14 August 2014
Westphalia vs. Caliphate
Various commentators have expressed the opinion that the Islamic State is probably too violent to be viable in the long term. However, before it inevitably reaps what it has sown, it can inflict a lot of damage on anyone anywhere whom it perceives as the enemy.
The modern international order of territorial states that emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 has faced a number of challenges in the past century, but reports of its impending collapse have proven to be premature.
The international relations theorist Hendrik Spruyt explained the rise of the territorial state to the dominant type in the international order as its being more efficient in performing a number of crucial functions, such as reducing transaction costs within its territory by establishing standards of weights and measures, including the value of money, the ability to credibly commit to obligations with other states, and the ability to mobilize resources for warfare. Other types of governmental forms, such as the city-state, the city-league, and the loose confederation of the Holy Roman Empire, were less efficient at these functions and withered away.
In the 21st century, the multi-track processes of globalization -- liberalized flows of goods, services, capital, and information -- challenge nation-states to remain competitive with each other, and to remain relevant as the paradigm of governance. These modern conduits have the power to fan the flames of a virulent ideology as Marxists of a century ago could only dream of for their global project.
Although Karl Marx envisioned that the state would eventually wither away as true communism was achieved, the reality was that Vladimir Lenin and others were forced to work within the established Westphalian nation-state system. Communism came to a fork in the road in the 1920s when Mongols formed their own people's republic rather than join the Soviet Union, and for the next seven decades communism was straight-jacketed by the Westphalian system and by nationalist friction between brother socialist regimes.
Today, however, there are global social media to carry the message and global capital flow to empower it. This positions the caliphate to be the first "unlike type" to seriously challenge the global order of territorial states since its emergence nearly 370 years ago. Its fundamental organizing principle is incompatible with the Westphalian system.
While the territorial state has defined borders and claims sovereignty only over the territory and people within, the caliphate claims sovereignty over the entire umma, the global community of Muslims, wherever even one may reside. Whereas the Westphalian system has made progress in the past century towards the norm of equality before the law for all peoples, only the followers of the Prophet -- peace be unto him -- are citizens of the caliphate, and the fate of infidels, being non-citizens without God-given rights, is solely in the hands of the caliph, who is both chief priest and absolute monarch. Any parishioner of a church in Iowa is a legitimate target, and the white picket fence is the front line of the jihad. Even Muslims of the wrong sect are inside the rules of engagement.
The caliphate is a virus in the global order that seeks to rewrite the DNA of the Westphalian system. It has no qualms about straddling the international border between Syria and Iraq because it does not recognize international borders, and it will seek opportunities to spread across other international borders and to command the faithful in far-flung lands to commit the most barbarous crimes.
Until a few months ago, a massive outbreak of Ebola was considered nearly impossible because of the virus's high kill ratio; now it is a global health emergency. The international community must mobilize a response to the Islamic State with equal or greater vigor rather than sit back and hope that it will simply burn itself out.
Is UN Intervention in Iraq and Syria in the Cards?
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