CALCULATING SOVEREIGNTY
IT is not a disputable fact that the community of nations is partly based on hierarchies that are ultimately and essentially bound to power. At state level, power is a consolidation of economic, political and social forces which can be mastered by one country so that it can claim sovereignty over its borders.
Every single country in the community of nations has this kind of consolidated power over its territory and would readily defend that sovereignty from attack.
The calculus of power is such that political and social forces are often dependent on economic power to be able to function and distribute evenly. In other words, a nation without financial stability cannot fund its own operations such that ultimately, the lack of funds may cripple that country.
Such analyses make it easy to suppose that economic ranking is unquestionably the most important component of power. That, therefore, the most essential part of calculating or ranking sovereignty is economic power.
While this may hold true in most cases, it may not explain how Cuba produced more doctors than most wealthy western nations at some point and had some of the highest literacy levels in the world.
Cuba is still not a rich country by far but managed to distribute its lean resources in a way that elevated its standing in the community of nations.
During the Covid-19 pandemic Cuba was able to export quality medical health personnel to other countries, including developed nations. Countries like Cuba, China and very few others, were historically opposed to defining sovereignty in economic terms that violated human dignity at international level. To overcome some of these complexities among states, international organisations were created to pacify the obvious differences in how nations perceive or calculate sovereignty.
The most obvious of these is the United Nations (UN). Although the UN does not give instructions to independent nations, its opinions are widely accepted because of its wide membership and reputation it has built overtime, albeit with great difficulty.
The assumption is that each nation holds equal standing irrespective of their economic or other ranking in the world. Any country can express its views on a wide range of internal, regional and global issues.
At various points in the history of the UN, Zambia ranks a country that represented other nations to either gain independence and become sovereign or refrain from confrontations that compromised that sovereignty.
In reality, UN membership must be paid for and its many operations funded. The reality is also that some nations like the United States of America (USA) contribute more financial and logistical resources to the UN than others. From such a perspective, it can be accepted that power and thus sovereignty, is not distributed equally.
In other words, some nations are greater than others. The danger is that the view of the “superior nations” could eventually become the global agenda to the extent that nations who are not in their favour become misrepresented. What this could lead to is that a neutral organisation like the UN may begin to subtly peddle
the agenda of those nations with acknowledged power.
An example is how the nation of Iraq was discussed at the UN for a protracted period, underpinned all the while by the agenda of a powerful nation to remove a legitimate government of another state.
Ultimately, and with hindsight, the country was not availed equal opportunity to present its case because it was regarded a «bad nation.”
The discard, for the sovereignty or power of another nation was played out at the UN, a supposed neutral stage.
In a similar fashion, one can argue the case of the Zimbabwe sanctions have exceeded the purpose for which they
were intended yet the country continue to suffer the ravaging effects of the sanctions imposed through the supposed neutral UN.
If the UN strives for consensus, and if that consensus is largely driven by powerful nations, then the so-called rebel nations like Iran, Iraq and now Russia among others are only rebels because they disagree with a faction of powerful states.
Once political power is compromised in favour of powerful nations, it will not take long for other politically related functions like finance and the social norms like rights to be re-ordered in favour of those powerful states.
Ultimately, democracy or not, rich or poor, the best form of sovereignty is one that preserves the integrity of its people and environment.
The momentous liberation of Zambia in 1991 did not mislead the country into giving up its soul; on the contrary, the nation was opened up and set on the trajectory for sustained economic growth and national prosperity regardless of the current failures and flaws that in part have been triggered by global systematic shocks arising from the Covid -19 pandemic.
The country evolved to recalculate our sovereignty as part of a new nation of free minds, unchained.