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Rise and Demise of the Territorial State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

John H. Herz
John H. Herz
Affiliation:
City College of New York
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Extract

Students and practitioners of international politics are at present in a strange predicament. Complex though their problems have been in the past, there was then at least some certainty about the “givens,” the basic structure and the basic phenomena of international relations. Today one is neither here nor there. On the one hand, for instance, one is assured—or at least tempted to accept assurance—that for all practical purposes a nuclear stalemate rules out major war as a major means of policy today and in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, one has an uncanny sense of the practicability of the unabated arms race, and a doubt whether reliance can be placed solely on the deterrent purpose of all this preparation. We are no longer sure about the functions of war and peace, nor do we know how to define the national interest and what its defense requires under present conditions. As a matter of fact, the meaning and function of the basic protective unit, the “sovereign” nation-state itself, have become doubtful.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , July 1957 , pp. 473 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1957

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References

1 Mcllwain, Charles H., The Growth of Political Thought in the West, New York, 1932, p. 268.Google Scholar

2 von der Heydte, F. A., Die Geburtsstunde des souveränen Staates, Regensburg, 1952, pp. 103ff., 277Google Scholar, 293ff.

3 Ariosto expressed the feeling of despair which invaded the “old powers” of chivalry when gunpowder destroyed the foundations of their system, in terms reminding one of present-day despair in the face of the destructive forces loosed upon our own world:

”Oh! curs'd device! base implement of death!

Framed in the black Tartarean realms beneath!

By Beelzebub's malicious art design'd

To ruin all the race of human kind.”

Quoted from Orlando Furioso by Felix Gilbert, in Earle, Edward M., ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton, N.J., 1943, p. 4.Google Scholar

4 On this, see Mattingly, Garrett, Renaissance Diplomacy, Boston, 1955, pp. 59ff.Google Scholar, 121ff., 205ff.

5 See Meinecke, Friedrich, Die Idee der Staatsraison in der neueren Geschichte, Munich and Berlin, 1925, pp. 241ff.Google Scholar

6 The emergence of “non-intervention” as a legal concept illustrates this transition.

A complete change in the meaning of the term occurred in the brief period between the time of Grotius and that of Pufendorf. Grotius, writing during the last phase of the pre-modern era of religious and “international civil” wars and still thinking in terms of “just” and “unjust” wars, considered a ruler entitled to intervene in the affairs of another sovereign if it was necessary to defend oppressed subjects of the latter; Pufendorf, barely fifty years later, rejected such interference in the “domestic affairs” of another sovereign as a violation of the sovereign's exclusive jurisdiction over his territory and all it contained. See Schiffer, Walter, The Legal Community of Mankind, New York, 1954, pp. 34f., 56.Google Scholar

7 “Entretiens de Philarète et d'Eugène sur le droit d'Ambassade”; quoted here from Werke, 1st series, 111, Hanover, 1864, pp. 331ff.

8 Ibid., pp. 340, 342.

9 Ibid., p. 349.

10 “La souveraineté est un pouvoir légitime et ordinaire de contraindre les sujets à obéir, sans qu'on puisse être contraint soy même si ce n'est par une guerre” (Ibid., p. 352).

11 Ibid., p. 354.

12 Ibid., p. 358.

13 Leibniz' emphasis on constraint as a primary prerequisite of sovereignty might strike later observers as over-materialistic. But one should remember that the rocher de bronze of sovereignty was only then being established, not only against outside interference but also against still recalcitrant feudal powers within the territorial ruler's realm, and even in the latter case frequently by force of arms and armed forces which to the defeated may well have appeared as something very much like occupation forces. As a matter of fact, “garrisoning” is a key word in Leibniz' arguments: “As long as one has the right to be master in one's own house, and no superior has the right to maintain garrisons there and deprive one of the exercise of one's right of peace, war, and alliances, one has that independence which sovereignty presupposes (liberté requise à la Souveraineté)” (Ibid., p. 356).

14 Laurent, François, as quoted by Schiffer, op.cit., p. 157.Google Scholar

15 See my Political Realism and Political Idealism, Chicago, 1951, pp. 206–21.

16 von Elbe, J., “Die Wiederherstellung der Gleichgewichtsordnung in Europa durch den Wiener Kongress,” Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, IV (1934), pp. 226ff.Google Scholar

17 See Schmitt, Carl, Der Nomos der Erde, Cologne, 1950, pp. 60ff.Google Scholar; also Schoenborn, W., “Über Entdeckung als Rechtstitel völkerrechtlichen Gebietserwerbs,” in Constantinopoulos, D. S. and Wehberg, H., eds., Gegenwartsprobleme des internationalen Rechts und der Rechtsphilosophie, Hamburg, 1953, pp. 236ff.Google Scholar

18 On this, see McMahon, M. M., Conquest and Modern International Law, Washington, D.C., 1940Google Scholar; Lindlay, M. F., The Acquisition and Government of Backward Territory in International Law, London, 1926Google Scholar; and Langer, Robert, Seizure of Territory, Princeton, N.J., 1947.Google Scholar

19 As witness the impression made on contemporaries by the destruction of the first ancient European unit to fall victim to these policies—Venice.

20 See Eyck, Erich, Bismarck, 11, Zurich, 1943, pp. 305ff.Google Scholar

21 Except for these cases, we find only marginal instances of complete obliteration. The annexation of the Free City of Krakow by Russia eliminated a synthetic creation of the Vienna settlement. British conquest of the Boer Republics, if considered as an instance of annihilation of European polities in view of the European origin of the inhabitants, happened at the very rim of the world, as it were, remote from the continent where the practice of non-annihilation prevailed.

22 Cf. also the remarkable stability of state units in the Western Hemisphere qua independent units; unstable as some of them are domestically, their sovereign identity as units appears almost sacrosanct.

23 In League practice, therefore, membership applications of countries without this minimum were rejected (for instance, that of Liechtenstein; cf. Schücking, Walther and Wehberg, Hans, Die Satzung des VölKerbundes, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1924, pp. 252ff.).Google Scholar The decline of genuine collective security in our time is apparent from the fact that, in contrast to this practice, the United Nations pays hardly any attention to the question of defensibility, particularly in connection with membership applications.

24 See my article, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, 11, No. 2 (January 1950), pp. 157ff.; in particular, pp. 165ff.

25 Liddell Hart, B. H., The Revolution in Warfare, New Haven, Conn., 1947, p. 36.Google Scholar Suspicion of what would be in the offing, once man gained the capacity to fly, was abroad as early as the eighteenth century. Thus Johnson, Samuel remarked: “If men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford security” (quoted in Nef, J. U., War and Human Progress, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, p. 198).Google Scholar And Benjamin Franklin, witnessing the first balloon ascension at Paris in 1783, foresaw invasion from the air and wrote: “Convincing Sovereigns of folly of wars may perhaps be one effect of it, since it will be impracticable for the most potent of them to guard his dominions.… Where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” (from a letter to Ingelhouss, Jan, reproduced in Life Magazine, January 9, 1956).Google Scholar

26 See Stone, Julius, Legal Controls of International Conflicts, New York, 1954, pp. 611ff.Google Scholar

27 Some of the pertinent questions are discussed in a more comprehensive manuscript, “Reflections on International Politics in the Atomic Age,” from whose initial chapters the preceding pages were adapted.

28 The Open Mind, New York, 1955, p. 141.

29 Hilsman, Roger, “Strategic Doctrines for Nuclear War,” in Kaufmann, William W., ed., Military Policy and National Security, Princeton, N.J., 1956, p. 42.Google Scholar

30 Finletter, Thomas K., Power and Politics: US Foreign Policy and Military Power in the Hydrogen Age, New York, 1954, p. 256.Google Scholar

31 The expectations connected with the situation of nuclear deterrence may serve as an illustration. Each side, so we may assume, wants to act “rationally”—that is, avoid resort to a war which it knows would be suicidal; in this, in fact, is grounded the widespread present belief in the obsoleteness of major—i.e., nuclear—war. However, not knowing for sure that the other side can be trusted to behave rationally, each feels that the possibility of irrational behavior by the opponent must be included in its own calculations. For instance, assuming that rationally the United States would not permit itself to be provoked into nuclear action, can it rely on Soviet abstention from nuclear attack for similarly rational reasons? Or can the Soviets, who may actually believe that the “imperialist” powers are ready to inflict the worst on them, rely on Western rationality? And if, knowing that the other side may be swayed by considerations like these, one side takes these amended calculations as yardsticks for its own, what rational considerations remain? Policies then become so dependent on considerations of what you believe the other side believes, etc., ad infinitum, that no sane calculations are any longer feasible. One is caught here in the vicious circle inherent in the problem of the effects of assumptions (in behaviorist parlance, the problem of “anticipated reactions”), of what David Easton has called the possibility of an “infinite regress of effects” (The Political System, New York, 1953, p. 27). It may be doubted that even the theory of games as applied to international relations can cope with this one. And suppose that, sometime in the future, more than two major units “play”? In the face of this prospect, as Herbert Butterfield says, “The mind winces and turns to look elsewhere” (History and Human Relations, New York, 1952, p. 23).

32 “Atomic Weapons,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, XC (January 29, 1946), pp. 9f.