The Modern City-State, Part II

"I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that." 

"Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?"  

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

      Globalization is a contemporary word for what history has shown to be a group of reoccurring phenomenon: the spread of disruptive technologies, migrant populations, capital, ideas, etc., across state borders. Contemporary globalization is simultaneously undermining a facet of state sovereignty on the one hand while further embedding cities into the fabric of International Relations (IR) on the other. Far from a period of decline, however, states are still the primary actors in IR and as such, are the foundation upon which today's state-centric system of IR rests.

      Exercising less formal authority than their national overlords do, cities increasingly act as release valves for the state; they lessen the degree to which pressures of globalization work upon and through state borders. Today we undoubtedly live in a world that is undergoing a period of authoritative re-calibration (re-territorialization) whereby states writ large are failing to manage the forces both within and without of society, economics, finance, security, etc. But make no mistake: this period of adjustment will approach an equilibrium sooner or later.

      This is not only expected but welcomed because, whatever faults or weaknesses the Westphalian, state-centric model of IR may harbor today, society has yet to design a better system to manage international affairs. And yet, the steady march of urban expansion, connectivity, and evolution in the past couple of decades has progressed in lock-step  with the establishment of a more accommodating socio-economic regime within which cities have nested themselves. In other words, cities are more wealthy, numerous, healthy, and connected than they've ever been in the past. Most cities enjoy protection from foreign militaries: the cosmopolitan city - however autonomous it may be - resides within national borders and is therefore subject to state-centric domestic legal structures and authorities. In contrast, classical Greek city-states valued liberty over collective security and - the Greek alliance against the Persian invaders notwithstanding - as a result, every individual city-state fell prey to, first, the Macedonians and then Rome. Today's 'city-states' - New York, Chicago, Hong Kong, Doha, Dubai, etc., - are thankfully not responsible for their own security. This has enabled the modern city to focus more of its attention toward, inter alia, capital accumulation, expansion of their service sectors, and trade networks. At least since the late 1970's, cities have leveraged this comparative advantage to secure and strengthen more power within the state-centric arena of IR. And as the number of large, commercial cities continues to expand within and across state borders, both their relative power vis a v. the state and their absolute power in international affairs will increase exponentially.

      This development is encouraging because the state as the principal actor within IR is finding itself frequently unable or ill-suited to manage social, economic, financial, cultural, etc., issues in a globalizing society. This doesn't mean, however, that the state-centric system is doomed. Far from it. In fact, the relative power of states in military and managerial terms has grown rapidly since the end of World War II. How can that be? How can the state simultaneously lose and gain power in international affairs? Wouldn't the result of globalization as a negative force, and military expansion as a positive force, cancel out each other thereby having a neutral effect upon state sovereignty? The answers to these questions are easy to answer so long as one understands that the institution - the principle - of sovereignty is not unified, but very dynamic.

      When most people think of sovereignty, they are thinking of what IR scholars - particularly Stephen Krasner - call "Westphalian Sovereignty", or the universal legal protection of states from foreign intervention. The norm of non-intervention began to be codified after the conclusion of the central European Thirty Years' War between, amongst many others, the Holy Roman Empire and its souther-German allies on one side, against Protestant (more or less) northern-German principalities, Sweden, and - eventually - France. The Holy Roman Empire was ruled by the Habsburg Dynasty which, in 1521, split into two family branches that resided on opposite sides of continental Europe. The senior branch resided in Spain while the junior branch governed from Austria. The conflict lasted for thirty years and decimated the population of central Europe, particularly the populations of the Germanic principalities: some 30% of the citizenry died in the heart of Europe. The respective combatant rulers were so moved by the war's devastation that they brought an end to the conflict and began the process of reconciliation whereby it was decided that each prince (sovereign ruler for that matter) had the exclusive right of determining the religion of his lands and, as a result, the religion of his subjects. (read: the Protestant Reformation and Catholic counter-Reformation triggered the war by divorcing huge swaths of populations and lands from their former Catholic overlords). This right of religious exclusivity given to sovereign rulers was the foundation for today's international norm of non-intervention. Interestingly enough, the Peace of Westphalia also required rulers to honor universal minority rights: Protestant Lutheranism and Calvinism were given the status of full socio-politico legitimacy, freeing those individuals who were religious minorities from confessional persecution. After all, the truest catalyst for the war's beginning was the Habsburg's strategy of minority persecution at the local level and institutional marginalization of Protestants at the Imperial level. So in a way, the Peace of Westphalia established conflicting norms: the universal norm of non-intervention on the one hand, and continental protections accorded to religious minorities on the other.

      Here is where most discussions of sovereignty end, but in so doing they fail to capture the other institutional dynamics of sovereignty. Would you believe that, in addition to non-intervention/Westphalian sovereignty, there exist today three (3) more types of sovereignty? That was a rhetorical question; they exist.

1. International Legal Sovereignty - according to Krasner (2002): "Recognized jurisdictionally independent territorial entities which [have] the right to freely decide which agreements or treaties they will enter into" (3). A state with international legal sovereignty can join, for instance, the World Trade Organization (WTO), sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), etc;
2. Effective Domestic Sovereignty - which "implies that there is an independent authority structure within a recognized territory capable of effectively regulating activities within its own borders" (ibid). So is the police apparatus of state X capable of maintaining law and order throughout the territory of the state? Are their pockets of unrest and militant extremism that are so isolated that the central government can not bring them to heel? At this point, one should start to notice that, unlike the purely legal nature of international legal sovereignty, effective domestic sovereignty can be lacking in state with weak central authority structures. Look at Somalia. So to a certain degree, the forces that enable or prohibit a state from controlling events inside its borders can operate against and outside of the state's ability to control them;  
3. Interdependence/Globalization Sovereignty - This is the newest articulation of sovereignty (or is it?), and this type of sovereignty is the one we hear of most often in the news. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman drew upon his... extensive experience from his... long career as a scholar of international relations (read: he has no experience and, therefore, had no career in that field) to reach the conclusion that technological advances in communication, fiber-optic wiring, cell phones, travel, etc., have collectively "shrunk" the world by reducing the amount of time and space needed to act in today's globalized world, and as a result "The World is Flat". In other words, the state-centric approach to IR analysis is now inappropriate because these advances have, firstly, more or less leveled the playing field between strong and weak state actors and, secondly, enabled non-state actors like NGO's, transnational corporations, and militant extremists, to exert power on the world stage. Friedman's argument is interesting, but absolutely false. Power, or the ability to act, is still the single-most important force in the world today. The U.S. military apparatus and price-tag is larger than its next 14-15 competitors combined. Is that flat? Of course not. 

      Granted, ideas of political equality can permeate through state borders and 'infect' the populations of tyrannical regimes leading to popular protests, viz. the Arab Spring. But most of the now defunct regimes from the Middle East (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya) were brought down from within and after major world powers called for the dictators to step down. While the regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt were relatively bloodless, Libya erupted into all out civil war costing thousands of lives. The death toll from today's raging Syrian civil war has undoubtedly topped 70,000 people. So while Twitter and Facebook served as the platforms through which popular uprisings were channeled, the very real response from authority structures was deadly. Communication networks, ideas, protests, etc., in and of themselves can not topple a regime: only cold steel and hot lead can.

     If one is able to see sovereignty as a multi-faceted - indeed, more complex - system of legal norms, social processes, and power relations then one has the ability to study the modern interaction between the primary agents within the system of IR. The two most important actors in this system are states and cities. It is true that globalizing forces of communication, transport, capital flows, etc., are ceaselessly conflicting with state sovereignty. How states are to compensate for this relative loss of sovereignty is unknown and many states will be forced to discover the answer alone. A more troubling reality will be the inability of weak states to adopt strategies for controlling globalized forces that have been implemented by more powerful states. In effect, the complexity of today's world is inherently chaotic and chaos is the antithesis to the state-centric model of IR.

      An encouraging insight for IR theory is this: while the forces of globalization pose challenges for state authority, these forces are a boon for urban centers, particularly cities. By nature, cities are chaotic, informal, and the processes by which urban institutions manifest themselves are the result of unplanned opportunities just as much as planned initiatives.

      Crucially, however, cities will begin to - and indeed are encouraged to - resemble the ancient city-states of Classical Greece, China, and the early Islamic Caliphate, etc. The key to this reemergence of city-states is the ease with which urbanites construct urban identities. To be a citizen of Athens, Aleppo, Cordoba, Corinth, etc., was to identify oneself as an Athenian, Aleppan, etc., etc., before anything else. Urban identities are more tangible, more salient - more dear - to city-dwellers than the geographic identities of either the state or of the nation. While the developed world struggles to both escape its stagnant economic recovery and reverse negative demographic trends, modern city-states should be encouraged to flourish not only because they are engines of growth, but because they are the most appropriate model for the 21st-century economy.

      As sure as the sun rises from behind the eastern horizon, the city-state is today reborn: shield thicker than before, bronze helmet polished to Athenian-gold, and a Spartan blood-crimson cloak unfurled in the wind.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF THE CITY-STATE

How the Dallas Cowboys and Greenbay Packers Explain the Middle East Peace Process

     Cairo, Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Beirut. Among others, these are the major cities of the Middle East. Before colonialism took root in this region, many citizens of a myriad of different ethnicities and confessions professed allegiance to the cities they lived in and the surrounding neighborhoods. Can we not wipe the map of today's Middle East clean, leaving only the cities as focal points for a new state system?

Would you not agree that Dallas Cowboy fans and "cheese-headed" Packers fans at times are more loyal to their cities than the state or country they live in? You wouldn't be wrong to ask: Why should it even matter? or, Are being a Packer fan and owing allegiance to the U.S. mutually exclusive options? That's because you have little reason to reject the pride that accompanies living as a citizen of the United States. But what does it mean to be Lebanese or Iraqi? For many inhabitants of these countries today, the answers to the questions I have just asked can be puzzling and ambiguous, if not downright inappropriate.

     Before World War I, it really meant little to be Iraqi or Lebanese in the sense that these national definitions were equated with territorial limits that were irrespective of the populations within them. Instead, most of the people that lived around major urban centers derived their pride and loyalty, to a significant degree, from the bazaars and main streets that ran through the major cities. Sunnis, Shi'a, Maronites, Arabs, Kurds, and company, were not constrained by arbitrary lines on a map or fictitious governments that were created by Great Britain and France. These newly formed governments wrangled together urban dwellers and hinterland nomads into defined but awkward units.

After World War II, colonialism retreated and the United Nations celebrated as new kingdoms and republics sprang up throughout the region. And since that time, tensions between confessions and sectarian struggles have continued unabated. It is no wonder why there is so much violence in the Middle East today. What would happen if one day fans of the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers were moved to Chicago and the citizens of all three of those cities were called upon to root for a newly created team? It would be pandemonium! None of these people would agree to the terms and violent infighting would surely ensue. The relationships between and among the different religious sects and confessions of the colonial Middle East were changed in the like manner. Although, in order not to compare religion and ethnicity with professional football teams, I have to say the tensions that arose between colonial subjects were a matter of life and death. The change was dramatic, the damage was irrevocable, and the long path leading to today's civil wars was laid with blind precision.

     A city mayor or governor of the pre-colonial Middle East exercised remarkably different responsibilities as governing entities than state/nationwide legislators do today. The former entity was charged with preserving the peace and the facilitation of trade between merchants and consumers who often valued commerce over confessional loyalty. On the streets of Constantinople during the Byzantine Era, coinage was accepted as faithful currency, not religion. A Shi'a's hand did no evil to silver or gold such that a Sunni would refuse it as payment.

     If we worry today about the best ways to strengthen fragile states in the Middle East, or prop up loyal dictators in that region, we do so only because we lack the mental capacity to remember a time when cities were the lowest common denominator of governing entities. To wit, Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth were only a few city-states amidst thousands throughout classical Greece. City-states were the loci around which a menagerie of different ethnicities gathered to trade goods and blend cultures. These city-states of old commanded unquestionable loyalty and the benefits that one would accrue from being an Athenian or Spartan was far more tangible than the treatment some Lebanese or Iraqi citizens are subject today.

     Can we not wipe the map of today's Middle East clean, leaving only the cities as focal points for building a new state-system? Can we not think of an institution of government that is representative, but founded upon a city's population? It would seem to me that a city is a more tangible entity to owe allegiance to than a country with more or less meaningless boundaries.

     Cities command not only more loyalty than some of today's countries but, in some cases, also have more output. Take a look at this Wall Street Journal article by Conor Dougherty from July, 2012 and the accompanying chart. I'll delve into that insight more fully later, but does it not pique your interest to know that cities, and the commerce that is made possible through their networks, provide the most tangible benefit for citizens of different faiths? Those benefits are jobs, income, and the ability to feed your family. The classical Greek city-states of old crumbled under the weight of Alexander the Great's Macedon and then the Roman Republic. If we were to affect the change I speak of only to witness Middle Eastern city-states falling prey to the same conventional aggression typical of the ancient world then we face a set of problems that need to be discussed in some other forum.

     It's not that the "state system" is broken. In fact, however imperfect the global state system is, it still is better than all alternatives. And keep in mind: "state" is just a word that can easily be extended by, and replaced with, "city-state." The lines were simply drawn in the wrong place because the colonial powers started in the wrong place. Great Britain and France just carved up areas that were more or less equal in size and wealth.