Elkus on The Sovereignty Solution
Buried at work this week, but I wanted to take a moment to point to a review by amigo Adam Elkus at Japan Security Watch of The Sovereignty Solution by Anna Simons:
Sovereignty and National Defense
….their new book The Sovereignty Solution, Naval Postgraduate Institute (NPS) scholar Anna Simons and her co-authors develop an approach to global security rooted around an odd idea: every state should have the right to order itself internally under its own preferences and in turn bares responsibility for all acts of aggression that transgress the sovereignty of others. This implies tolerance for a range of governmental types, an end to expeditionary state-building (direct and indirect), and an approach to warfare built on breaking states that misbehave with conventional capabilities rather than a “whole of government” approach. While a national defense policy built around such ideas may or may not be sensible, it certainly is at variance with many cherished ideas in American and Western national security policy. To name a few, the strong and weak versions of the Responsibility to Protect and the commonly held philosophy that all foreign events are interconnected and thus of American concern.
Simons’ book, to a large extent, unintentionally describes the way that many non-Anglo Pacific governments view sovereignty and its relationship to national defense. As Amitai Etzioni noted, there is a kind of “back to the future” quality about China’s prioritization of sovereignty above all else. As the West moves away from the idea of sovereignty towards a post-Westphalian future, China has moved from a Maoist policy of sponsoring insurgencies in neighboring states to championing the idea that states should be the only legitimate force of national power within their own borders. China’s views, however, are representative of a common national security philosophy in Asia….
Hat tip to SWJ Blog
