Sovereignty is a myth

If David Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey believe the title of their opinion piece “Border Security equals Sovereignty” (8-14-08) they need a refresher course in reality. ‘Border security’ is a mythical ideal impossible to achieve in an increasingly and irreversibly interdependent world.
Federal officials might stop a few papers or laptop computers from crossing our border each month but the daily volume of dangerous information accessible on the world wide web, via emails or stuffed into any bushel of marihuana smuggled across our borders each day dwarfs any lucky federal finds. And, there appears to be no shortage of federal inspection officers capable of error or open to bribes. Have Rivkin and Casy bothered to calculate what would it cost our government to inspect all the laptops of the 400 million travelers who enter the US each year? And, what about the latest data storage devises like IPods that can store more information than 2 year old laptops but be smuggled inside a wallet.
Sovereignty is a political concept that current reality simply doesn’t recognize. A Nazi like regime can’t stop a pandemic from ravaging their nation and American seem incapable of kicking a dangerous addiction to foreign oil. An oil tanker filled with a fuel oil and fertilizer bomb could deliver a near nuclear sized detonation to any US port. And a biological weapon capable of killing more Americans than a limited nuclear exchange can be smuggle in the blood stream of any individual.
How do Rivkin and Casey propose ‘sovereignty’ will stop the effects of climate change or defend us against cyber attacks by those who know sovereignty is an outdated notion?
“The inspection” that “revealed approximately $79,000 in unlawful US currency” is a joke when one considers the hundreds of billions of unregulated currency that crosses our border each day by electronic currency trading and illegal electronic offshore deposits.

Only the dumbest of terrorist would try to carry something across our border that an inspector could find. What to Rivkin and Casey have to offer for the more creative terrorists? A wiji board? Lawyers like Rivkin and Casey may be good at understanding laws but they carry no credibility in dealing with the real world we all now live in.

China military in Haiti?

Alvin Rabushka accurately details “China’s emergence as an economic [and “military”] power” in his Aug 23^rd oped “US and China: Which Way?. When answering his own question “should the United States take a path of confrontation or seek out a path of cooperation?” Mr. Rabushka wisely decides on the path of cooperation. He then correctly suggests forging “a new global security framework” but his idea of forming a new “Monroe Doctrine” is fatally flawed.

The real problem Mr. Babushka should address was highlighted by Frank Gaffney Jr. in his oped “Eroding Sovereignty” the previous day. But, Mr Gaffney writes about ‘eroding US sovereignty’ like it’s a bad thing. Nothing is more problematic for the future in preventing or addressing a growing array of serious security threats than the “abstraction” of “sovereignty”.

The most accurate definition of national sovereignty that I’ve ever encountered is ‘the right of any nation, to do anything it wants, anywhere it wants, to anyone it wants, anytime it wants.’ This will always be a receipt for the global chaos. The global chaotic lawlessness that we now have that provides lethal advantage to terrorists, pollution, pandemics, poverty and international criminals.

Mr. Babushka suggests that the “US” take “responsibility for stability in the Western Hemisphere.” That is a brilliant idea but unlikely given our military might and limited financial resources already being over committed in the Middle East. And China has already established a military presence in the Western Hemisphere.

Last week I returned from Haiti where I was shocked to see a Chinese fag flying next to a UN flag over a UN military compound. China has the second largest military force in Haiti. According to a US Air force person I spoke to flying in our nation has fewer than a dozen US soldiers helping that trouble nation. I also witnessed a TV interview with a high ranking Chinese Military official in front the Haiti’s largest government building. Nearly a dozen armed Chinese soldiers with safeties off formed a perimeter around their commander as the interview rolled. Haiti, the poorest nation in our region, is providing China with an opportunity of the century because our worship of ‘national sovereign’ has prohibited the UN from having its own truly independent police force. And, our foreign policy that puts ‘national sovereignty’ above human rights is punishing the Haitian government with complete disregard for Haitian needs or Haitian human rights.

Only when the global protection of inalienable human rights takes precedence over the protection of the “abstraction” of national sovereignty will we have any real capacity for a ‘new global security framework”. For this we will need a global federalist doctrine, not another foreign policy based on the inherently flawed abstraction of sovereignty.