Challenges to the concepts of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘intervention’

The concepts of sovereignty and intervention are closely intertwined. It is the jurisdictional walls erected along the boundaries of nation states that create the barriers to 'international intervention'. The 350 years since the treaty of Westphalia can be seen in a fundamentally different light. Rather than a process in which distinct geographic areas were politically crystallised as states, this period could now be interpreted as a relatively brief interlude in the development of political communities and political institutions. Reconceived liberal democratic values, to be effective, require institutions to support them. The end of the Cold War led to some unedifying bouts of normative triumphalism. It was seen as avindication of what were claimed to be western values and the future was assumed to involve the adoption of these values by all countries. The values of liberal democracy were formed in and for strong states.