One can adopt a cosmopolitan approach and thus identify these crosspressures as symptoms of the eventual demise of the state and the state-system and their replacement by some form of world government or “new Medievalism.” Or alternatively, one can look at the changing reality of the closing years of the millennium through a non-Grotian approach and reach the conclusion that the state is in relatively good health, despite the growing challenges to its sovereignty.

Like the shell of a lobster, the outer facade of the nation-state retains its general appearance and consistency, even as the societies which comprise each of them have been bombarded and saturated from outside to the point that they barely resemble the original contents. The lobster in the sea and the lobster on the plate are both lobsters, but the change in their circumstances is certainly qualitative. The same is true of states and their constituent societies amidst the political “warming” of the last generation … Their borders remain largely intact and their constitutions are in place, but the shells of these sovereign crustaceans have often proved too porous to prevent their contents from being cooked to someone else's taste.

We are all hostages to the state's impotence

From Haiti in the Western Hemisphere to the remnants of Yugoslavia in Europe, from Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia in Africa, to Cambodia in Southeast Asia, a disturbing new phenomenon is emerging: the failed nation-state, utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community.