Interdependence may be overused, but it accurately describes our world today.

Economic
forces flow with great rapidity from one country to the next. Despite all the talk about
sovereignty and independence, these concepts can mislead when applied to today’s world
economy. How “sovereign” is a country with an economy so dependant on trade with other
countries that its government cannot readily affect the real domestic interest rate, implement
its preferred tax policy, or establish an effective program of incentives for business or
talented individuals? Many governments face such constraints today including, increasingly
and inevitably, the government of the United States.

- La falacia de la soberanía y la independencia en los modelos actuales de Estado.

The difficulty comes in extending this realization to the world of public policy, and to
questions of war and peace.

War is now the continuation of a far more chaotic politics, in a far more chaotic political
environment.

It is hard to imagine an effective international political initiative that does not rely on some
mix of visible and latent violent and legal modes of authority. What may be most difficult to
see is that to use law is also to invoke violence, at least the violence that stands behind legal
authority. Asserting one’s property rights, as every first-year law student learns, is to call, at
least implicitly, on the enforcement arm of the state in one’s relations with other private
parties. The reverse is also true—to use violence is to invoke the law, the law that stands
behind war, legitimating and permiting violence.