Sovereignty and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Ana Esther Ceceña
National Autonomous University of Mexico
[email protected]
Summary
The political and territorial organizational design of the capitalist world-system forged a disciplinary and cohesive configuration in which the nation-state emerged as the central structure. Over time, this figure and the very institutions of capitalism have been challenged or eroded by the same agents and forces that created them or that failed to be disciplined. This text highlights the challenges to state sovereignty that arise from the actions of four actors: supranational powers (theory of imperialism), corporations, organized crime (cartels), and subordinate and resistant forces and societies (theory of internal colonialism).
Keywords: sovereignty, State, disputed territorialities, colonialism
The sovereignty of the 4 knights of the Apocalypse
Summary
The political-territorial organizational development of the capitalist world system forged a disciplinary configuration in which the nation-state emerged as a central structure. As a time, this figure is the very institutionality of capitalism that has been questioned or corroded by the same agents and forces that have created or that have not been disciplined. This text highlights the challenges to State sovereignty that emerge in the last decade from four subjects: the supra-states (theory of imperialism), corporations, organized crime (carteis) and forces and subordinate societies in resistance (theory of internal colonialism).
Keywords: sovereignty, State, disputed territorialities, colonialism
Sovereignty and the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Abstract
The organization of the political and territorial design of the capitalist world-system was forged by providing cohesion through discipline. In that structure the state-nation plays a central role. Over time, however, this state-nation and the institution of capitalism itself have been questioned and corroded by the very agents that created it, as well as by those that had not been fully disciplined. This article will highlight the challenges to state sovereignty that emerge from the action of four subjects: super-states (imperialism theory), corporations, organized crime (drug cartels) and subordinated societalities in resistance (inner colonialism theory).
Keywords: sovereignty, state, struggling territorialities, colonialism
Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
[...]
Hey you, don't help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight
Pink Floyd
The ambiguity of sovereignty
Since the first wave of globalization, which led to the universalization of the nation-state as a form of societal organization, the notion of sovereignty has accompanied structuring processes and permeated the conflicts that arise in their development. This is due both to the desire to articulate what is diverse—and often contradictory—within a delimited and subordinate political and territorial unit, and to the arbitrariness in setting boundaries that such a process entails, and the consequent tendency toward the expansion of the strongest centers. Nevertheless, despite remaining an imprecise notion, with content that shifts depending on the political stance of whoever invokes it, the contemporary understanding of sovereignty generally refers to the state and its territory.
The sovereignty of a nation or the sovereignty of a people, the two most commonly used formulations, presupposes a collective identity that is difficult to verify, given the diversity of cultures, ethnicities, individual histories, and opinions of the groups that comprise it. However, this identity functions as a cohesive element in the defense of shared territory or interests that, in the international arena, appear to represent the national community as a whole. Thus, the elements recognized as national heritage are the material foundation of the sovereignty of a people or nation, and any violation of territorial, political, economic, cultural, or other boundaries, according to the limits demarcated by the corresponding community and legal identity, is considered an attack on sovereignty.
In this context, I am interested in contributing some reflections on the threats to the sovereignty of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, pointing to this geographical region as a place of enunciation and approaching the analysis from the dispute and reconfiguration of its territorial dimension.
Imperial states
Capitalism has built a world order that homogenizes criteria, imposes rules and forms of behavior through an intricate institutional system that appears consensual but is traversed by power relations, asymmetries and heterogeneities that tend to modify the territorial limits of nations sovereigns and their territorialities or specific modes of social organization in the territory according to their own ways of life and idiosyncrasies.
Nation-states were simultaneously a general mode of structuring and disciplining forged in the constitution of the modern capitalist world-system, necessary for the articulation and ordering of interests and dynamics, and a means of defending particular territories against the voraciousness of external powers. This is precisely what makes them appear as spaces of resistance and claims to self-determination, supposedly protected by international law.
It is in this methodological place that the theory of imperialism is based, which highlights the power relations between the different States that have configured borders since the beginning of this process, as ways of limiting conflicts, but which also permanently subvert them to the extent that these become obstacles.
Imperialism employs a variety of intervention methods, the extreme of which is the dissolution/annexation of territories that are, in principle, foreign. Within a broad spectrum encompassing all dimensions of institutional articulation, these methods range from military interventions, which have become so sophisticated that they also exhibit a range of variations, to less visible interventions not considered components of (conventional) warfare, although they are increasingly present and active, such as trade or financial blockades. All of this together constitutes what I have previously termed full-spectrum warfare, adopting the formulation of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, which uses the concept of full spectrum domination alluding to the concerted intervention of all military forces. In my view, the military extends to all spheres of defining life in society and subordinates non-military forms to an articulated strategic logic. The strategy of domination unfolds both in the subordination of culture and the realities of food and agriculture, and in the dismantling of common senses shaped by the history and tradition of peoples in order to impose a homogenized meaning produced as a global commodity; likewise in economic, financial, health, or educational policy decisions, all of these constituting the areas that are militarily recognized as the water that needs to be taken away from the fishIf it ever was, war is no longer solely about physical force. Even considering the great technological advances that give strategic weight to the networks of cyberspace, interventions have their greatest and most decisive impact on the penetration of computer systems belonging to the identified enemy. This can refer to control systems of nuclear power plants, as happened in Iran, or to financial systems, energy supply systems, or others relevant to challenging a nation's sovereign capacity or provoking a popular uprising against the state. Wars are fought, won, or lost in these other arenas, as the traumatic experience of Vietnam demonstrated and as Sun Tzu studied in ancient times.
Territories are intervened upon from this wide range of perspectives, seeking to reconfigure collective meaning and identity, consequently undermining sovereignty. Force, culture, and control of the basic resources that ensure existence are the three components of a sound strategy for redesigning and transforming the criteria and modes of understanding and using territories.
This dispute over territories, which can be understood as a confrontation of sovereignties, is a constant in the dynamics of the modern capitalist world-system governed by an expansive, appropriating/concentrating and objectifying mode, with relationships that are both exclusionary and hierarchical.
In this trend towards expansion, whether of direct intervention or of control over territories, we find four main reasons, whose relative importance may vary according to the specific circumstances:
- The appropriation of the wealth located in those territories, which within a broad spectrum can be what is considered as naturalThese resources, whether inorganic (minerals) or organic (biodiversity), also include social resources, encompassing cultural diversity and the capacity and willingness to work. Each historical and technological moment establishes priorities in the classification of these resources, categorizing them as strategic, basic, dispensable, or replaceable. This also explains the relative importance of different territories.
- The geographical situation of the territory in question is a key consideration, whether from a communications perspective, as in the cases of Suez, Panama, and possibly Tehuantepec, or territories through which oil pipelines or supply routes (the old and new Silk Roads) pass, such as Syria or Georgia. Territories like Afghanistan are also considered, as they are the vortex between oil-producing regions and areas that fuel coalitions threatening the established hegemony (the link between Iraq, Iran, and China), as well as supply routes for the Chinese or Asian economy in general.
- Strategic occupation of territories to disrupt the possibility of forming coalitions that compete with the hegemonic power. This was the defining characteristic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the former to occupy a space in Central Asia after the implosion of the Soviet Union and prevent the expansion of China or a rapprochement between China and the Russian Federation; the latter to prevent the formation of a cohesive Arab power in lands of enormous natural and geostrategic wealth.
- Territories where anti-systemic forces emerge with the capacity to organize collective life around principles of cohesion that dissent from capitalism, in confrontation or detachment that generates fissures in the hegemonic world order. Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia can be placed in this category, but also regions (not necessarily countries) that harbor threatening social groups, where it is necessary to dismantle bifurcating trends.
Corporations
A second threat to state sovereignty is posed by the actions of corporations. That is, it occurs when capital threatens the structures and institutions it has created. In these cases, the individual breaks free from societal mediations to reveal themselves as they truly are: a voracious and expansive subject, with their own agency and in constant transformation and empowerment.
Beyond state limits and regulations, corporations are occupying spaces. They intervene in all aspects of life's construction, thus modifying ways of thinking and daily practices. They regulate and transform eating habits and food content, mobility, communication interfaces and social relations, ways of conceiving health, illness, and the management of a good life, and also ways of conceiving and constructing space and territory. In this way, they subvert, shape, and create capitalist territoriality, incorporating not only homogeneities but also disparities, combining them and bringing them into play within an articulated and complementary whole. It is corporations, through their control not only of production but also of consumption, that are shaping our sense of reality, often contradicting or overriding state policies (of any state).
Considering that one of the strongest institutions of capitalism is private property, secured and protected by the State, but claimed and exercised by its direct beneficiaries—a phenomenon that becomes very visible with agricultural or extractive corporations—the nation's territories have been passing into private hands, falling outside the State's jurisdiction. The case of mines, or, in general, the exploitation of the subsoil, is the most telling: in many cases, what is granted are exploitation concessions for fifty years, renewable for another fifty, which relegate the State's rights. Thus, for a century, the State has no possibility of claiming authority over the concessioned territories, and when it finally regains that authority, what it recovers are... emptied territories.
It is not new for companies to own or hold concessions on parts of land, both in their home countries and abroad. However, the relative scarcity of deposits or natural resources considered valuable due to their profitable use, the scale of their exploitation, and the resulting competition for their exclusive control, as well as the technological conditions that enabled the globalization of production systems, have intensified the race for private land ownership.
Giant corporations, with their global production systems and the capacity and resources to modify public policies in the countries where they establish a presence and to dictate global policies from international regulatory bodies, are at the forefront of this process. The mechanisms of intervention employed by corporations that double, triple, or more the annual income of many of the countries in which they invest are numerous. Threats to withdraw investments, competitive pressure on local companies that generate oligopolies or monopolies, and the creation of extensive corruption networks are some of the recurring mechanisms used by these powerful corporations. Furthermore, in many cases, there is collusion between them and their home states. This can even lead to the outbreak of declared wars, such as the war in Iraq, for the control of its oil fields, among other objectives.
From a territorial perspective, the impact is much more profound, since parts of the territory are falling outside the jurisdiction of the nation-state. Sometimes, various national laws, such as labor, environmental, or other similar legislation, remain in force in these territories, albeit in a state of relative dispute. In other words, from the perspective of the nation-state, its territorial support is being invaded or violated, revealing a loss that can be metaphorically described as a Swiss cheese. The territories are surrendered, voluntarily or under duress. territories of strategic density within a country, so that its wealth, or, in other words, the nation's patrimony on which its conditions of survival, strength and internal cohesion are built, is correspondingly impoverished.
This also applies to the transfer of territory for the installation of foreign military bases, with the added problem that, in these cases, the territories remain strictly under the jurisdiction of the occupying power, without any possibility of oversight by the host state. Currently, based on data from official and public US military bases—which, of course, are not all of them—their territorial extension reaches 108,791 km².2, the equivalent of the surface area of Guatemala (108,889 km²)2).
Giant corporations should be understood as integrated subsystems with their own rules and, depending on the circumstances, with schools, cinemas, and supermarkets within their facilities and with private security forces or armies protecting them from the threats From abroad, they contribute to imposing internal order, justified by their distrust of the protective capacity the State can offer them in the host regions. In other words, they have their own kind of internal social structure that operates according to the conditions of each location where they are established. Many examples of this can be found in Peruvian mines or in those in various parts of Africa. In Africa, in particular, private armies operate more intensely due to the fragility of the State and the proliferation of armed groups. The resistance of local populations to these types of investments, which not only occupy territories but also simultaneously violate previously established territorial boundaries, is generally combated by both nation-states and the private forces of the companies themselves.
Viewed from the corporate perspective, this process reveals an overlap of territorialities and societal structures that simultaneously imposes and dissolves borders. The structure of nations, as neoliberalism points out when invoking the concept of the market, has become an institutional straitjacket containing the expansion of capital. However, it remains effective for controlling populations, while capital finds diverse mechanisms and routes to circumvent it, since the territorial, cultural, and political borders of nations lack the necessary strength to regulate corporations. One of the most prominent elements in the erosion of state sovereignty, reinforced by global regulatory bodies, is the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), where states lose in over 90% of disputes, facing exorbitant fines that sometimes exceed the annual amount of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The static and regularly continuous territories of states are confronted by a highly capable subject that has constructed global but discontinuous territories. I call them archipelago territories Due to their formation and characteristics, they are an integrated diversity with a rather reticular form, and they grow by incorporating pieces of territory that have strategic density (Ceceña, 2017). That is, they are territorial structures of very high value, organized at the same time as profoundly authoritarian and hierarchical private regimes of government, and which, seen in national delimitations, would be an important part of the holes in Gruyère cheese: the non-State (or the other State) within the territory of the nation-state.
Corporate archipelago territories are such high-level power structures that they are barely comparable to the world's most powerful states, with which they maintain relationships that are rarely subordinate, often collaborative, and therefore possess privileged agency (see the case of Exxon Mobil as a paradigmatic example). With respect to other states, their relationship is based on a position of strength and the capacity to impose or modify public policies and even territorial boundaries (see the cases of the Essequibo region between Venezuela and Guyana, with none other than Exxon at the center; the partition of Sudan; and other similar cases).
The economic power and, consequently, the political agency of these giant corporations becomes clear when comparing their revenues with those of nation-states. The twenty largest corporations in 2019,1 They have a sales revenue of $5.818.797 million, which places them only behind the GDP of the United States ($21.433.225 million) and China ($14.279.937 million), according to the magazine's measurements. Fortune (2019) and the World Bank (2019). The entire Latin America and Caribbean region reached a GDP of 5.786.727 million dollars generated in 2019, and its negotiations with the world are individualized, so that even countries like Brazil, with a GDP of 1.877.811 million dollars, find themselves in an unfavorable asymmetrical situation vis-à-vis corporations.
Organized crime
A third prominent actor in the contemporary world is what is generically called organized crime, whose structural expression is the cartels. As an extreme manifestation of commodification, organized crime traffics in drugs, weapons, people, and bodies, undertaking highly profitable activities and businesses that are nonetheless illegal under established law.2 This makes him, from the outset, a subject who is originally another with respect to institutional powers, even though, in fact, it has been sponsored and protected by the State which at the same time condemns it, and with which it maintains a collaborative interrelation.
The type of goods this individual trades in, or the special quality of his inputs, which in some cases are people (taking Marx's reflections on fictitious commodities to their ultimate limit), places him in a situation of extreme abuse that cannot be tolerated or justified by institutions, but which, beyond the peculiarity of his work material, is not too different from other forms of capital accumulation.
However, even considering it a kind of outgrowth of the general machinery of capitalism, its presence is not circumstantial. The gradual integration of drug and weapon use into common sense and social practices signals its acceptance as part of everyday life. The same is true for the various forms of forced labor and the exploitation of bodies, especially after the social devastation caused by, or masked by, the pandemic.
It is well known how organized crime money shapes politics and subjugates states, appoints civil authorities, subordinates armed forces and security agencies, and imposes new geographies. Routes, airports, and infrastructure come under the control of these traffickers under the protection of the military, as do political decisions, social practices, and norms.
The calls organized crime forces They operate across vast territories that they have been transforming. They establish internal rules, contrary to those that govern at the national level. They implement their own social policies, as well as sanctions, punishments, and forced discipline, such as the cession of certain lands, the sale of their products, intelligence gathering and surveillance, or even forced consent for marriages not necessarily desired by one of the parties. In other words, they impose their own social order within the state, without neglecting the fact that they possess a military capacity, often greater than that of the state, which guarantees compliance with the social rules and regulations governing the use and organization of the territory that they impose.
Scholars such as Hansen and Stepputat (2006) characterize the phenomenon as clearly related to the concept of sovereignty and refer to these other spatialities as de facto sovereigntiesThis concept was taken up by David Barrios Rodríguez to work on this process of dispute for power and sovereignty in places like Mexico, Colombia or Rio de Janeiro where these groups “… prefigure the establishment of parallel social orders through which contemporary capitalism finds forms of reproduction that cross previously constituted borders and spread in various areas” (Barrios Rodríguez, 2021, p. 4), establishing “parallel orders of authority to that of the States, within which they impose regulations on forms of coexistence, behavior, and even sanction conduct through penalties and punishments” (Barrios Rodríguez, 2020, p. 13).
When observing the regions on a map sockets In a country like Mexico, where sovereignty is often overridden by various cartels, this overlapping of sovereignties becomes evident. What is the State in these circumstances? What is its scope of action? On what does the State's sovereignty rest if not on these other sovereignties that have eroded its foundations?
Society/social conflicts
The fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, referring to the nation-state, is implicit in the trap of the constitution of unitary states, supposedly hosts of a consensual community.
Pablo González Casanova coined the concept of internal colonialism to refer to the relationships of subordination and conflict between the various social groups that make up what is usually called national communityThis situation, characterized by “contradictions between the national government and the neocolonized nationalities” (González Casanova, 2003, p. 2), highlights not only the differences in their social standing but, above all, those related to their ways of life, social organization, and political practices. In other words, it considers that the formation of states imposed a system that superseded the diverse range of societies, worldviews, and ways of life that pre-existed them, serving as a mechanism of general, cultural, and civilizational control. The formation of nation-states promoted a single, exclusionary vision of society.
In the Americas, which experienced a large-scale invasion accompanied by policies of denial and cultural erasure, the homogenization process combined military measures, such as the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples to villages instead of their extended and dispersed territories, or the imposition of chieftains to focus communication and control, with evangelizing measures that erased and imposed meanings and denied the long-standing historical memory of these peoples. The burning of books, the construction of new buildings designed according to the cultural codes of the invaders—over those of the peoples or nations who inhabited the American lands or Abya Yala before the invasion—the suppression of languages and customs, as well as massacres, looting, and biological warfare, were the path of subjugation and exploitation charted by the invaders, even before developing capitalism shaped territorial organization through the consolidation of nation-states.
The populations of the Americas were reduced to a tenth of what they were before the arrival of the invaders, and some were enslaved or subjugated. Nevertheless, they rebelled, resisted, and to this day maintain their commitment to their worldviews and ways of life, as evidenced by the wave of continental uprisings commemorating the 500th anniversary.
With the formation of states, a result of the independence uprisings, borders were imposed that cut through ancestral territories to divide them among neighboring states, and private property was instituted. The Indigenous peoples, despite having contributed to the struggle to expel the invaders, were, in most cases, dispossessed of their lands or forced to retreat to rugged territories far removed from those chosen for the settlement of the new states. good societies to which they did not belong. Unfamiliar with individualistic logic and private property, and convinced of their communal practices, these peoples remained alert or in resistance against the vicissitudes of the new colonizing phase.
In an effort to achieve national unity, so necessary for the strengthening and cohesion of the State, very aggressive integrationist policies were designed which, like new evangelizing acts, sought to educate These peoples were imbued with the modern worldview in exchange for abandoning their own. Diversity was simply not accepted, much less the worldview and ways of the non-Westernized, among whom were also the communities formed by populations of African origin who arrived in America as slaves, who, if not integrated, were fought against by all means.
However, despite the powerful destructive/assimilative onslaught of political decolonization and the formation of independent states, diversities persisted, and more than five centuries later they continue to clash, fighting for their space and the survival of their organizational structures for the reproduction of life. The problem is not resolved. The sovereignty of the nation-state is not equivalent to the sovereignty of the peopleIt is rather its negation.
But if this occurs with respect to systems of life in confrontation or dispute not only over space but also over the sense of reality, such as indigenous peoples or communities of African origin, an additional or intersecting rupture arises from the conceptual definitions of the nation from the perspective of class and collective self-determination within a highly disparate and polarized collective. The nation, far from being homogeneous, is made up of organizationally and culturally diverse nations or groups that only circumstantially find spaces of convergence and shared identity. The State represents the boundary of their impossibility, and therefore they neither recognize it nor recognize themselves within it.
Territory and State
Communities, peoples, and societies colonized or even denied in their specificity coincide with the illusory national community in the defense of their territory. The problem is that to safeguard their territories and territorialities (ways of life and integral organization), they must confront the nation-state. Faced with a blatant foreign invasion, this agreement is immediate, but not so with other forms of external invasion, such as mining or extractive investments in general, agribusiness, the construction of mega-infrastructure (even when undertaken by the national state), logging operations, or other activities with direct territorial implications. These interventions are celebrated by the state, while the affected population groups repudiate them and try to prevent them. It is not only a matter of legitimacy, but also a dispute over visions and territories.
Territories have a much longer history of development than states. States were established on forged territories, which hold ancient memories and traditions whose deep roots make their eradication difficult. The solidity of territorial and ecocosmological frameworks stands out markedly in contrast to that of states that have yet to fully realize their potential. This is especially true in Latin America and the Caribbean, where their vulnerability to the North American supranational state places them in a subordinate position, challenging their sovereign authority.
Without diminishing in the slightest the relevance and political effectiveness of anti-imperialist struggles, it is essential to reflect, without complacency, on the State as a form of hierarchical discipline and its relationship with the real community of communities that supposedly comprise it; on its relevance in the face of powers that surpass it, impose rules and policies on it, and maintain it only as a facade; and on its historicity, which is being shattered from within and without.
Institutions respond to the circumstances of their time. They have limits and boundaries. The forces that create them are dynamic, transforming over time. Nation-states generated by an emerging and consolidating capitalism are being overtaken, destroyed, and violated by mature capitalism in the process of civilizational decline. Where are the peoples struggling for self-determination and the recognition of their diversities in this process and circumstance? How do they position themselves in relation to the agents of destruction: corporations, cartels, and states? How do we envision these systemic dilemmas from our Latin American and Caribbean perspectives, and from our long history on and with the planet? Is it possible to conceive of non-capitalist collective organizations? Will the state be able to navigate this drift?
Highlighted
World Bank (2019). World GDPhttps://data.worldbank.org
Barrios Rodríguez, David (2020). Life Between Fences: Social Militarization in Latin America in the 21st Century [Doctoral thesis]. PPELA, UNAM, Mexico. http://ru.atheneadigital.filos.unam.mx/jspui/handle/FFYL_UNAM/490
Barrios Rodríguez, David (2021). Thesis on social militarization in Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American Geopolitical Observatory. https://geopolitica.iiec.unam.mx/sites/geopolitica.iiec.unam.mx/files/2021-10/Tesis%20sobre%20la%20militarizaci%C3%B3n%20social%20en%20Am%C3%A9rica%20Latina%20y%20el%20Caribe_David%20Barrios_Rodr%C3%ADguez%20%281%29.pdf
Ceceña, Ana Esther (2014). Full Spectrum Domination over America. Patria (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration of Ecuador),(1), 85-103.
Ceceña, Ana Esther (2017). Chevron: Capitalist territoriality at its limit. Chevron. Paradigm of civilizational catastropheMexico: 21st Century.
Fortune (2019). Ranking. Fortune Global 500-2019. https://www.fortuneenespanol.com/rankings/ranking-fortune-global-500-2019/amp/
González Casanova, Pablo (2003). Internal colonialism: a redefinition. Fundamental concepts and phenomena of our timeMexico: UNAM.
Hansen, Thomas Bloom and Stepputat, Finn (2006). Sovereignty revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35, 295-315.
1The first twenty corporations on the list of Fortune In 2019, which is the data we work with, they are Walmart, Sinopec Group, State Grid, China National Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco, Volkswagen, British Petroleum, Amazon, Toyota Motor, ExxonMobil, Apple, CVS Health, Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, McKesson, Glencore, China State Construction Engineering, Samsung Electronics and Daimler.
2The boundaries of legality shift with history and community practices. In this respect, we can observe the shifting limits of permissibility regarding drug use with the legalization of marijuana, which entails legal and social changes, and a conceptual revision to justify the differentiated treatment of the various types of narcotics circulating in the market and the change in the treatment of marijuana.
