With the end of the Cold War, the modern states are becoming much more fluid, their borders are blurring, migration is diluting ethnic homogeneity and the growing reality of interdependence has induced a situation of far-reaching international cooperation. This has created a world of multi-lateralism. Strobe Talbott says that the old Westphalian system of nation-states “is giving way to a new system in which nations feel secure enough in their identities and in their neighborhoods to make a virtue out of porous borders and intertwined economies and cultures.” He cites the establishment of the euro as a common currency as an example of the “pooling of sovereignty in certain areas of governance.”
Western political commentators have been pointing to a decline in the importance of the modern State and say that humankind is moving towards a more federal world, with the modern state being eroded from below and above. However, on the other hand, struggling people sin Asia and Africa do not share the same opinion. In fact, on the contrary, they hold the view that the state will become more coercive and regulatory in the 21st century. Currently state policies indicate that in the absence of “calibrated and calculated responses” to conflicts arising out of the denial of justice and freedom, States will become more violent and predatory.
While the modern State seems to be moving away from the classical understanding of Westphalian State sovereignty and boundaries, it is evident that States are in reality converging to form alliances or supra-states to protect their own interests. The underpinning reality is that the ‘form’ of the State is changing, but its ‘content’ remains the same. In other words, the outer ‘form’ of a State maybe subsumed into larger blocks that will establish new borders while blurring old ones (as in the case of the European Union), but at its core it retains the monopoly to use legitimate force to retain its control and power over the people.
In this context, the difficulties around a peoples’ desire to put into praxis their self-determining capacities and to chart their own future has been elevated to a macro level. With the increasing alliances between States that seeks to protect their common interests, the challenge of a people’s right to exercise their sovereignty has increased manifold. For instance, the Kachin people’s right to self-determination will affect not just Burma, but ASEAN as well.
Therefore, from a struggling peoples’ perspective, the notion that the State is on the decline is misleading. This amplifies the need to look beyond the State, and hence, beyond the present Westphalian World Order.
