GOVT6119 International Security - Questions/Answers Essay Help

Part 1: Theory

Q: How are the concepts of ‘sovereignty’, ‘national interest’ and ‘national security’ related? Are they still useful for understanding contemporary international relations?

Sovereignty can broadly be described as “holding an absolute authority within a territory” (John Hoffman, 1998). The structure of sovereignty is based upon three dimensions: the holder of sovereignty, the supremacy of sovereignty and the internal and external fractions of sovereignty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,2016). Historical sovereignty is typically based on the concept of complete independence of a state in governing its internal affairs without any interference from the outside body (AdriánTokár, 2001).

National interest is the main derivative of a country’s foreign policy and aims at achieving its goals and position in the world. According to Morgenthau “the meaning of national interest is survival—the protection of physical, political and cultural identity against encroachments by other nation-states”.A country’s external and internal policies are all regulated through its national interest channel. The long term goals have an impact on its external matters such as foreign policies, foreign aid, warfare, macro-economic policies etc. whereas the short term interests determine the currents course of actionsregarding cultural, social, linguistic, religious and ethnic norms (Morgenthau, 1958).

National security was once used as a term to solely describe ‘military security’ of a country (Joseph J. Romm, 1993). The definition of national security evolved over time and included non-military aspects such as economic stability, cyber security, crimes, terrorism, environmental security, food security and many other variables inside the parameters of national security (Paleri, 2008).

The typical concepts of a sovereign state, national interests and national security seem to be deeply inter-related under the blanket of ‘realism’. Realism is an old-fashioned school of thought which implies that an individual entity has supreme authority over a state because of which human characteristics widely affect the national interests which ultimately give shape to the national security of that state. Hence, extreme tools of power and violence could be used by the ruler to protect the internal and external interests of a territory (Sandrina and Isabel, 2018).

In the world of today which is moving rapidly towards the concept of globalization, the concept of sovereignty has lost its deep rooted ground of ‘supreme authority’. Globalization has given birth to the concept of global security which emphasises on the interdependence of different states in protecting mutual interests of one another.  The complex nature of global security challenges could only be controlled through cooperation and collective efforts of different states (Segun, 2014). Hence, the interdependence of states on one another and emergence of multiple international organizations have blurred the concept of sovereignty, national interests and national security to quite an extent. International legislation and international law limit the right to exercise sovereignty to its core functions such as implementation of taxation, outlining domestic laws, coining of money, strengthening the commerce and foreign policies (Jorge M. Pedraza, 2016).  The development of Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has given a further boost to the global security management that goes beyond the walls of military security. It covers security areas regarding food, physical health, political issues, economical grounds, environmental sensitivity and many more.