Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty, is a principle in international law that

each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle underlies the

modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter,
which states that "nothing should authorise intervention in matters essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any state. According to the idea, every state, no matter how large or
small, has an equal right to sovereignty. Political scientists have traced the concept to the Peace
of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War. The principle of non-interference was
further developed in the 18th century. The Westphalian system reached its peak in the 19th and
20th centuries, but it has faced recent challenges from advocates of humanitarian intervention.

Principles and criticism

The Peace of Westphalia is considered by political scientists to be the beginning of the modern

international system,[3][4][5][6] in which external powers should avoid interfering in another country's
domestic affairs. However, recent scholarship has argued that the Westphalian treaties actually had
little to do with the principles with which they are often associated: sovereignty, non-intervention, and
the legal equality of states. For example, Andreas Osiander writes that "[t]he treaties confirm neither
[France's or Sweden's] 'sovereignty' nor anybody else's; least of all do they contain anything about
sovereignty as a principle." Others, such as Christoph Kampann and Johannes Paulmann, argue
that the 1648 treaties in fact limited the sovereignty of numerous states within the Holy Roman
Empire and that the Westphalian treaties did not present a coherent new state-system, although
they were part of an ongoing change. Yet others, often post-colonialist scholars, point out the limited
relevance of the 1648 system to the histories and state systems in the non-Western world.
Nonetheless, "Westphalian sovereignty" continues to be used as a shorthand for the basic legal
principles underlying the modern state system. The applicability and relevance of these principles
have been questioned since the mid-20th century onward from a variety of viewpoints. Much of the
debate has turned on the ideas of internationalism and globalization, which conflict [how?]
 with
Westphalian sovereignty.
History

The origins of Westphalian sovereignty have been traced in the scholarly literature to the Peace
of Westphalia (1648). The peace treaties put an end to the Thirty Years' War, a war of
religion that devastated Germany and killed 30% of its population. Since neither the Catholics
nor the Protestants had won a clear victory, the peace settlement established a status quo order in
which states would refrain from interfering in each other's religious practices. Henry
Kissinger wrote:

The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral
insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's
domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power. No
single claim to truth or universal rule had prevailed in Europe's contests. Instead, each state was
assigned the attribute of sovereign power over its territory. Each would acknowledge the
domestic structures and religious vocations of its fellow states and refrain from challenging their
existence.

The principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs was laid out in the mid-18th
century by Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel. States became the primary institutional agents in an
interstate system of relations. The Peace of Westphalia is said to have ended attempts to impose
supranational authority on European states. The "Westphalian" doctrine of states as independent
agents was bolstered by the rise in 19th century thought of nationalism, under which
legitimate states were assumed to correspond to nations—groups of people united by language
and culture.[citation needed]

The Westphalian system reached its peak in the late 19th century. Although practical
considerations still led powerful states to seek to influence the affairs of others, forcible
intervention by one country in the domestic affairs of another was less frequent between 1850
and 1900 than in most previous and subsequent periods.[dubious  –  discuss]

After the end of the Cold War, the United States and Western Europe began talking of a post-
Westphalian order in which countries could intervene against human rights abuses in other
countries. Critics have pointed out such intervention would be (and has been) used to continue
processes similar to standard Euro-American colonialism, and that the colonial powers always
used ideas similar to "humanitarian intervention" to justify colonialism, slavery, and similar
practices. China and Russia have thus used their United Nations Security Council veto power to
block what they see as American actions to violate the sovereignty of other nations.

Challenges to Westphalia

The end of the Cold War saw increased international integration and, arguably, the erosion of
Westphalian sovereignty. Much of the literature was primarily concerned with
criticizing realist models of international politics in which the notion of the state as a unitary
agent is taken as axiomatic.

In 1998, at a Symposium on the Continuing Political Relevance of the Peace of

Westphalia, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said that "humanity and democracy [were]
two principles essentially irrelevant to the original Westphalian order" and levied a criticism that
"the Westphalian system had its limits. For one, the principle of sovereignty it relied on also
produced the basis for rivalry, not community of states; exclusion, not integration.

In 1999, British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a speech in Chicago where he "set out a new,
post-Westphalian, 'doctrine of the international community'". Blair argued that globalization had
made the Westphalian approach anachronistic. Blair was later referred to by The Daily
Telegraph as "the man who ushered in the post-Westphalian era". Others have also asserted that
globalization has superseded the Westphalian system.

In 2000, Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer referred to the Peace of Westphalia in

his Humboldt Speech, which argued that the system of European politics set up by Westphalia
was obsolete: "The core of the concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the
European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states that had
emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a rejection which took the form of closer
meshing of vital interests and the transfer of nation-state sovereign rights to supranational
European institutions.

The European Union's concept of shared sovereignty is also somewhat contrary to historical

views of Westphalian sovereignty, as it provides for external agents to influence and interfere in
the internal affairs of its member countries. In a 2008 article Phil Williams links the rise
of terrorism and violent non-state actors (VNSAs), which pose a threat to the Westphalian
sovereignty of the state, to globalization.

Military intervention
Interventions such as in Cambodia by Vietnam (the Cambodian–Vietnamese War) or
in Bangladesh (then a part of Pakistan) by India (the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Indo-
Pakistani War of 1971) were seen by some as examples of humanitarian intervention, although
their basis in international law is debatable. [22] Other more recent interventions, and their
attendant infringements of state sovereignty, also have prompted debates about their legality and
motivations.

A new notion of contingent sovereignty seems to be emerging, but it has not yet reached the
point of international legitimacy. Neoconservatism in particular has developed this line of
thinking further, asserting that a lack of democracy may foreshadow future humanitarian crises,
or that democracy itself constitutes a human right, and therefore states not respecting democratic
principles open themselves up to just war by other countries. However, proponents of this theory
have been accused of being concerned about democracy, human rights and humanitarian crises
only in countries where American global dominance is challenged, while hypocritically ignoring
the same issues in other countries friendlier to the United States.[citation needed]

Further criticism of Westphalian sovereignty arises regarding allegedly failed states, of

which Afghanistan (before the 2001 US-led invasion) is often considered an example. In this
case, it is argued that no sovereignty exists and that international intervention is justified on
humanitarian grounds and by the threats posed by failed states to neighboring countries and the
world as a whole.

Political scientist Hall Gardner has challenged elements of the Westphalian

sovereignty. Reviewer Sarang Shidore summarizes Gardner's argument:
the standard interpretation of the Peace of Westphalia, the 1648 treaty that is widely seen
to have inaugurated a new era in European and world affairs, by reifying state
sovereignty as a global governing principle. Westphalian sovereignty, Gardner argues, is
substantially a myth. While Westphalia did put aspects of state sovereignty in place, such
as the right of almost three hundred German princes to be free of the control of the Holy
Roman Empire, it also limited sovereignty in important ways, for instance, by “denying
 the doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio (the religion of the prince becomes the religion of
the state) ... established by the 1555 Peace of Augsburg” (p. 118). Rather than a strict
enshrining of the principle of noninterference, Westphalia legitimized “power sharing
and joint sovereignty” by giving the new powers France and Sweden the right to interfere
in the affairs of the German Protestant princes (p. 117). Another example of power
sharing was the recognition of Switzerland as a confederal state.

Defenders of Westphalia

Although the Westphalian system developed in early modern Europe, its staunchest defenders
can now be found in the non-Western world. The presidents of China and Russia issued a joint
statement in 2001 vowing to "counter attempts to undermine the fundamental norms of the
international law with the help of concepts such as 'humanitarian intervention' and 'limited
sovereignty'". China and Russia have used their United Nations Security Council veto power to
block what they see as American violations of state sovereignty in Syria. Russia was left out of
the original Westphalian system in 1648, but post-Soviet Russia has seen Westphalian
sovereignty as a means to balance American power by encouraging a multipolar world order.

Some in the West also speak favorably of the Westphalian state. American political
scientist Stephen Walt urged U.S. President Donald Trump to return to Westphalian principles,
calling it a "sensible course" for American foreign policy. American political commentator Pat
Buchanan has also spoken in favor of the traditional nation-state.