A Revolution in International Affairs?

1 See Pierre Hassner, in Nicole Gnesotto, ed., La Sécurité Internationale au Début du XXIeme Siècle [International Security at the Beginning of the 21st Century], in Thierry de Montbrial & Pierre Jacquet, eds, Ramses 2000: L'entrée dans le XXIe siècle [RAMSES 2000: Entering the 21st Century] (Paris: Dunod, 1999), p. 207.

2 See Noel Parker, Revolutions in History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p. 4, and Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 20. Revolution may be a matter of agency and aspiration, or simply one of the reality of radical change, as Halliday indicates (p. 4). The present treatment is descriptive of a phenomenon, rather than a matter of advocacy, although it is clear that change has occurred because of human agency: all the matters relevant to this topic are products of human, mostly collective, activity, rather than given elements. In this sense, although this article is not expressly constructivist, it has some referent points in constructivist analysis.

3 See, for example, James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 26-27, 36-37, and Alfred Cobban, The Nation-State and National Self-Determination (London: Collins, 1969), pp. 40-41.

4 Daniel Philpott, `Westphalia, Authority and International Society', in Robert Jackson, ed., Sovereignty at the Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, for the Political Studies Association, 1999), pp. 155-156, identifies `constitutional revolutions' which are radical changes to one or more of what he terms the three faces of sovereignty.

5 Michael Ross Fowler & Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and the Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 12, quoted in Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999: Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 16.

6 Krasner (note 5 above, pp. 9-25) emphasizes two versions of sovereignty - what he calls international legal sovereignty and what he terms Westphalian sovereignty - but he omits to note that these are merely two faces of the same coin.

7 See Gidon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993).

8 See Gene M. Lyons & Michael Mastanduno, eds, Beyond Westphalia?: State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

9 See G. John Ikenberry, `The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos', Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, no. 3, May-June 1996, pp. 79-91.

10 For a summary of such views in the first half of the 20th century, see Cobban (note 3 above), p. 134.

11 Georg Sørensen, `Sovereignty: Change and Continuity in a Fundamental Institution', in Jackson (note 4 above), pp. 168-182.

12 See Harvey Starr, Anarchy, Order and Integration: How to Manage Interdependence (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 86.

13 As I have suggested elsewhere, the absolute and indivisible character of sovereignty is not a matter of necessity, despite the views of some observers. See James Gow, `Shared Sovereignty, Enhanced Security: Lessons from the Yugoslav War', in Sohail Hashmi, ed., State Sovereignty: Change and Persistence in International Relations (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 163-169.

14 See Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty, ed. Julian Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 31-32, 40-45.

15 It should be noted that these terms may be used as synonyms, but need not always be regarded as such - indeed, doing so may be a cause of considerable difficulty. See Gow (note 13 above), pp. 159-163.

16 This is the key point of Krasner (note 5 above).

17 Alexander Wendt, `Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of State Politics', International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 391-425.

18 See James Gow, `Stratified Stability: Interpreting International Order', in Michael Clarke, ed., Brassey's Defence Yearbook 1997 (London: Brassey's, 1997), pp. 349-365.

19 `Annual Report to UN General Assembly', UN doc. SG/SM/7136 and GA/9596, 20 September 1999.

20 The primacy of the mission to maintain international peace and security is supplemented by the aspirations to develop economic and social cooperation and to promote human rights. Primacy is established in two ways - by first mention and by the fact that this mission is objective and achievable, rather than aspirational: peace and security are to be achieved, whereas the others are both desirable aspects to be encouraged.

21 `Statement of the Heads of State and Government of the United Nations Security Council', UN doc. S/23500, 31 January 1992.

22 See Security Council Resolutions 1076, 1189, 1193, 1214 and especially 1267 and 1269 (15 and 19 October 1999 respectively) on Afghanistan; 1070 on Sudan; 1199, 1203 and 1244 on Kosovo; 1264 and 1272 on East Timor; and 1031, 1088, 1174 and 1247 on Bosnia and Herzegovina.

23 It was noted by NATO Secretary General Robertson that whereas the problems of the former Yugoslavia had initially been largely dismissed in the UK, they had come not only to affect neighbouring states, but also the UK directly, in a variety of ways. Interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, London Weekend Television, 11 June 2000, 13.10 p.m.

24 The last clause of this sentence opens the way for the right to be overtaken by Security Council action (this is a complement to the clause permitting the overriding of domestic jurisdiction provisions offered in Article 2 (vii)).

25 I am grateful to Vesko Popovski and Nick Wheeler for engaging me in discussion on this point and helping me to clarify my thinking.

26 The list of such cases include the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, US air strikes against Libya in 1986, US air strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1999 and Israel's air strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.

27 Strategic Defence Review Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defence by Command of Her Majesty (London: The Stationery Office, July 1998), para. 30.

28 Madeleine K. Albright, `The Testing of American Foreign Policy', Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, no. 6, November-December 1998, p. 53.

29 `X', `The Sources of Soviet Conduct', Foreign Affairs, vol. XXV, July 1947, pp. 566-582.

30 It was noticeable that during the Kosovo operations in early 1999 many of the same figures who had condemned the UNSC-authorized action concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of the decade, alleging that it was in breach of the UN Charter and Article 51, objected to the Kosovo action on the grounds that it was not authorized under Chapter VII. Thus, at the moment where the story appeared to have moved on, the critics had only caught up with the main events of the last chapter.