The 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, which forced Serbia to give up control of the restive province after years of abusive rule, may well be a prototype for the future. That reflects not just moral scruple but also a hardheaded understanding that neglect - benign or otherwise - can generate destabilising refugee flows and trigger state failure, which creates openings for terrorists. Similarly, a government that lacks the capacity or will to provide for the basic needs of its citizens will forfeit its sovereignty. States in the future will sometimes choose to strip sovereignty from their fellow states.
Impersonal forces aren't the whole story, though.
Sovereign states will increasingly measure their vulnerability not to one another but to forces of globalisation beyond their control. All of this traffic challenges one of the fundamentals of sovereignty: the ability to control what crosses borders. Sovereignty will fall victim to the powerful and accelerating flow of people, ideas, greenhouse gases, goods, dollars, drugs, viruses, emails and weapons within and across borders. Nation-states will not disappear, but they will share power with a larger number of powerful non-sovereign actors than ever before, including corporations, non-governmental organisations, terrorist groups, drug cartels, regional and global institutions, and banks and private equity funds. Powerful new forces and insidious threats will converge against it. Thirty-five years from now, sovereignty will no longer be sanctuary.
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RICHARD N HAASS on sovereignty: Sovereignty - the notion that governments are free to do what they want within their own territory - has provided the organising principle of international relations for more than 350 years. Sixteen leading thinkers on what won't last the next 35 years