The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World

"Stewart Patrick is a big ideas person and this book is very much in keeping with his scholarship to date. What he does is he takes abstract concepts and interrogates them. He deconstructs the assumptions underlying them and he imparts greater clarity and nuance. Whether it’s failed states, global governance or, now, sovereignty, he really unpacks the term. Underlying this book is a paradox that I find fascinating. It’s a paradox that has always dogged American foreign policy, but we’re seeing it play out with far greater force post-2016. The paradox is: ‘How can it be, and why is it, that the country that has the greatest freedom of maneuver in world affairs, that has accumulated far more power than any other actor in the international system (and maybe contextually more than any other actor in history) and should, in practice, be most unencumbered by considerations of sovereignty, is most preoccupied with it?’ He makes a point, early on in the book, that the United States is not alone in its preoccupation with sovereignty. The Chinese are also preoccupied with their sovereign rights as are the Indians and the Russians. But it’s hardest to understand in the case of the United States because we essentially have more or less unrestricted freedom of maneuver. A lot of the discussion about infringements on American sovereignty veers in conspiratorial directions. The UN is conspiring to do this, that or the other to the United States or the World Trade Organization is conspiring to do this, that or the other. But how can you be the victim of a conspiracy when you are the architect of the system? People say, ‘I don’t want international institutions infringing on American sovereignty.’ But the irony is that many of the international institutions of whose surreptitious intrusions we’re most concerned are largely American creations. It’s an important book because it demonstrates that this preoccupation with sovereignty is increasingly undercutting US influence. The Transpacific Partnership (TPP) is a good example. Is it a perfect agreement? No. It was a highly flawed agreement but then again, which agreement isn’t? It’s true that as a condition of joining certain agreements (not all) you cede a certain amount of sovereignty. But you can do so in a way that advances your interests. Joining the TPP would have given us a very important pillar of economic influence in the Asia Pacific. Now we look back and we want to contest the economic practices of the Chinese. We would have been in a far stronger position to do so than we are now if we had been with the other 11 countries that were negotiating that agreement. Many of those TPP countries have essentially moved on. They’re making progress on the TPP, they’re joining Chinese-led arrangements and the United States is out in the cold. So what Stewart Patrick is trying to argue in his book is that, sure, every country has to be concerned about its borders. It has to be concerned about its sovereign prerogatives. But if, hypothetically, we were to unwind ourselves from international agreements and unwind ourselves from world affairs, we would have won a very pyrrhic victory. Some people might say, ‘Ah, we’re finally rid of the UN, no one can tread on us.’ But then it would become increasingly clear that we need those institutions and agreements to exercise influence. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Take, for example, the Law of the Sea. It’s an interesting example of an agreement by which—were we to accede to that agreement and ratify it—we would actually increase the jurisdiction of our sovereignty. We would be granted an exclusive economic zone which would grant us tremendous economic opportunities. It would give us a legalistic footing to push back against the Chinese in the South China Sea that we presently lack, because China says, ‘Well, you’re not a member of UNCLOS.’ Which is true. We’re not. He also demonstrates that when we talk about sovereignty, Americans are often talking about different phenomena. Some Americans are talking about sovereignty in a narrow, constitutional sense: ‘I don’t want other actors or other countries to be able to undermine America’s constitutional commitments.’ There are other people who use sovereignty more in the sense of independence or autonomy: ‘I don’t want countries to be able to undercut the independence of American foreign policy.’ And then there’s the influence dimension. There are different dimensions of foreign policy and people who talk about sovereignty sometimes are talking past each other. In another part of the book—which I actually wish he would’ve expanded on—he issues a warning to western and particularly US policymakers that they would be remiss to treat populism as a passing storm. From the 1940s to roughly the mid-1970s, before the financialization of the American economy took off, US policymakers did a good job, not perfect, of synchronizing domestic policy and foreign policy: ‘Yes, let’s embrace globalization, let’s develop this postwar order, let’s embed American power in a larger framework, but let’s simultaneously put in place safety nets so that people who are displaced by globalization have a cushion on which to fall.’ Starting in the mid-1970s, we continued to embrace globalization and technology, but without making a commensurate investment in our social safety net. The result is that many people who have been displaced by globalization feel very left out. They don’t have the skills that they need to be competitive. There’s this increasing disconnect between a foreign policy that says we should continue to embrace globalization and a domestic policy where many members of the middle class haven’t seen a real gain in wages or income in roughly four decades and have seen their purchasing power decline. They feel excluded. What Stewart Patrick is saying is, ‘Yes, we need to embrace globalization. We need to embrace interdependence. We can’t be a country that essentially turns its back on the world. But we need to do a better job on the domestic front.’ That’s a huge element of it. I wouldn’t say that it’s the sole precipitant of the conversation. As he points out in the book, America is a foundational experiment in a certain kind of sovereignty. America basically said, ‘We are chafing under the dominion of the British. We need to wrest ourselves free and we need to embark on this radical experiment.’ So Americans have been preoccupied with sovereignty since the country’s birth. But it’s undeniably true, particularly since the 1970s, that there has been a feeling of being buffeted, of being unmoored and unanchored; that you don’t have control over the forces that are dictating your life. “The psychology of power lends itself to overstating the extent to which you can influence events in far-flung corners of the world” Stewart Patrick talks about how free trade is far less of a boogie man than it’s made out to be. If you look at the extent to which America’s manufacturing sector has hemorrhaged jobs, it’s largely the result of automation and technology. It’s not so much about China or Mexico stealing our jobs. But there is a sense for many people in America that they have less and less agency over their lives. Not only am I increasingly victimized by forces outside of my control, but the individuals whom I have entrusted with protecting me against the vagaries of globalization are not fulfilling that promise. As Stewart Patrick says—and I completely agree with him—it’s not a passing storm. We need to be investing in our social safety net far more aggressively, investing in job retraining skills and a whole host of other arrangements that we’ve underinvested in over the past 30-35 years. It’s a powerful feeling. We do need to think about the psychology of disorientation and dislocation. When you feel you don’t have agency and that your agency is being undercut by these phantom-like forces that you can’t see or control, the ensuing resentment against those who are seen to be not doing what they should be doing is very powerful. I hasten to implicate myself in this. My thinking prior to Trump’s election was that the benefits of the postwar order are largely self-evident and that folks in the think tank community just need to do a better job of explaining those self-evident benefits that we’ve been discussing amongst ourselves. Explanation is a component of it, but there’s a real failure that has occurred. We need to meet people where they are. It’s not going to do to go to people who say, ‘I’m feeling angry or I’m feeling dislocated’ and say, ‘Well, your anger and your dislocation are empirically fallacious.’ That kind of reasoning will boomerang."