Denial of Sovereignty

"Respecting the sovereignty means preventing coups, unconstitutional actions and illegitimate overthrowing of the legitimate government. All these things should be totally prevented." ~ Vladimir Putin

"The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small." ~ Nikita Khrushchev

"We believe that big nations should not bully smaller nations, and that the sovereignty of nations must be respected. And we have long urged that disputes be resolved peacefully, including through mechanisms like international arbitration." ~ Barack Obama

"Sovereignty and the right to rule cannot be conferred on anyone no matter who ... as a result of an academic discussion. Sovereignty is acquired by force and power and violence." ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Countries do not recognize each other's existence due to goodwill. Rather, they are extended or withheld on legal grounds, political considerations, economic interests, and, most of all, geopolitical strength. Revocation of sovereignty is a weapon, to isolate, destabilize, and cripple an enemy in order to bend it to will or bring about its ultimate failure and collapse.

When a powerful state wants to deny the sovereignty of another, it does not usually do so directly by war. That is costly, unreliable. Instead, it employs a more subtle form of warfare in the guise of diplomatic, economic, and psychological.

These can include denying the government of a country recognition, denying it entry into international organizations, or preventing it from entering security and intelligence-sharing organizations. But the strongest tactics are the behind-the-scenes ones, stripping legitimacy away quietly without confrontation.

The denying state can deny the other's official name, flag, or national symbols, rendering it a State within a nation rather than a legitimate country. In international sporting events, it can organize symbolic acts of disdain, flag burning, anthem booing to remind the world that this state is not a country.

No empire has ever ruled without the power of division. The denying state will discover the ethnic, religious, or political cracks in its adversary and widen them with negative propaganda, and financing opposition movements. A divided people cannot stand; a people who are fighting against themselves can be easily ruled.

A sovereign state can sustain itself with free trade agreements with multiple sovereign states. Without economic connections, without finance stability, without trade, a nation fails. The denying state will set aside trade limitations, ban exports and imports, and reject signed agreements.

Ultimately, denial of sovereignty is one done gradually, one of process erosion. History, culture, identity, all can be rewritten. The state in denial will declare that boundaries will be rewritten, land will be claimed, maps remapped. If the life of a nation is consistently put into question long enough, even its own people can end up doubting it.

This is the character of unconstrained geopolitical power. Sovereignty, then, is not concerned with justice, nor with truth. It is concerned with control and power.