Sovereign States: One of Many Possible Arrangements

One of the questions that most caught my attention during our lively class debate on Monday evening was asked by a member of the Con team [I paraphrase]: How could the international system fundamentally change? What would that even look like?

The Pro team did not have a good answer to the question of what a fundamentally different international system would look like. But simply because something is difficult to imagine does not mean it cannot exist. Much of modern industry relies upon the ability to come up with things previously unimagined by most people.

Nonetheless, it is difficult to argue in favor of something with no idea as to its possible shape. So I set to thinking about what a fundamentally altered international system might look like. Professor Shirk’s comments at the end of class were helpful in that endeavor. He pointed out that throughout history, sovereign states have not always been the way in which the international system was arranged. Certain empires, for example, did not conform to that model.

We can use empires as a jumping-off point for what are, at heart, different ways of framing power. Currently, the system of sovereign states divides power into discrete units, all defined in the same way – as “states” – despite the fact that they differ in the extent and configuration of their power. Due to the imbalance of power, weaker states are incentivized to form alliances with stronger states, thereby marginally increasing the power of those already strong states.

What if we conceived of the dispersion power in a different way? For example, it is possible to imagine an arrangement in which weaker states, knowing that they could not maintain their sovereignty in any case, chose to give up their sovereignty and merge with stronger states for the protection of their citizens. In another scenario, a more even distribution of power might disincentivize both alliances and competition, making cooperation among all states more advantageous than discord. For that matter, why could power politics not play out on the world stage in the way it currently does within states, with a global government replacing state governments?

Of course, there are many reasons “why not” given the current tensions and relations among states. However, the point of the above exercise is not to measure the likelihood of those changes happening, but merely to point out that it is possible to imagine them.