaller city-state, and that treaties bind nations no matter their size. While the concept of sovereignty creates disagreements in the Indo-Pacific region, it is also the glue that holds it together. After all, international diplomacy, law and convention all depend on the goodwill and working relations of sovereign nations.