Mac-Coleman

3 November 2011 -

I posit that U.S. policy makers should have a firm understanding of the concept of sovereignty before they establish strategic objectives and before they use the instruments of national power to achieve those objectives. It is necessary that they consider definitions similar to those below to evaluate countries, including the United States. This process will help determine if U.S. efforts in other countries have a chance to achieve her desired strategic objectives.

Most of the countries where United States military forces are assigned have had or are now having severe problems with their sovereignty. Japan, Germany, and Italy were occupied after losing the Second World War and surrendering their sovereignty to the Allied Powers. One could say that all three countries are still occupied by U.S. forces. Worse yet for these countries’ sovereignty is that fact that the U.S. has consistently used these countries as forward bases of operations for military operations elsewhere in the region. For four years, I served in the U.S. Air Force at the Headquarters Supreme Allied Command Europe, Mons, Belgium. During that time, I regularly went to Italy and Germany as we geared up to deploy U.S. troops from those countries to Bosnia in the mid-nineties. I served nearly eight years in Japan as well. There, I tried to accomplish our stated mission in the defense of Japan while our forces assigned were constantly deployed to Southwest Asia and elsewhere for other operations. In 1950, President Truman decided to rescue the Republic of South Korea from an invasion by its cousins from the North. The U.S.-led UN forces succeeded in reestablishing the 38^th parallel region as the border between the two Koreas. Tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel remain on that peninsula.

Does this mean that these countries are not sovereign? I served a 366 day, seven hour and fifteen minute remote tour in South Korea (it was a leap year) as well. I have been back there at least a hundred times for exercises, conferences, deployments, etc. I did not need a passport to enter Germany, Italy, the Land of the Rising Sun, or the Land of the Morning Calm. My U.S. issued military orders were sufficient to bypass the countries’ immigration and customs. Even with the present European Union debt debacle and Japan’s huge deficit and stagnant economy, these countries are prosperous and seem to be independent nations. Yet, are they sovereign?

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, and The Democratic Republic of the Congo are a few of the countries where U.S. military forces are either fighting or training local militaries and security forces to fight. The U.S. has economic and security interests in these countries. They all suffer from endemic insurgency problems, terrible economies, corrupt or nonexistent rule of law, and borders that do not match predominant religious, ethnic, or tribal allegiances. It seems that they are less sovereign than Japan, Germany, or South Korea, but how and why exactly are they less sovereign?

Defining sovereignty is the first step to assessing and prioritizing many problems that face a country. Problems can range from paralyzed, internal politics to full-blown insurgencies, from external pressure on a country’s economic or security policies to full-blown invasion of a country’s territory. I use a common definition of sovereignty: The exclusive right to exercise supreme authority over a geographic region or a group of people, such as a nation or tribe. Sovereignty is usually vested in a government or other political agency, though it can be held by an individual, such as an all-powerful monarch. Examples will follow of different sovereign entities and their characteristics. Each one will show a different way to look at sovereignty. Policy makers must identify the challenges the U.S. would have in establishing and achieving strategic objectives in another country. They can do so by accurately assessing how much a country’s or a group’s sovereignty is under strain by forces from without and from within? Do these forces want to share in the country’s sovereignty or subsume it altogether?

Some of the forces pressing from without are, of course, other countries and the international law structures they form to protect their own interests and to pursue their own ends. If a country is to be sovereign, international law states the obvious: The country has to be recognized by other sovereign countries. It would be difficult to be called sovereign if a country is not recognized by other countries as having exclusive jurisdiction for the internal exercise of power over its populace. Exclusive jurisdiction is a fancy legal term saying that only one entity has legal power to do something. Simply put, no country can effectively tell another sovereign county’s leaders what laws to pass or how to enforce those laws. The exclusivity of jurisdiction over the external exercise of power over a country’s interests elsewhere on the globe is more difficult to define, but it rounds out international law’s concept of sovereignty. To put it one way, a country is sovereign if it can effectively authorize the use of its instruments of national power to pursue interests outside its borders. And, importantly, a country is sovereign if it can effectively say what its interests are outside its borders. According to international law, a country is sovereign if other countries and organizations treat it as if it is. Other countries honor the country’s jurisdictions, and the country acts effectively in its own interests within and without its borders. Nothing hard to understand there, heh?

Supporting the international law model of sovereignty is the concept of DeJure sovereignty. That is the legal right to exercise power. Countries officially recognize other countries’ sovereignty or refuse to do so according to well established, diplomatic procedures. Their reasons often are intimately tied to these countries’ assessments of their own sovereignty, sense of nationhood, cohesion, and the threats thereto. To understand why a country does not recognize Israel or Taiwan, for example, one must look at the strains on that country that recognizing Israel of Taiwan would cause. Those strains may indeed reduce that country’s exclusive jurisdiction to exercise authority over its people or interests.

External pressure by other countries on a country to recognize or not recognize another country may indeed reduce a country’s ability to use effectively its instruments of national power. Therefore, the sovereignty of individual countries is often intimately tied to the sovereignty of and the pressure from other counties. Nothing in the world happens in isolation.

De Jure sovereignty is threatened by internal forces as well. Ethnic groups, tribes, political groups, and brigands often refuse to recognize sovereignty in the country’s existing government. A limited criminal example is the moon-shiner who considers his still in a remote “holler” in eastern Tennessee as off limits to “revenoors”. As long as the problem can be handled by local police, it is a minor criminal problem and can actually serve as an example of effective sovereignty. The drug cartels in Mexico who operate with impunity and murder thousands of people a year are an example of criminal activity that has reached a level that it overwhelms a country’s power to suppress it, thereby threatening the country’s sovereignty from within. Less violent but equally corrosive internal threats may be ethnic groups that create ghettos within a city or region and prevent a country’s agencies from enforcing laws therein. Extralegal, local justice thereby supercedes and renders null a country’s exclusive jurisdiction over the internal exercise of power over its populace. If the problem is small and can be handled by the country’s existing agencies, it is not a threat to De Jure sovereignty. If it becomes too large for the government to effectively suppress, De Jure sovereignty can evaporate, both in the eyes of the populace and in the eyes of external forces.

De Facto sovereignty is the ability, in fact, to exercise power. That power mostly is included in the following categories: economic, military, political, and diplomatic. These are the basic instruments of national power mentioned earlier. Political power, including the effective power to prohibit certain actions or goods in a country or to tax such activities or products is a strong example of De Facto sovereignty. It bears repeating here: If a country can effectively reduce a moon-shiner’s activities to a miniscule, local example of crime, then the country’s sovereignty is pretty much intact. If a country can effectively insert the rule of elected law into the ghetto alluded to above so that there is a uniform application thereof to all citizens within its jurisdiction, then a country’s sovereignty is not significantly threatened. The country is, in fact, sovereign.

As with De Jure sovereignty, De Facto sovereignty has international aspects to it as well. For example, does The People’s Republic of China (PRC) have the De Jure right to exercise sovereignty over and to govern all of China, including Taiwan? Well, 171 nations recognize the PRC’s sovereignty over all of China. Only 23 nations recognize the Republic of China’s, e.g., Taiwan’s sovereignty. So, is Taiwan sovereign? I would say that Taiwan’s sovereignty slides further toward subsumption into the PRC as the PRC’s ability to wield its instruments of national power---particularly its economic one—increases in the world. You may ask: Why would the power brokers in an increasingly powerful Beijing care about how other countries recognize a small island off the coast of China? The reason lies in the exercise of the political instrument of national power within the PRC to maintain the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the sovereign of the Chinese people. This dynamic lies at the heart of assessing sovereignty in Taiwan and China.

At the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao Ze Dong in 1976, China’s economy, indeed the fabric of its society itself, was in ruins. Her diplomatic position in the world was buttressed from collapse only by her potential as a useful counterpoint in Asia to China’s implacable enemy, the USSR. Thank you, Doctor Kissinger and President Nixon. China’s military had never been a power projection force; its main mission has always been to support the Chinese Communist Party’s political hold on China. The political strength of the Chinese Communist Party, its hold on the exercise of sovereignty in China, was indeed in peril. Deng Xiao Ping, a survivor of forty years of war, purges, and horribly conceived and applied government economic policies, took leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore, of China, shortly after Mao Ze Deng’s death. He was faced with a monumental challenge to sovereignty, the likes of which few leaders have known in modern times.

The Mao dynasty was teetering on the edge of the abyss. Deng knew that if the Chinese Communist Party were discredited, then mass bloodshed would follow—as so often happened in Chinese history when an emperor lost his “Mandate of Heaven”. That meant that Deng and his henchmen would die a horrible death. Therefore, he did the only thing a die-hard Communist could do to stay in power and maintain his hold on sovereignty in China: he appealed to the rice bowls and the nationalist hearts of the Chinese.

Deng Xiao Ping told the Chinese people that the Chinese Communist Party would prove its legitimacy to rule by doing two things: It would improve the lives of the people through a more liberal, capitalist economy; and, it would reunite all of China’s peoples and lands under one sovereign entity. Therefore, Taiwan returning to the fold is a lynchpin to the Chinese Communist Party’s claim for legitimate sovereignty over China. It is a lynchpin to the Chinese Communist Party’s survival. While the diplomatic language from the nations who support Taiwan, yet officially recognize Beijing, is painful to follow, the road for Deng Xiao Ping’s successors has been crystal clear: Taiwan will never succeed in gaining full independence or Beijing’s Communist government will fall. It is that simple.

Therefore, is China—Beijing—a De Jure sovereign? Or, is it compelled to rely on other nations’ recognition of a carefully-worded, painful De Jure interpretation of sovereignty to maintain legitimacy and order in a country of 1.3 billion people? De Jure sovereignty, you must remember, is partially dependent on other countries’ recognition of the country in question. Such recognition is almost always determined by the De Facto sovereignty facts of life. As long as Beijing can effectively wield its economic instrument of national power domestically and internationally, the diplomatic instrument of national power will maintain or improve upon the present ratio of pro-Beijing vs, pro Taiwan countries’ recognition and, therefore, maintain exclusive jurisdiction over China’s interests internationally, which is the first half of De Jure sovereignty. The effective use of the economic instrument of national power overseas and within China will ensure that the political instrument of national power will retain the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people. The military’s main mission will remain the internal suppression of political threats to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power in China. The People’s Republic of China is, after all, a brutal dictatorship that will stop at nothing to retain power. All things change; but, for now, China is indeed a sovereign country.

Another useful example of how De Jure sovereignty is a complex issue is the state of Israel. One hundred fifty-seven of two hundred three countries have relations with Israel. However, only two Muslim/Arab countries have official relations: Egypt and Jordan. The numbers seem to say that Israel has achieved legitimate De Jure sovereignty. However, the countries that do not recognize her right to exist are implacable enemies and surround her on three sides, with the fourth side, the Mediterranean Sea, being where her enemies want to drive her. De Facto sovereignty strength, it seems, is what keeps Israel alive as a country.

International De Facto sovereignty is a fluid concept. De Facto sovereignty consists of two factors. The first is how external stresses such as other countries’ interests, economic advantages and challenges, or even such things as immigration—legal and illegal—shape and challenge a country’s ability to exist and thrive in the international community. The second factor is how effectively a country governs a people who more or less agree with the current system of governance or how it coercively imposes its sovereignty on a populace unwilling to abide by laws. As with De Jure sovereignty, there are no crisp, clean lines anywhere. Internal and external stresses and interests defy easy demarcation. I don’t have the time to write another 150,000 words. Therefore, I simply assert that Israel is De Facto sovereign over pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank because it has won wars with its neighbors to seize and claim that territory, the refusal by the Palestinians and most of the rest of the Arab world to recognize Israel notwithstanding. How long Israel maintains both De Jure and De Facto sovereignty against the designs of determined enemies at her borders remains a challenge for Israel, her allies, and her friends. Does the future sovereignty of Israel fit into the U.S.’s list of strategic imperatives? Yes, but probably for only one reason that the U.S. can consistently defend domestically and internationally: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The United States’ strategic interests to defend democracy trump our economic interests in ensuring the flow of Middle East oil to us and the rest of the world. We define freedom in democratic terms. We define ourselves in those terms. Our legitimacy as a sovereign nation is inextricably tied to defense of such concepts. Religion aside, economics aside, we must defend Israel as long as she remains a democratically run country. Does that mean that Israel is not truly sovereign? Yes. But, as I have been trying to ask, who is?

North Korea is an example a country that needs constant international support from neighbors to maintain sovereignty. She probably still has De Jure sovereignty because her neighbors, China, Japan, and Russia, have strong interests in keeping her separate from South Korea. Historically, neither China nor Russia has wanted a united, strong Korea on its borders. Japan, since its colonial days in Korea, has had interests in maintaining a divided Korea instead of enabling a strong economic competitor on the Korean peninsula. When I served in Korea, the joke was that we were there to keep the South oout of the North as much as to keep the North out of the South. The U.S. really did not, and does not now, want the obligation of another war of unification that risked ending as inconclusively as the 1950-53 war did. Different reasons, different actions; the same outcome for all external players. Korea remains, for now, divided. The Republic of Korea, Seoul, is a vital, prosperous, De Jure and De Facto sovereign nation with the highest percentage of on-line citizenry in the world and was a host for the 1988 Olympics. The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, Pyongyang, is a De Jure only sovereign country. Her population is decreasing due to starvation, and her birth rate is falling due to malnutrition. No lights shine at night for satellites to record. Few vehicles drive even the streets of her capital. The only computers linked to the world are in Kim Jong-Il’s palace. International good will feeds her people. Even China stations soldiers along the Yalu River border between the two countries to prevent mass movement of starving people into Northeast China. In reality, North Korea’s sovereignty is a chimera that bites all who come near it.

Obviously, counties’ legal and factual sovereignty are not always the same in strength or stability. Importantly as well, they are not the same in basic structure. For example, sovereignty also can be defined in many parts of the world by allegiance to tribal affiliations and to their governance and economic structures. Tribal sovereignty predates most governments, is incredibly durable, and is the basis of many borders in more modern parts of the world and the De Jure sovereignty that emanates therefrom. This said, we Americans are foolish to look at tribal sovereignty as a relic of the uncivilized world, something that thrives only in central Africa or Papua New Guinea. Virtually every Native American tribal organization that has desired to has established supranational rights and privileges within the sovereign United States and Canada. These rights and privileges often allow these tribes and their members to ignore the laws that other U.S. and Canadian citizens must to follow. Tribal sovereignty is alive and well throughout the world. It must be considered in any review of sovereignty.

Tribal sovereignty is often more powerful in the lives of tribal members than is local or central government. This is especially true in regions like central Africa where regions are vast and lines of communication are not well maintained by the government. Where the functions of government are not well established, the necessity to maintain structure in local society falls on the original governing power: the tribe. The people, mostly tribal members, accept this fact. Life goes on. In countries where the communications and travel infrastructures are more established, such tribal sovereignty may be conceded to larger government. But, tribal roots and traditions are often the basis of the larger government’s laws and, therefore, its legitimate sovereignty in the eyes of the people.

My experience working with the militaries in central Africa showed me that allegiances and power within the present governments flow along tribal lines. This is understandable in a country such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo where over two hundred tribes are identified and the infrastructure and lines of communication are so fractured as to be non-existent. The interpretation of the law is, therefore, parsed along local, tribal traditions. As well, the international borders in the region do not reflect any grouping of similar tribes into a single cohesive, De Jure sovereign entity. Internationally recognized borders, a vital part of the recognition of sovereignty in more modern parts of the world, exacerbate sovereignty issues in Africa. The wars in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, which more or less cooled after resolving such spatial sovereignty issues, are still on the hot plate in places like Africa. I doubt seriously if anything short of more war can establish a stable sovereignty in any country that suffers from a lack of cohesion among the people because of colonialist imposed borders. A successful expression of De Jure sovereignty follows the resolution of De Facto sovereignty issues. It does not happen the other way around.

Another way to define sovereignty is what we Americans are so proud of: Popular Sovereignty. For Americans, sovereignty is vested in the people, not in the government the people elects or in a particular political party. In theory, if not always in fact, the government is an extension of the people’s will. The government’s power, on both a state and federal level, is vested temporarily in representatives of the people through regular free elections. The U.S. constitution in 1789 was the landmark establishment of this concept. This type of sovereignty is based on an evolution of the concept of modern governance and the rule of law from English Common Law. One could say that the antecedents of the U.S. Consititution were old English tribal laws that melded into a common structure. From that structure evolved the idea of the sanctity of individual rights based on common principles and freedoms, not on tribal or family affiliation. Ironically, some now proudly state that what gives Americans the necessary cohesion to maintain our sovereignty is that we are a new tribe: Americans. Our cohesion, what makes us the same, is our principles of individual freedom and limited, collective governance. A general I once worked for, a black man who had pictures of Buffalo Soldiers adorning his living room, told me proudly that America is the only tribe on earth that anyone can be adopted into. He’s right. No matter how fluent my Chinese is, I will never be Chinese. No matter how well I sing the songs of the Ashanti, I will never be a member of the tribe. But, by swearing allegiance to the United States and to the principles of People’s Sovereignty, I can become as much an American as anyone. My grandmother did in 1912 when she came from Poland to Ellis Island with her brothers and sister. I am not Polish. I am American. That should be an enduring concept, able to overcome the politics of diversity and their corrosive effects. It appeals to much of the earth. That and our hamburgers.

Another trend in the last century is a nation ceding sovereignty to various supranational organizations. World sovereignty, or “Democratic Globalization” is some adherents’ goal. Others want to use the organizations to further an individual country’s goals. No surprise there. If a country is not trying to pursue its own interest, it will cede its sovereignty to more ravenous interests. In fact, I trust the latter far more than the former. Depending on how powerful a country’s sovereignty is and its instruments of national power are, it yields a lot or a little sovereignty when it joins the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Court, or any regional collective security or economic organization such as NATO, NAFTA, etc. I would say that pragmatic and wise leaders of a country cede only as much sovereignty—the ability to make its own decisions inside and outside its borders—as it needs to in order receive the advantages it gets from being in the organization. Membership and adherence to world organization rules are continually balanced against the advantages such membership affords a country. For the most powerful countries, the sovereignty ceded is relatively minor: a veto in the UN Security Council is always an option. If you think that a smaller country can maintain its rights and advantages in the world by ceding its sovereignty to world government organizations, then I have a parcel of land in the Gobi Desert I want to sell you. Such movements defy all historical examples of successful and stable governments in a harsh world.

Tomorrow, I will write on the concept of Religious Faith Sovereignty and how slam’s concept of sovereignty and the role of religion in government and society differ greatly from the toleration that has more or less prevailed in Europe and America for the last few centuries. If I have time, I also will expand on the concept of cohesion as a contributing element to durable sovereignty.