Essay Example on Sovereignty has demonstrated to be a puzzling Establishment

During the past decades sovereignty has demonstrated to be a puzzling establishment at the same time altering and persistent Currently it is of significant curiosity to academics of International Relations and is the topic of considerable discussion This essay assesses how the orthodox models of sovereignty have been contested in the post Cold War era with the growth of several nations with variable internal structures together with the development of recent menaces to the international order This essay divides the discussion into four parts the first examines the concept of sovereignty that originated from the Peace of Westphalia 1648 the second part observes the geo political structure right after the end of the Cold War thus the birth of interdependence sovereignty established in a unipolar world order where nations step from an internal to an external sovereignty and the curious reactions of the United Nations UN to this order The third segment s main focus is on humanitarian intervention with the example of NATO's involvement in Kosovo in 1999 which can be described as the shift that took over the concept of national sovereign from realist to a rising ethical view with the support of a global civil society movement 

Lastly concentrating on the change from a Statist order to a Polycentric structure of international governance the globalization era is examined especially concerning the outcomes of issues involving the military and the finance when the traditional notion of sovereignty is challenged by this new environment, In conclusion, this essay will demonstrate that sovereignty has indeed changed in the last centuries and whether the change has been positive or negative Taking its roots from the Cuius regio eius religio of the Peace of Augsburg 1555 the 1648 Peace of Westphalia which is actually made up by two distinct treaties Mu nster and Osnabru ck stipulated values still relevant in the current political sphere to state sovereignty Jackson 2013 The key aspects brought by the classical proposal of sovereignty were two internal and external sovereignty 

The internal aspect was about the capacity of state authorities to rule inside their borders whereas the external aspect was the acknowledgment by other states of a state right to independence and inviolability Wang 2004 Therefore on the international scene the only legitimately equal are sovereign nations acknowledging no superior authority both externally and internally Nations have the right of non intervention by other nations and to self preservation Brown 2006 The Westphalian s vital features are still significant nowadays and can still be found inside the UN Charter 1945 for example the article 2 1 entrenched sovereignty as an equal rightful principle for all the Members of the UN Furthermore the Charter indicated the recognised refusal of a hierarchy of states and forbidden the use of strength against sovereign equals excluding self protection Moreover Article 2 7 sustains that Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII in other words it forbids the UN itself from interfering in the internal matters of its Members Krasner 1999 states that 

The term sovereignty has been commonly used in at least four different ways domestic sovereignty referring to the organisation of public authority within a state and to the level of effective control exercised by those holding authority interdependence sovereignty referring to the ability of public authorities to control trans border movements international legal sovereignty referring to the mutual recognition of states or other entities and Westphalian sovereignty referring to the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority configuration The president George H W Bush led the United States at end of the Cold War under his vision of a New World Order instead of a bipolar system there was now a unipolar one Hehir 2008 Nevertheless after 1991 many countries were left disastrous and weak also as demonstrated by the conflicts that took place both inside and outside countries like Kosovo Bosnia and former USSR Where their corresponding Communist regimes had formerly repressed this brutality The end of the bipolar era without its ideological divide and weight of any strategic logic gave the opportunity for common action and an authentic implementation of the responsibility of the UN Security Council As stated by the ICISS in 2001 Despite some notable setbacks the capacity for common action by the Security Council was shown during the 1990s to be real with the authorization by the Council of nearly 40 peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations over the last decade Hence the international system took a completely different path targeting their mediation predominantly on the reconciliation procedures between belligerent nations was no longer their main strategy A Realist attitude predominated until the end of the Cold War with an inclination to settle internal conflicts without any external involvement However the ethical and human rights violation was rising in the global consciousness calling the obligation of the international structure to take action regardless of the weight of sovereignty