Page |1
Multinational Conflict Management:
Does the Concept Conflict with Sovereignty?
Sovereignty is a multi-use concept with a seemingly unending supply of
definitions. It is also in an apparent logical conflict with the idea of interstate cooperation.
Yet, for centuries states have sought to collaborate across a number of fields, though
perhaps none more so than that of security. In an apparent anarchic international system,
states enter into multinational agreements to manage conflict. The multinational conflict
management organization wrests sovereignty from the state only when the state
surrenders its sovereignty and only to the degree that the state allows. Simply put,
sovereignty is what states make it.
The Idea of Sovereignty
The term sovereignty is used in one of four different senses; international legal
sovereignty, Westphalian sovereignty, domestic sovereignty, or interdependence
sovereignty. International legal sovereignty refers to what most of us think of when
discussing sovereignty; the act of mutual recognition by independent territorial bodies.
Westphalian sovereignty refers to domestic political structures free from external actors
and territoriality. Domestic sovereignty is the measure of the strength of domestic
authority within a state and the state’s ability to exercise that authority. Finally,
interdependence sovereignty looks at a state’s ability to regulate the movement of
Page |2
information, ideas, goods, people, pollutants, and/or capital across its borders (Krasner 34).
Sovereignty is also a key element in defining the state. Max’s Weber’s 1946
definition of the state was that "a state is a human community that (successfully) claims
the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber 26).
This definition implies the conditions of sovereignty as a legitimizing principle thus
giving the state the authority to exist. John Agnew views the relationship of state and
sovereignty as essentially being about power. He explains that “in conventional political
discourse, sovereignty is about central state control and authority…From this viewpoint,
state sovereignty may be understood as the absolute territorial organization of political
authority” (Agnew 99-100).
The concept of sovereignty is often jealously guarded by states and is therefore
resistant to environmental change. In one way or another nearly every occurrence in the
international system represents a challenge to sovereignty. Today, the international
system and indeed the world, is undergoing a steady march toward globalization.
Globalization is the “process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that
events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far
away” (Baylis 8). This serves to increase the bearing of a state’s actions on other states.
Baylis goes on to paint a picture of the attributes of a globalized world, stating that, “A
globalized world is one in which political, economic, cultural and social events become
more and more interconnected” (9).
So given the staunch, protected nature of the
sovereignty concept, it is natural to assume that globalization, especially of politics
represents a direct threat.
Page |3
Globalization [presents] an ideology of what we might call "transnational
civil society." It is transnational because the global flows of ideas and
money in an increasingly liberal international order take place outside or
beyond the immediate purview of states. It is a domain of civil society
because it depends not on organized politics but on the interests of citizens
in their private capacities: making money and converts, spreading ideas
and technologies, and running businesses and charities… There are two
persistent fantasies about the relationship between domestic politics and
the foundations of global order. The first imagines the universalization of
the state, the construction of a world-spanning Leviathan. The second
supposes that we can do without the politics of the state system altogether
by relying on transnational networks of private agents. (Grewal 39)
The globalization process has spread at least in principle to the field of international
relations and conflict management. This spread comes in the form of multilateral or
multinational action.
Multinational Conflict Management
Multinational conflict management is simply the management of conflict by a
cooperative alliance of states, just as the name suggests. The interesting aspect of
multinational conflict management is that its prerequisite is cooperation among sovereign
states. It is not uncommon for states to seek out cooperative security approaches and
conflict management options. There are five essential types of collaborative approaches
sought by states, “power restraining power, great power concert, collective security,
Page |4
pluralistic security community, and integration – as rungs on an imaginary ladder of
increasing levels of cooperation” (Lake 170). The most popular form of multinational
conflict management is the idea of the collective defense agreement. These agreements
generally come in the form of treaties and are formed and reformed as the security
environment shifts and cultural and attitudinal similarities between states ebb and flow.
These collective defense agreements are rarely permanent or binding (170).
The case for multinational cooperation as a threat to state sovereignty is centered
on a supposed migration of authority from the state to the collective. By collaborating
with its neighbors in the security arena, a state becomes an organ of a supranational
authority. The fear of the state is that this supranational authority may not have the best
interests of the state at heart, as state interests often vary and conflict in this variance.
One such supranational authority is the European Union (EU):
The first and most frequently noted is the emergence of the [EU], which
has gone from six member states in 1957 to twenty-seven states that
currently belong. This represents from one point of view a major pooling
of sovereignty for a wide range of issues, though some still remain largely
in the hands of the members states. There is a sense in which the EU has
begun to develop common norms that imply, in an institutional context at
least, that there may be an emerging European political space. (Agnew
122)
When viewed through the realist lens, this collaborative action is corrosive to state
sovereignty.
Page |5
Sovereignty is What States Make It
The devil of a multinational approach to conflict resolution lies in the details.
Essentially, multilateral security options only erode state sovereignty if states perceive it
to do so. The traditional approach to understanding sovereignty is the actor-oriented
approach. The actor oriented approach makes key assumptions about the preferences of
actors, in this case states. We assume that the raison d’état is centered on survival and
security and that in order to guarantee itself survival and security, a state must maintain
the status quo. However purely as an intellectual exercise, what if the raison d’état was to
guarantee a higher quality of life for its inhabitants, even if the pursuance of such goals
would lead to the dissolution of the state in its current form? Given this supposition, if the
route that best guaranteed the safety and security of the individual citizen was to
surrender state sovereignty and authority by submitting to a supranational authority, then
the logical endgame would be multinational cooperation.
While this has been an amusing series of mental calisthenics, I do not believe that
we will see a new, collaborative utopia in which the state no longer exists and global
peace prevails. I do see that as long as a state is willing to give up some small measure of
its sovereignty in order to gain access to the security option afforded to it through
agreements with other states, and that a state can see the benefit of such a condition, that
the present system of temporary alliance and convenient cooperation will continue.
Works Cited
Agnew, John. Globalization and Sovereignty. New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Page |6
Publishers, 2009. Print.
Baylis, John, Steve Smith, Patricia Owens. The Globalization of World Politics, 4th
edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Grewal, David Singh. "The Return of the State: Recovering State Efficacy for Global
Solutions" Harvard International Review. Winter 2010, Vol. 31 Issue 4, 01
January 2010. Web, 14 June 2011.
Krasner, Stephen. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999. Print.
Lake, David A. and Patrick M. Morgan. Regional Orders: Building Security in a New
World. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Print.
Weber, Max. "Politics as a Vocation." In Essays in Sociology, edited by
H.H. Garth and C. Wright Mills, 26-45. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Web, 14
June 2011.