Sovereignty

Such a precious, intoxicating—and ultimately terribly delicate thing, sovereignty. It surely needs to be enjoyed and handled with great care. Many noble sacrifices have been made in its name. But equally many crimes and misdeeds too.

It is, at face value, a worthy principle. You, as a country, are the master of your decisions, without any outside entity dictating the way you should run your house. The problem arises in the way, and under what circumstances, you invoke this hallowed principle—and when you, or someone else, should choose to disregard it.

There are those countries that invoke it, index finger raised in warning, when they are called to keep to their budgetary or reform commitments, citing the inviolability of their self-determination and intoning we-are-a-proud-nation with raised eyebrows and half-mast eyelids. In the next breath, they blithely ignore their we-are-a-proud-nation bit when they request more “solidarity” funds from their partners for budgetary relief or for some slack in the pace they are to conduct the reforms they promised—after sovereignly driving their economy to the wall.

(Here, by the way, the US federal states, which have subsumed their sovereignty into a bigger sovereign entity, have learned something from history: they are sovereign to dig their economies into a hole, but must then sovereignly dig themselves out again. No index fingers raised.)

Then there are those countries, east and west, which invoke the sacrosanct nature of sovereignty when they need to crush some domestic minority or other, or wipe out a pesky rebellion within their borders, so that no outsiders come to the idea of pointing out that such energetic handling of dissent is actually bad manners, internationally speaking. The bad manners, they counter, is interfering in their domestic affairs, i.e. calling into question the sovereignty of their domestic decisions. These, by the by, are usually the same countries that have no qualms in dipping their fingers into neighbouring countries’ territories, or even farther afield, to snuff out a dissenter that managed to slip away from their sovereign house-cleaning. Or simply to express more vividly their dislike for a neighbour’s political orientation.

But then again there are those countries which voluntarily decide to give up some sovereignty for the sake of attaining some loftier goal. Back in 1944, still during World War II, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg decided to create the Benelux Customs Union which, later, led to an economic union, aimed at promoting the free movement of workers, capital, services, and goods among the three countries. Benelux was a precursor to the European Union, of which it became a founding member.

Another example are the Scandinavian countries, which, despite having lorded it over each other at one time or another over the centuries, have sacrificed a bit of sovereignty for the sake of mutual benefit. Movement across their shared borders is a breeze. In the 19th century they even had their own monetary union, and today they have a common airline. This cosiness has not prevented them from entering into other unions or pacts: Norway is not part of the EU, as the others are, but is part of NATO, of which Sweden is not, and so on. This easy-going philosophy extends to the rest of the Nordics: Finland, Iceland and associated territories all practice this kind of enlightenment.

The European Union and the Eurozone are also examples of the benefits of relinquishing a bit of sovereignty for the common benefit. Countries that formerly had been at each other’s throats now happily open their border to goods, labour, capital, students and so on, with even a limited, while somewhat grudging, system of fiscal transfers among them. Granted: the euro has ended up stoking division among its members instead of bringing them ever closer together, the UK is not thoroughly thrilled by its membership in the EU, and many member countries grumble about intra-EU migration. But the euro is not even 15 years old, and the EU, by historical standards, is still a toddler. Give them time.

The Swiss are another shining example of a pragmatic approach to sovereignty. Its cantons speak different languages, have varying cultures and economic power, but over the centuries have subsumed their sovereignty into an overall Swiss one — and Switzerland itself has sacrificed some sovereignty, by joining the Schengen agreement that allows for passport-free border crossings and adopting many EU regulations, for instance, for the sake of a smoother relationship with the surrounding EU. Today Switzerland is one of the most prosperous nations on earth – and hasn’t been at war for ages.

So, it appears that relinquishing some sovereignty is a good thing, provided you do it voluntarily: it contributes to peace and commerce and cultural interchange.

When sovereignty is raped by a foreign power, however, it is the worst kind of sovereignty readjustment. It not only sullies the victim, but the aggressor as well. And lastingly. Sadly, as a look around the map shows, some powers have not yet learned that lesson.

All the more reason for us Europeans to preserve what we’ve gained by giving up what, at one time, appeared unthinkable: a finer type of sovereignty by giving up a bit of the old one.