The ability of a territory to hold onto its
independent existence in the face of
obvious threats to that existence, and
to eventually get the rest of the international community to recognize
it as such, remains the last means through which territory can acquire sovereignty. This
scenario obtains only in a period of unprecedented and garrulous imperialist
predilections by all or most of the
prevalent major powers late 19th century Europe. Or a situation where a small and weak state is
sandwiched between large and strong neighbours – the Gambia in Africa, and Switzerland (SWISS Cantons) in Europe.
In Africa , Ethiopia and Liberia were able not only to
hold onto their territories’ independence in
the 19th century despite the spreading miasma of the colonial
enterprise, but were also able to get
the international community to recognize
their sovereign status. Thus, by the time Italy invaded,
and purported to annex Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as a
colonial possession in 1935, it
was already recognized as an independent
sovereign nation- hence the opprobrium that
attended the Italian misadventure.
Loss of Sovereignty
Once acquired, is it possible for a state to loose its
sovereignty? This is a difficult questions to
answer, as there are various
reactions to it. It has been stated,
however, that as states can acquire sovereignty, they can also lose (SIC ) it”21. Two ways are identified: voluntary and forceful annexation as means of
loosing sovereignty by states. Mergers are identified as major genre of
voluntary loss of sovereignty. When two
states, A and B, decide to merge, it is argued that both will loose their
separate sovereign status, and then assume a single sovereignty. That is to say
they will cease to conduct separate independent foreign policies, loose
separate seats in the multinational organizations that they belong to, and
generally shed all attributes of double external sovereignty for a
single one. Besides, such mergers also do result in the adoption of a new name to reflect the new identity brought
on to the international system.
For instance in 1958, Egypt and Syria merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). Again
in 1964, Tangeanyika and Zanibar fused
their structures and institutions
to form the united republic and
Tanzania. Senegal and the Gambia
have been experimenting with varied degrees of merger since the
1980s to form Senegambia.
This has, however, not yielded much
fruit, as both states still retain all attributes of separate external sovereignty.
In the area of forceful annexation, not much success
appears to have been recorded by way of loss of sovereignty of states. Apart
from the experiences of the Baltic states . Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as has been alluded
to earlier, which lost their sovereignty in the 1940s due to soviet
revisionism, most other examples of forceful annexations tend to have suffered various degrees of frustrations. Reference has already been made to the
Italo-Abyssinia Imbroglio. Though the Italisans militarily overwhelmed
the Ethiopians, but the attempt to
subsume Ethiopian sovereignty, already
recognized by the international
community, under the Italian
state, was successfully resisted.
More recently, the Iraqi invasion and subsequent annexation of Kuwiat as its 19th
province, in August 1990, was equally successfully resisted by a coalition
of UN force under the leadership of the
United States, in the famous gulf war
of January 1991. though the league of nations did not
take such strong measures against
Italy in its invasion of Abyssinia,
save the half-hearted sanctions which
were brazenly violated by the major powers without any discernible
league reprimand, that such sanctions
were imposed by the league goes to show that the international community had long shown a commitment against
forceful annexation as a means of depriving states of their sovereignty.
But the question must continue to be posed; can
sovereignty once acquired be lost? We
are persuaded to answer in the negative. According to the architect of the
concept, Jean Bodin, as we
pointed out earlier, sovereignty, as an
attribute of the state is perpetual, that is to say once conferred,
the state retains and continues
to exercise it until the state itself ceases to exist, in the
so-called voluntary loss of sovereignty by mergers, can we say that the merging states have ceased to
exist or that they died, and
resurrected, and in the process adopted a single sovereignty?
From our preceding analysis, it is obvious that it is only the attributes of external sovereignty –foreign policy, seats
in international organizations, embassies, flags, national
anthems, currencies etc, that are fused at mergers. In other words, the merging states still retain
some elements of domestic sovereignty-
a recognized government , judicial system, local authorities, local security agencies , etc. This
makes it possible for states contemplating mergers, or even those
already merged to pull out of such mergers when and if it no longer suits them,
the Senegambia’s Example is a case in
point. But more dramatically, we
can cite the case of the Untied Arba
Republic (UAR) . after their merger of 1958 , as already indicated, two year later
(1960), they went their separate
ways, resuming their separate external
and internal sovereign status.
Even the Tanganyika-Zanizibar Scenario which has been termed a “successful case of merger
of two sovereignties”, it is still to be
expected that both can at any point in time
decide to delink from each other and go
their separate ways. And if precedence is anything to go by, the
international community would
have no option than to recognize them once again as two sovereign
entities. The case of
forceful annexations does not appear to detract in any significant way form above scenario.
The Baltic states have
since regained their sovereign
status. So did Abyssinia and
Kuwait.
It is thus reasonable to surmise that sovereignty once acquired can never be lost, but may be
suspended. So what happens at political mergers and or forceful annexations of
nation-states by stronger nations –states is a suspension of sovereignty, pending the removal of the
encumbrance that is sustaining the
annexation or an appropriate time or
circumstance in the case of a merger.
Categorization
of the State System