In this increasingly interconnected world, the very definition of "sovereignty" needs to be revamped, said Ambassador Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, during a Jan. 29 talk on campus.

The international community must work together to build a consensus on what rights a sovereign nation has and what should happen when a state negates its responsibilities, asserted Haass, who has been hailed for his work as a behind-the-scenes statesman. His talk, titled "Rethinking Sovereignty," was the annual George Herbert Walker Lecture, sponsored by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies.

For nearly four centuries, the notion of sovereignty has been "the organizing principle of international relations," Haass told the standing-room-only audience gathered in Luce Hall for his talk.

As traditionally defined, he said, a sovereign state "enjoys supreme political authority and a monopoly of the use of legitimate force within its borders"; has control over its borders, "both what goes in and what comes out"; is free "to chart its own policy course"; and is recognized by other governments as an independent entity. "Others essentially let it be," said Haass. "They do not intervene in what is essentially seen as its internal affairs."

Almost no nation today fully enjoys these attributes of sovereignty, contended Haass.

"For example, it's hard to think of any state that fully controls its own borders." Furthermore, he added, there are now growing challenges to the core ideas of sovereignty itself "including the most basic one: that if you're a sovereign state, you enjoy freedom from interference from the outside."

Haass asked the audience to envision the world as a chessboard. Four hundred years ago, he said, the board would have contained a limited number of pieces representing major powers. With the end of the colonial era in the last century, many new independent nations have been established, noted Haass, and there are now over 200 sovereign states on the international chessboard.

Furthermore, he added, "a lot of other pieces would be things other than states." These include multinational organizations such as the United Nations and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, the Red Cross and Greenpeace, as well as universities, think tanks, media organizations and labor unions.

"Indeed," Haass asserted, "you could almost say that a lot of you in the audience would be on the chessboard. The mere fact that you can now write an e-mail and send it to all sorts of people in all sorts of places ... and you could be fomenting your ideas or your political agenda or economic agenda if you so choose, puts you on the chessboard."

That allegorical chessboard would also contain "less-benign global players" such as terrorist organizations, drug cartels and groups that traffic in slavery, said Haass.

"States may be technically the only sovereign units out there, but what I think this shows is that you don't have to be a state to matter," he added. "Many of these non-state actors do things that are beyond the control of governments. Indeed, in some cases, they do things not only beyond the control of governments, but beyond the notion or knowledge of governments.

"I would suggest that's essentially as good a definition of globalization as any," continued Haass.

Today, there is a growing sense in the international community that "sovereignty is not and cannot be an absolute ... that states should and do enjoy great rights, great freedom and latitude within their borders, but not unlimited rights ... and that even these limited rights can be taken away absolutely if the government behaves badly enough," said Haass.

For example, he told the audience, there is widespread support for the notion that "citizens have rights as well as governments" -- that "the international community has the right or even the obligation to act when a government attacks its own people or is too weak to defend them." This belief was at the heart of the American and European military intervention in the Balkans, he noted.

The idea that a sovereign nation should not support agents of terrorism led to the "tremendous international support for the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan," where Al Qaeda had been allowed to flourish, said the statesman.

Similarly, the belief that sovereign nations have the responsibility "not to facilitate in any way the spread or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" was the "principal rationale behind the American-led intervention in Iraq," said Haass, conceding that this issue has become more complicated because of the controversy over that particular decision.

While there is "a greater openness to limiting sovereign discretion," said Haass, "I don't think we want to revert to a pre-sovereign world ... to go back to a world in which everyone is intervening in everyone else's affairs, and by that I mean military intervention.

"We need to strike a balance as we move into the 21st century between a world of too little and too much sovereignty," he continued, asserting that this is "not an abstract question ... It is at the core of the debate over U.S. foreign policy."

If the United States can reach a consensus with other nations about what constitutes sovereignty in this era of globalization and how to respond to transgressions, "it will help pave the way for an extremely successful international era," said Haass.

"On the other hand, if we fail, we will then be unable to meet the global challenges well, and the United States, for all of its strength and resources, risks -- to some extent -- being overwhelmed by these particular challenges," he asserted, adding that there is nothing more important "to the future character of the world than this set of questions."

-- By LuAnn Bishop

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