This is a continuation of an earlier article that is being split in two. Please start there for context.
Westphalian sovereignty
Westphalian sovereignty is yet another term where the word “modern” is abused as a substitute for “Western European”. In conversations I have noted some people somehow believe it only has to do with religion, and there is some debate around if the phrase is accurate given the Peace of Westphalia introduced different concepts.
Unfortunately, the English language regularly fails to clearly describe anything which the Anglosphere is intended to take as “natural” or axioms, rather than concepts to actively debate.
Under the Westphalian system (Westphalian sovereignty), exclusivity is granted to a state (government institutions) over all land and life within a boundary drawn on a map.
Under other conceptualizations of sovereignty, such as “Genos-based” or relational sovereignty, land is non-exclusive and governed under living treaties between nationalities where sovereignty is based on a peoples (Genos/etc).
While it is possible for both to coexist (as is being experimented with in Greenland), under Western European individualism and universalism, any other unit that isn’t the individual or the species are ignored or outright rejected (such as Genos/peoples). This has inevitably led to ongoing conflicts.
I apparently perceive time differently than those who fully embrace Western European linear time. I don’t believe the “age of colonialism” ever ended because the occupations by foreign Westphalian governments never ended.
As someone who was Assigned Canadian At Birth, my concern with the whole “51st state” rhetoric from the USA isn’t that I want to protect the Westphalian institutions of Canada, but that I want to protect the interests of the Relational Sovereign nationalities that have non-exclusive intrinsic rights to the lands which the foreign Westphalian institutions of Canada and the United States keep wanting to make Eurocentric Westphalian exclusive claims to.
In my mind, Westphalian exclusivity over land and life within a boundary drawn on a map itself is an extremely serious problem, as it most often leads to only one Genos/people having self-determination and all other peoples being oppressed.
Is Westphalian self-determination an oxymoron?
In case it wasn’t obvious where Westphalian exclusivity linked in with Lockean “free real estate”, it is in a contradiction I regularly see which loyalists to Western worldviews regularly don’t.
You will hear groups talking about their “right to self determination”. When we are talking about Genos/peoples style groups, and relational sovereignty, I am fully supportive of those groups and their right to self-determination.
However, Westphalian sovereignty is an exclusivity over land and life, and when combined with other Western worldviews has largely become a mechanism to deny self-determination to all groups but one (some alleged “majority”, even if that majority is formed and maintained via violent uncivilized means).
This conflict has been ongoing since the alleged “Age of Discovery”, but there are 5 examples where the active, ongoing and violent Westphalian denials of self-determination are the most visible.
United States: July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence from the “rule of law” (Sovereign Citizens style) as British colonies
Canada: July 1, 1867 Creation of the Dominion of Canada via the British North America Act 1867 as part of the British Empire, with colonial expansion continuing into other territories. Canada has no “history” of colonialism as it is ongoing
Australia: January 1, 1901 Federation of the colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia within the British Empire
New Zealand: September 26, 1907 Proclamation of Dominion status within the British Empire.
Israel: May 14, 1948 Declaration of Independence following the expiration of the British Mandate for Palestine in line with the Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) supporting the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine
In all these examples, there were pre-existing nations that weren’t configured as Westphalian governments the way that Europeans recognized, and thus Eurocentric Westphalian institutions were imposed and violently maintained. While these are the dates of the establishment of contemporary Westphalian institutions, the violent denial of the self-determination of pre-existing peoples inhabiting the regions later drawn on a map started much earlier.
I don’t believe that we will be able to solve the underlying conflicts between peoples, or stop ongoing land grabs, without dealing with the notion of Westphalian exclusivity over land and life.
Oh, no – you mentioned Israel?
I have been trying to write an article about the resolution passed by the Green Party of England and Wales titled “Zionism is Racism” (Wikipedia, Greens4Palestine booklet and motion, Green Party Autumn Conference 2006 - Final Agenda)
No matter how many rewrites, I couldn’t get comfortable – so I will only mention it here.
In the 1990s and early 2000s I was involved in the Green Party of Ontario and Canada, and my general attitude was to encourage the party to not talk about this issue as it regularly gets it wrong and only harms the party. In the early 2000s the Ontario and Federal parties engaged in the Streisand effect before Streisand herself did, actively promoting someone named David Icke (claiming to be protesting against him). It only drew more and more Green Party members to Icke talks.
Then in 2016:
Then in 2021:
My understanding of what is happening both on this continent as well as Western Asia is much more advanced a decade ago. I have written about how I see the colonialism of Palestine to be primarily an Anglo Protestant project since the 1600s, with the rebranding of the movement to claim to be about “Jewish self-determination” being extremely recent.
I have serious concerns with these conversations in mainstream Western political discussions as well as within the Green Parties.
The most violent tool used against Ashkenazi Jews by European Christians was European Christian Westphalian sovereignty which was denying the self-determination of this subgroup of Jewish peoples (plural, meaning there is more than one ethnoreligious Genos when discussing Jewish peoples). These are all relational sovereign peoples, descending from the twelve tribes that according to their origin story grew from the twelve sons of Jacob (later named Israel).
Given I believe the primary source of the problems facing Jewish and other relational sovereign peoples has been Westphalian exclusivity over land and life, I of course reject the notion that yet another Westphalian institution can solve that problem. I emotionally understand why some Jewish individuals have decided that they need to “fight fire with fire” and try to use Westphalian induced violence to protect against Westphalian induced violence, but this has only made all Jewish peoples less safe.
What has become frighteningly obvious to me is that few of those talking about the Westphalian project of Israel are talking about Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (collectively known as CANZUS) as settler-colonial Westphalian projects that exist as ongoing expressions of the denial of the self-determination of pre-existing peoples (relational nationalities, etc).
Pretty much everything I see being suggested around accountability for the Westphalian institution of Israel should be applied to CANZUS as well. This includes the recognition that all 5 of these projects are inherently built on racism (a system, not about individual prejudices or individualism at all), calls for the use of BDS policies to stop subjugation and the denial of self-determination of other peoples, and so-on.
This is especially important for a British party, given all 5 of the most violent and obvious expressions of Westphalian settler-colonialism are all the ongoing impacts of the British Empire and its ideologies.