Sovereignty in the Millennial World-system

• In Event: 518 - Section on Political Economy of the World System. Open Topic on Political Economy of the World System

Abstract

Standard treatments of sovereignty in international relations theory conceptualize sovereignty as an absolute, unitary condition. Each state is (notionally) the ultimate constitutional political authority within a given territory. But in a development that has gone unnoticed by international relations scholarship, this Westphalian system of state sovereignty has broken down. At least since 1945 major powers have mutually acquiesced in each others' settling of the internal affairs of their respective client states, and since 1991 the United States has exercised a near-global authority to settle the internal affairs of nearly all nominally sovereign states. This post-Westphalian system closely resembles the imperial Chinese system of tianxia: "all under heaven." In the new American tianxia the United States is the central state of an interstate system in which the vast preponderance of interstate relationships are (1) associations with the United States, (2) in direct opposition to the United States, or (3) modulated by the United States. Moreover just as was the practice in imperial China, the United States primarily wages war to settle the internal affairs of other states, not to impose external conditions on them. In this new, post-modern world-system the most important lever of power is influence at the imperial center. Thus the post-modern citizen of the world inexorably seeks to become, either metaphorically or (increasingly) literally, a citizen of the United States. The emerging liberal, universal, homogeneous state is not the United States per se, but the American tianxia writ large to cover the entire world.

Author

• Salvatore J. Babones, The University of Sydney