5 - No Sovereignty without Freedom: Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Global Order in the Twenty-First Century

Summary

International debates concerning human rights, as seen in recent years, are intimately connected to the central paradigm at the core of today's world order: the sovereignty of the state (cf. Kalmo and Skinner 2010; Minkkinen 2009). Human rights violations committed by national governments have often provoked debate about the legitimacy of such states and/or their governments and continue to do so, while also providing the moral basis for military intervention in response to a specific crisis or conflict. Although one might very well question whether a particular campaign against human rights violations is actually motivated by ethical concerns or more by rhetoric instead, it is clear that human rights and state sovereignty have often collided in the arena of international relations (cf. Prokhovnik 2007; Walker 2010).

The insistent question of what is more important, respecting state sovereignty or defending human rights, is generally handled by politicians and diplomats in a pragmatic manner: if human rights are violated by a state whose legitimacy is not fundamentally questioned by the international community, then the integrity of that state, and thereby its sovereignty, is granted a higher legal weight; however, if a state's legitimacy is strongly challenged in the international context, then human rights objections will become prioritized over state sovereignty. One of the most glaring recent examples of such asymmetrical arbitrariness in international relations is the case of the former Yugoslavia compared to that of Iran: while international criticism of human rights violations was enough to legitimize the violation of state sovereignty in the case of Yugoslavia, the sovereignty of Iran is not in question, even though its human rights violations are more widespread than those of the former Yugoslavia, and not only domestically but also internationally—in repeatedly threatening to destroy Israel, Iran has shown that the fundamental violation of human rights is its guiding principle. Nonetheless, we are a long way from any internationally backed military intervention to topple the authoritarian theocratic regime in Tehran.

Although this asymmetrical arbitrariness may dominate international relations in empirical reality, it obviously does nothing to solve the problem from a theoretical perspective—and for a critical theory of sovereignty to be worthy of its aspirations, it has to address this issue from a consistent position that is defined not by arbitrariness and subjectivity but by transparency and consistency.