Sovereignty: Limitations and Leadership Problems
Abstract
Except for birth and death, most everything in life is a matter of degree. There is always someone richer, handsomer, and cleverer than we; there is always someone less favored than we. This also holds for international life. In theory, the distinction between sovereign and subject, between a state's absolute right to do what it pleases and a people's submission to a writ which is not its own, is as sharp as a razor. All member states of the United Nations are sovereign. The United Nations Charter, although it assigns special privileges to a small elite in the Security Council, does not quibble on the one indispensible qualification for admission, namely the exercise of national sovereignty. Under the law of the United Nations, every member is every other member's peer. For national sovereignty, like Gertrude Stein's rose, is what it is. If it is not exactly what it is, then it is nothing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1964
- Accession Number
- ADB241064
Entities
People
- Robert Strausz-hupe
Organizations
- Center for Strategic and International Studies