The Concept of Sovereignty in the US International Studies at the Turn of the 21st Century

At the turn of the millennium, as the Cold War ended and the United States were striving to build a unipolar world order, academic debates about the concept of sovereignty gained new momentum in the USA. This paper examines the views on this issue of representatives of the two major schools of international relations theory at the time — neoliberalism and neorealism. The author emphasizes that at the turn of the 21 st century the US academic discourse was dominated by a desire to revise traditional approaches to sovereignty as they were considered unsuitable for new postbipolar international realities. Discussions revolved around few key issues. Firstly, both neorealists and neoliberals focused on the possible implications of globalization and integration processes for the state sovereignty. Secondly, special attention was given to the search of a proper balance between the principle of sovereignty, on the one hand, and the protection of human rights, on the other. It is against this background that the concept of humanitarian intervention came into focus. The author stresses that at that time there appeared to be a certain convergence on the issues of sovereignty between the representatives of almost all key approaches in the US IR studies. For instance, it was a predominant assumption among the neoliberals and constructivists as well as the most part of the neorealists that a limitation of sovereignty was inevitable. Some experts pointed out that the processes of globalization and integration necessarily led to a ‘dilution’ of state sovereignty. Others suggested to decompose the principle of sovereignty into several parts. Still others stressed the indisputable importance of sovereignty as a basic principle, but admitted a necessity to adapt it to the new IR realities. Moreover, the US academic community almost unanimously accepted the priority of human rights over the principle of sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs of other states. As a result, the promotion of human rights was considered to be an international responsibility rather than an internal affair of a state. This, in turn, led to the emergence of the concept of ‘responsibility to protect’, which conditioned the state sovereignty not by its inherent rights but by its capacity to effectively protect its citizens’ human rights. This review of sovereignty researches published in 1990s and 2000s seems important for understanding the dynamics of the US official stance on a range of key issues of a current IR agenda, including the problem of foreign interference in internal affairs of other states.