Sovereignty and War

When nations surrender the right to fight, they cease to be nations.

Alexander Dugin argues that true sovereignty, and thus freedom, begins with the state’s right to choose war or peace.

Forbidding the very thought of war is a direct repudiation of the very idea of sovereignty. The defining characteristic of sovereignty is the absolute right of a free state to begin a war. Or to refrain from beginning one. The meaning of foreign policy (international relations in general) is that there exists no legal or legitimate authority that can compel a sovereign state to do one thing or another. In domestic politics, such an authority does exist; it is the state itself. The right to use violence belongs solely to it. That is its legal foundation. No one has the right to resort to violence internally except the state itself. That is part of its definition. Externally, war is always possible. That, too, follows from sovereignty. From its very basis. In fact, a state can be considered genuinely independent only if it is capable of initiating war (or of refraining from it, but deciding that question by itself). Otherwise it is simply not independent, but dependent — that is, not sovereign. Consequently, it is not a state in the full sense of the word, but a colony.

These are the foundations of the political organization of world politics (the Westphalian system).

In the late Soviet period, the USSR completely forgot these political foundations, demonized war, and introduced criminal penalties for any responsible statement about war other than hysterical blind pacifism. It paid for that harshly: it disappeared, losing sovereignty, territory, and peoples. Thus anti-Russia appeared in the entity of Ukraine. And many others besides. And some of those who appeared on the ruins of the USSR were quite ready to wage war. Russia itself inherited the late-Soviet pacifism. Even before Putin, despite fighting in the North Caucasus, it was afraid to honestly admit that.

But there is another point here, connected with political science: liberalism. According to that ideology, sovereignty is an evil (precisely because it makes war possible). Therefore, liberals believe, the right of the state to use violence must be taken away. In favor of two authorities at once: a World Government (the European Court of Human Rights, the Hague Tribunal, and the EU bureaucracy as examples of movement in that direction) and international NGOs, which receive moral sanction to fight “non-violently” against authoritarianism (that is, sovereignty, the state). Now liberals begin to wage war on the state itself — from the outside (on behalf of supranational authorities) and from within (through liberal networks, NGOs, and the opposition).

In Russia before Putin, liberals dominated. The country was systematically dismantled. Under Putin, sovereignty began to be restored. War was acknowledged. The result: the Second Chechen campaign. Victory. The disintegration of the country was halted. Liberals were pushed aside.

Before the start of the Special Military Operation, liberals still held leading positions in some spheres, but their influence was balanced by sovereigntists. With the beginning of the Special Military Operation, liberals could no longer act openly; many fled and now fight the state from the outside, on the side of the enemy. Those who remained were forced to camouflage themselves and engage in quiet (but dangerous, sometimes critically dangerous) sabotage.

Liberals apply the same pattern in Europe and the United States. Radical liberal networks regularly resort to violence against the state when it appears to have deviated from the liberal agenda. This is the BLM uprising, transgender actions against ICE in the US, political murders — the assassination attempts on Trump and the murder of Kirk. Soros calls his networks to violence. This is part of the liberal program. It also includes the campaign waged by supranational structures — like the EU — against Europe’s remaining sovereign governments (Orbán, Fico, and others). NATO is likewise a transnational authority, something more than a mere military bloc. It is the headquarters of the Atlanticist state-civilization; it is the Empire of the West. Although the core of NATO is the United States, NATO by its nature is supranational. Thus a sovereigntist like Trump (in whatever measure he is so), when enraged, threatens to disband NATO. From the America First and MAGA standpoint, that is precisely what should be done.

In essence, liberal theory considers the use of violence against a sovereign state legitimate — from the outside and from within. It follows that, to prevent war, one must begin a war. Liberalism at some point becomes uncannily reminiscent of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

(Translated from the Russian)