Abstract
Welcome to the first issue of World Affairs in our 183rd volume and the launch of our newly designed cover image! This issue comprises outstanding articles and commentaries on international ethics, borders, and immigration (Camacho Beltrán); China, the United States, and Taiwanese reunification (Gries and Wang); Germany’s position and prospects in a precarious European Union (Wood); a potential deepening of the partnership between Germany and the Ukraine (Umland); and two extremely useful book reviews spanning political science and international relations (Pelizzo).
All the pieces in this issue have been chosen for their exceptional insights into current affairs and our interpretations of them. However, one is especially timely, given the current political backdrop in world affairs, and is worth commenting on at some length here. I write this editorial on the eve of Britain’s departure from the European Union (EU) after 47 years of membership and a narrow (52–48 percent) win for the Brexiteers in the 2016 referendum. It is a departure that many in Britain will relish, while many others continue to lament sorely. Of the manifold issues determining the referendum outcome, national sovereignty over British money, laws, and borders, and deep anxieties over immigration stand out.
Camacho Beltrán (2020) does not dwell on Brexit. But his article in this issue theoretically connects contemporary questions of sovereignty, borders, immigration, and the mutual obligations that regional integration requires in a way that can help us understand why Brexit happened and what is now at stake. It also speaks to Euroskepticism elsewhere in the region (see Balestrini 2019; Wood 2020) and the wider backlash against global interdependency found in fierce isolationism elsewhere (see Magcamit 2017; Pasetti 2019).
Camacho does not argue per se for more inclusion (or more exclusion), but he does expose that liberal theorists take for granted, or assume without sufficient argument, that citizens and residents in any liberal democracy should be given priority over regular immigrants (the “priority assumption”). He suggests, in principle, that there may exist some reasonable arguments to support harder border policies in certain cases, but these should not be conflated with arguments justifying the existence of the state or jurisdictional claims to territory—though they often are. On his account, we need to examine and evaluate our justifications for priority far more closely if we are to be consistent liberals in an ethical international system.
Brexit indeed prioritized some of the most immediate interests of British citizens over immigrants. It also expressed the resentment that a large part of the British public feels over the perceived unfair burden sharing its membership of the EU requires—particularly the EU-wide legal requirement to admit an unlimited number of immigrants from other EU countries. Many liberal democratic theorists would not question this too deeply; for them, it is almost axiomatic that states have a right to admit or refuse entry because state dominion over borders is widely regarded as an analytic property of the state’s sovereignty. Camacho’s argument does question it; strongly, and with reason. For him, hard borders function as barriers that allow citizens and residents to benefit from domestic markets and resources without the interference of outsiders. In a globalized world, however, immigration seems a small cost for the market benefits that globalization brings to citizens and residents. His argument exposes that wanting to preserve the benefits of international globalized markets or sharing security arrangements with other nations, without bearing the inevitable costs—such as immigration or sovereignty compromises—appears to be unjust and exploitative. Free trade across borders is logically accompanied by the free movement of persons as well as goods. Wanting one requires accepting the other. Neither the United Kingdom nor the United States, among others, seems quite able to accept this logical dyad for reasons that appear to be deeply embedded in liberal thought. Camacho suggests that we should use a more careful questioning of priority and the limits of state sovereignty to moderate the problems of these poles. His solution requires a radical rethink of how we understand borders themselves as the ultimate site of the exercise of liberal democratic state power and authority in an international system that also purports to be liberal and ethical.
While highly theoretical, and ultimately contestable, Camacho’s argument throws into sharper relief the importance of equal, fair, and well thought-through burden-sharing policies and attendant mutual obligations within integrated regions. It also exposes some of the theoretical inconsistencies that lie behind contemporary regional resentment and the balking of those states that feel they are being required to shoulder too much while not being fully prepared to accept that regional benefits require significant compromise—often in favor of members who may bring less to the negotiating table. This article is especially valuable for inciting the questions: how, in a globally interdependent world, do we balance the economic and security benefits of belonging to a regional bloc with the limits that belonging places on national sovereignty and a responsive national democratic government that can win elections at home while maintaining mutually responsive relations abroad? How much of the shared burden should individual states be required to shoulder if new states that potentially bring less to the table are admitted to the bloc (a question also pertinent to the new U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement)? And, if we leave the bloc—to promote increased sovereign control over borders and laws and avoid the perceived costs of unfair burden sharing—can we face the potential risks of a future alone in a globally interdependent world? We do not yet know what these risks will be outside of potential climate change, global pandemics (given current fears over the coronavirus), armed conflict, or economic crisis worries. But one thing is clear, Britain will now have to find out and face them unaided by the rest of Europe or its declining special relationship with the United States. A similar point is taken up by Wood’s commentary in this issue, which inter alia underlines Germany’s potential fears of being alone in Europe as other states depart—as well as some reflections on the country’s concomitant countermeasures.
I hope you enjoy these superb contributions to WAJ and find that they stimulate your considered thought, counter arguments, and divergent perspectives. As always, I look forward to receiving your original articles, commentaries, and book review submissions on these and other topics in world affairs for future issues.