[dropcap]P[/dropcap]residential addresses to the United Nations General Assembly don’t get a lot of press here at home, but they do matter to listeners around the world. And those who heard President Trump’s first such address may have noticed one concept repeated throughout: sovereignty.
Most American high school students learn about sovereignty in the domestic context: popular sovereignty, or the notion that power rests with the people, is one of our political system’s most admirable and distinguishing features. In international relations parlance however, a country is considered ‘sovereign’ if it has control over its own land.
Sovereignty gained traction as a guiding principle in the international system in the mid-1600s as ‘nation-states’ – political units matching peoples and contiguous territories – began asserting authority against empires, religious authorities, and royal families. (This was first possible only in Europe; colonized peoples around the world had to fight much harder and longer for control of their own destinies.)
