CONTRASTING U.S., CHINESE AND RUSSIAN PERCEPTIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY *

Abstract: According to realist approach, three most modern influential states Russia, China and US strive to gain maximum freedom in the international arena while retaining independence in domestic policies. The author suggests that a different constructivist approach should be used. Paying attention to the peculiarities of norms and acknowledging the influence of domestic policy on the norms, this approach allows to explain the differences in understanding sovereignty in different states. The political elites of Russia and China tend to consider that the strong central power secures the Westphalian sovereignty, while the historic experience of the US formed the ideal of decentralized power. Aiming at population protection, democracy promotion, terrorist persecution and maintaining US hegemony, American liberal internationalists and neocons are in general eager to step away from the traditional understanding of sovereignty. Russia and China consider sovereignty from the absolutist standpoint, though they have made a number of concessions to the changing norms of territorial integrity and humanitarian intervention. The article proves that the Russian, American and Chinese understanding of sovereignty (both domestic sovereignty and interdependence sovereignty in S.Krasner’s terms) is changing with the emergence of common interests and the necessity to counteract new global threats.

Traditional realist theory would assert that as great powers Russia, China and the United States should have basically conflicting interests. Indeed, during most of the first decade of the 21 st century Moscow and Beijing sought to balance America's unilateral exercise of power. And yet the three countries have common interests in many areas-containing terrorism, ensuring stability in troubled regions, taking advantage of globalization to promote economic development and modernization, and dealing with the new security threats of environmental disruption, infectious diseases, and narcotics trafficking. Many analysts, and some policy-makers, argue that shared interests in addressing the new security threats and the need for cooperation clearly outweigh balance of power considerations in international relations. 1 In this rapidly changing, globalized world new mechanisms of statecraft are needed to address new and unprecedented challenges, yet in many respects prominent scholars and practitioners remain grounded in 19 th century perspectives. One central principle that continues to inform and shape international relations is sovereignty and its associated principle of territorial sanctity, though the concept is frequently interpreted differently to suit perceived national interests. As great powers, Russia, China and the United States each seek to preserve sovereign control over domestic affairs and to maximize their freedom of action internationally, and so are reluctant to concede sovereign authority, whether to regional organizations, multinational firms, or the more intangible erosions of sovereignty that accompany globalization.
A central argument of this paper is that sovereignty as employed by great powers is a malleable concept, though realism takes it as a constant. Realists assume that all states are equal in terms of their sovereign authority to manage affairs within their own borders, and to conduct business on the world stage with other powers, even though they may vary dramatically in terms of size, and economic and military capabilities. 2 But I suggest that it is precisely those variations in understandings of sovereignty that lead to misunderstandings and tension in the modern globalized world. For this reason, a constructivist approach that focuses on norms and identities, and which takes into account domestic influences on those norms, is more appropriate than a realist approach if we are to understand contrasting perceptions of sovereignty.
Sovereignty evolved out of the European context over the course of several hundred years. 3 Although the concept dominates international politics, nations will interpret sovereignty differently depending on their distinct norms and historical experiences. Russia's and China's experiences have convinced most of the political elite that centralized power is critical in exercising Westphalian sovereignty, while the United States retains a far more decentralized view of power. 4 Westphalian sovereignty here is defined using Stephen Krasner's approach, as exclusive control over one's internal affairs and the exclusion of any external authority structures from the state's internal decision-making processes. 5 Also important for this discussion are Krasner's distinctions between domestic sovereignty, which refers to the formal organization of political authority within a state and the effective exercise of authority within that territory, and interdependence sovereignty, the ability of states to regulate movement across boundaries and the potential erosion of control through such developments as globalization. All three of the great powers are sensitive to infringements on СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ КОНЦЕПЦИЙ И ИНСТИТУТОВ their sovereignty across the three dimensions, but each responds in different ways to perceived violations of the sovereign order. Moreover, these norms continue to evolve, making the task of analysis even more difficult. The subsequent discussion will elaborate the major strands in thinking on sovereignty among the three powers.

Variations in Sovereignty Perceptions
Russia An essential feature of Vladimir Putin's project to restore Russia's great power status was his determination to re-centralize power in Moscow, rejecting the chaotic, decentralized form of governance that prevailed under Boris Yeltsin as weakening the state. Russia's nascent "federalism" in the 1990s was viewed as a dangerous erosion of Moscow's domestic sovereignty, opening the country to the influence of foreign firms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and terrorists. A weak center left the state vulnerable to foreign political influences in the form of civil society building and democracy promotion programs. Under Yeltsin, the Russian Federation effectively conceded domestic sovereignty to the constituent units in the interests of territorial integrity, leading to an extremely decentralized and asymmetric federalism (or perhaps more accurately, feudalism). By appointing regional supra-executives, suspending elections of governors, eliminating Yeltsin's treaties with the regions, emasculating the Federation Council, and restricting the activities of foreign-influenced NGOs Putin sought to restore Moscow's sovereign authority.
Externally, developments in the Europe in the mid to late 1990s impacted perceptions of sovereignty in Moscow. NATO's expansion eastward over Russian objections, and its support for Bosnia and particularly Kosovo, including bombing Serbia in 1999, made clear the United States and its allies had adopted a view of sovereignty clearly at odds with that of Moscow or Beijing. In Moscow in April 1997 Russia and China adopted a Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order, advocating sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference in internal affairs, and asserting the equality of all members of the international community. 6 In contrast to Western condemnation of Serbian atrocities against Kosovar Albanians, the Russian position as the Kosovo conflict unfolded was that Yugoslavia's troubles were a civil war, an internal matter, and that neither side could be judged right or wrong. 7 The situation was viewed in Moscow as comparable to Chechnya; the Kosovo Liberation Army was deemed to be a terrorist organization employing tactics and with goals similar to those of Chechen militants.
The ability to defend state sovereignty is clearly a function of the state's political, economic and military capabilities. In the global community all states may have de jure equality, but in Orwellian fashion some states are more equal than others. Since the restoration of Russia's great power status, Moscow has asserted the right to claim a "sphere of privileged interests" around its periphery according to President Dmitri Medvedev, in those former republics that are now sovereign states. 8 Events along Russia's borderswitness the Color Revolutions-may negatively impact Russian sovereignty.
President Medvedev, and to a lesser extent Prime Minister Putin, have acknowledged that Russian integration into a globalized world in critical to the country's modernization, yet globalization also presents fundamental challenges to interdependence sovereignty. The international exchange of goods, information, people and technologies drives economic development, but gradually erodes central control over a nation's sovereign boundaries. Russia in the 1990s experienced an influx of liberal norms and values, along with foreign products, religious organizations, and NGOS, that were unfamiliar and largely unwelcome. Russia's global opening coincided with the emasculation of centralized power, reinforcing the perception that these forces eroded the country's sovereignty. 9

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The "sovereign democracy" philosophy of Vladislav Surkov, and Putin's attempts to restrict the influence of foreign corporations, governments and NGOs in Russian society, could be characterized as efforts to enhance both Westphalian and domestic sovereignty. 10 The idea of sovereign democracy emerged according to some Russian analysts as a reaction to the threat of global neo-imperialism in the form of U.S. hegemony, and is predicated on the vitally important Westphalian concept of sovereign equality among states. 11 The three-hundred year old, Eurocentric Westphalian system has become the foundation for the global order. Once the fundamentals of this system-above all sovereignty-begin to erode, the outcome is an international environment without rules or norms, making the global interactions unpredictable and more unstable. 12 Russia has a long tradition as a major European and world power, and Russians resent being lectured to on democracy by Westerners. A number of prominent Russian analysts argue that democracy is nation-specific, culturally constructed, and should be established according to each country's national and legal traditions. 13 Foreign support for "democratic forces" inside Russia and its neighbors thus is considered one of a series of strategies designed to weaken Russia, together with the eastward expansion of NATO and attempts to counter Moscow's integrative strategies in the post-Soviet space. 14 The United States, as the world's most powerful actor, is a threat to international order because "it no longer views national sovereignty and state boundaries as an obstacle for intervention when regional and international security is at stake." However, "the principle of national sovereignty remains a priority for many states, including Russia, which do not want to become an object of 'humanitarian intervention' led by NATO or anybody else." 15 China China's modernizing authoritarian model has generated pressures for change, threatening stability and calling into question Beijing's ability to retain full control over its provinces. International pressures to respect human rights are viewed as threats to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity-Beijing perceives the two norms as a zero-sum game that could encourage separatism in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. 16 Observing the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, and economic collapse under Yeltsin, Chinese leaders were determined to maintain tight political control through the Communist Party. 17 As economic reforms shifted fiscal and administrative authority toward provincial and local units, it was incumbent upon Beijing to prevent fragmentation comparable to that experienced by Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union and to preserve domestic stability. The model China developed consisted of economic decentralization paired with upward accountability and the preservation of central control. 18 This system of oneparty governance may facilitate the abuse of power and encourage localized corruption, but it does guarantee domestic sovereignty. Beijing is also jealous of its Westphalian sovereignty, rejecting as interference in its internal affairs any attempts by external powers to criticize the country's human rights record.
Allen Carlson rightly asserts that sovereignty "…lies at the core of contemporary China's evolving relationship with the rest of the world." 19 China has become increasingly tied into international organizations, and greatly values its participation in international regimes, but participation (as in human rights forums or the World Trade Organization) comes with limitations on domestic sovereignty. President Hu Jintao has emphasized that diplomacy should promote economic development, safeguard national sovereignty and security, and maintain stability. 20 While Beijing advocates a prominent role for international law and the United Nations, it selectively interprets the sovereignty provisions of both. In forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization China promotes its view of sovereignty, equating separatism with terrorism and extremism, for example, СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ КОНЦЕПЦИЙ И ИНСТИТУТОВ lumped together as the three great evils. Beijing employs a narrow definition of self-determination, restricting it to former colonial peoples; the concept does not apply to separatist groups within sovereignty entities. At the same time, China's deepening integration into the world economy has forced some concessions to interdependence sovereignty, as it has gained membership in the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO among others.
China's rapidly evolving political and economic position has generated contradictory impulses on sovereign governance. To reference the recent case of the uprising in Libya, China (along with Russia) abstained on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 establishing a no-fly zone around the country. Li Baodong, China's ambassador to the UN, stressed that China favored a narrow interpretation of the resolution, and stated the international community "…should adhere to principles of objectivity and neutrality, and fully respect the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the country concerned. There must be no attempt at regime change or involvement in civil war… 21 Li also voiced concern that the safety of civilians and property in Libya might be threatened by armed intervention, but these humanitarian concerns may have been instrumentally motivatedthere were 30,000 Chinese nationals in Libya at the start of the intervention, and Chinesefunded enterprises had contracted for 50 major projects worth $18.8 billion. 22 As a rising power China is accepting greater responsibilities internationally, and its position on emerging international norms is gradually changing. This has slowly begun to chip away at the notion of absolute sovereignty. At the same time, Beijing's growing confidence, increasing power, and greater flexibility has provided China with increased capabilities for influencing regional and global affairs. Over the past two decades China has become increasingly responsive to human rights issues, as indicated in its response to pressure over its business dealings with Sudan and the humanitarian crisis in Dar-fur. 23 Beijing has also shown greater flexibility in its foreign policy thinking as evidenced in the shift toward greater participation in UN peacekeeping operations. Yet this new activism and flexibility on issues of humanitarian intervention and international peacekeeping has not significantly eroded China's commitment to the traditional norms of state sovereignty and non-intervention in domestic affairs. 24 Beijing continues to reject actions by individual states or regional organizations that infringe on sovereignty, insisting that to be legitimate all such measures must have the imprimatur of the United Nations.
While officially China's position on sovereignty is that it is unchanging, a number of foreign policy elites recognize that it is in China's national interests to take a broader approach to sovereignty. Allen Carlson's work has shown that China's inflexible rhetoric on sovereignty does not preclude flexibility in practice, specifically in the areas of international peacekeeping and multilateral intervention. 25 The concept of tianxia ("all under heaven") and discussions of an Asian-Pacific international relations reflect China's new confidence and the possibility of developing international norms not predicated on European-based ideas of sovereignty. 26 The thrust of this line of thinking is that the international order and its fundamental principles have for the past three centuries been constructed through the European experience, and that the rise of Asia (and specifically China) may signal the beginning of a new order based on different principles. Perhaps these new ideas derived from Asia's cultural context will address the tensions and contradictions among sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights, and humanitarian intervention that strain relations among the three great powers.
The United States Washington is also extremely sensitive to possible infringements on American sovereignty, but unlike Russia or China the country's identity has historically tolerated and even celebrated decentralization; indeed,

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СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ КОНЦЕПЦИЙ И ИНСТИТУТОВ a range of political forces has consistently sought to weaken the center in favor of state governments. The absence of a consensus on a strong center, I would suggest, means that internationally Americans are more easily persuaded than either Russians or Chinese that the centers in other states may be flawed, and hence may forfeit their claim to sovereign rule over their people if they behave abusively. The American perspective, then, stresses a decentralized political order and popular sovereignty, while the Russian and Chinese perspectives emphasize political centralization and state sovereignty, reinforced by the negative example of the disintegration of three former federal communist systems.
Since the end of the Cold War American political discourse regarding sovereignty and intervention has divided into two broad camps. The first and most influential has been the unlikely "alliance" of the liberal internationalists and the neoconservatives. Each of these intellectual tendencies favors a revised view of the classic idea of Westphalian sovereignty, advocating the concept of American essentialism and an activist role for the United States in world affairs, although the two strains proceed from different assumptions. Liberal internationalists, including top figures in the Clinton and Obama administrations (Madeleine Albright, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Michael McFaul) agree that America should use its power to protect human rights and support democracy, following the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, but that Washington should generally use diplomacy before military force, and should act through multilateral organizations such as the United Nations as much as possible. By contrast, the neoconservatives associated with the George W. Bush administration (Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Norman Podhoretz, among others) promoted the idea of using American military power to effect democracy through regime change, while rejecting international organizations as at best ineffective, and at worst constraining U.S. freedom of action. 27 Both discourses support a more limited concept of sover-eignty, but only for countries other than the United States.
The other prominent, but less influential discourse, advocates a more restrained use of American power, more limited objectives, and eschews goals of regime change and democracy promotion. These two strainsisolationists and realists-tend to support a more traditional position on sovereignty. Isolationists (including Ron Paul, Patrick Buchanan and Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian CATO Institute) call for reducing American spending and presence abroad, reject nation-building and democracy promotion, and want to avoid having America's freedom of action constrained by participation in international organizations. Realists such as George H.W. Bush's foreign policy advisors, and scholars, including Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer, believe humanitarian intervention, democracy promotion and regime change are not in the national interest of the United States. Humanitarian and democracy promotion campaigns pursued by liberal interventionists and neoconservatives drain resources and attention from critical security tasks of balancing against real threats, primarily the rising powers in Asia. A more cautious use of military power, particularly in the form of offshore balancing, can focus U.S. efforts on the most serious threats, reduce the drain on the treasury, and avoid sparking anti-American sentiment. 28 One major difference between the American and the Russian and Chinese political systems is the critical role played by the legislature in foreign policy. Although the U.S. Congress frequently delegates responsibility to the executive branch, particularly in the area of foreign policy, Senators and Representatives consistently use foreign policy issues for grandstanding and appealing to constituents. Congress therefore drives an approach to sovereignty that rejects any form of interference in America's internal affairs, while reserving to Washington the right to act internationally without constraints. The draft 2011-12 Defense Authorization bill, for example, notes that the United States is СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ КОНЦЕПЦИЙ И ИНСТИТУТОВ at war with non-state actors like Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and gives the President legal authority to pursue terrorist groups and any states that may harbor them (as in the operation against Osama bin Laden). Domestic civil rights groups are concerned about the possibility of prolonged conflict and indefinite detentions resulting from this legislation, but ignore how the law's sweeping territorial scope will justify international sovereignty violations at the President's discretion. 29 In sum, American liberal internationalists and neo-conservatives are generally willing to sacrifice traditional notions of sovereignty to realize their goals of protecting vulnerable populations, advancing democracy, pursuing hostile non-state actors like terrorists, and ensuring American hegemony. In contrast to the neoconservatives, liberals support the UN Responsibility to Protect criteria for intervention-genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, acting on humanitarian grounds for intervening. Neo-conservatives see little utility (and much harm) in multilateral institutions like the United Nations, justifying American unilateral action through security rationales. Realists and isolationists value traditional forms of sovereignty as promoting America's national interests, but they constitute a less influential voice in American foreign policy.

Security Threats and the Responsibility to Protect
One fundamental difference among the great powers is that Russia and China face significant threats to their stability from domestic separatists and home-grown terrorism, while the United States is primarily concerned with international terrorism. Consequently, Moscow and Beijing are highly sensitive to international norms (such as those protecting human rights) or actions (such as humanitarian intervention) that might constrain their ability to deal with internal security threats. From this perspective, sovereignty ensures freedom of action internally, and prevents other major powers or institutions (such as the U.S. or NATO) from having a role in or influence over their sovereign exercise of authority domestically. Moreover, in the cases of China and Russia, the concept of domestic sovereignty is used to preserve a non-democratic regime. This leads to a clash of values with the United States and the West more broadly (although Russia is closer to the European civilization model and so appears normatively less distant than China).
By contrast, the U.S. needs to maximize its freedom to operate internationally to deal with terrorist threats such as al Qaeda. This may lead to violations of sovereignty, as in the 2011 operation to kill Osama bin Laden, where the U.S. refused to obtain permission or even inform the Pakistani government in advance. Similar security reasoning was applied to the cases of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Moreover, the U.S. government's capabilities to conduct operations that may violate sovereignty-whether to apprehend or kill terrorists, or to protect populations as in the case of Libya-far exceed those of other states. Sovereignty then is not the theoretically equal condition that realism claims, but rather a protean concept that varies depending on the relative power of the state in question. States may voice support for the idea of sovereign equality, but in reality the more powerful can accept those elements of sovereignty that support their national interests, while rejecting others that may constrain their international actions. Sovereignty is interpreted selectively because situations vary in the extent to which they threaten national security, generate humanitarian outrage, or prove politically feasible. As Stephen Krasner has argued, sovereignty is less a set of rigid, enduring principles than a set of loose conventions that are often circumvented by powerful states. 30 Although such behavior may lead to charges of "double standards," all great powers operate from this principle, since they are acting on their perceived national interests.
Key insights into each major power's approach to sovereignty can be gained by a brief look at their respective positions on the "responsibility to protect" doctrine (R2P). First

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СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ КОНЦЕПЦИЙ И ИНСТИТУТОВ elaborated by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, and later adopted by the UN at its 2005 World Summit, R2P holds that the international community can and should respond to genocide and other mass atrocities, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, through intervention. However, such intervention is to be a last resort, and the principles of state sovereignty and territorial inviolability are to be respected to the greatest extent possible. 31 The three great powers hold different positions on the responsibility to protect. The Obama administration has endorsed the concept, and has incorporated it into the 2010 U.S. National Security Strategy. In 2009 the State Department created an Ambassador at Large on War Crimes Issues, and the following year the U.S. Security Council created the position of a Director for War Crimes and Atrocities. 32 By contrast, Russia's official position is that states have the primary responsibility to protect and promote human rights, while international organizations and mechanisms should play only a supporting role. Moscow also strongly condemns using human rights as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of states. 33 The Chinese position is closer to that of Russia-while endorsing the principle of R2P, the Chinese government emphasizes that governments bear primary responsibility for protecting their citizens, and the international community should provide assistance and support while respecting the sovereignty and territorial of states. 34

Conclusion
By contrasting great power perceptions of sovereignty in international relations, as outlined in Table 1, we can more easily understand the underlying sources of tension in many contemporary global issues. Russia and China approach sovereignty from essentially a 19 th century, absolutist perspective, though in each case they have made some accommodation to changing norms of territorial inviolability and humanitarian intervention, rhetorically if not in practice. Russia and China cannot match the United States in global reach; their capabilities tend to be more regional, constraining their international behavior, though China's rise may be changing the equation. Perhaps more importantly, the most significant threats confronting Russia and China are internal pressures for separatism and domestic terrorism, unlike the global terrorist threat facing the United States. Moscow and Beijing, therefore, jealously protect their sovereign right to confront these threats free from outside interference. By contrast, Washington reserves to itself the right to seek out and destroy terrorists and other threats to its security regardless of location; in the process, the sovereignty of other states may be compromised. While expecting other states to understand this logic, the U.S. holds that its Westphalian sovereignty is absolute.
The same dynamic impacts human r i g h t s p r o t e c t i o n a n d d e m o c r a c y promotion efforts. U.S. policy, premised on the democratic peace argument, favors spreading democracy as a means of eroding support for terrorism and supplanting problematic authoritarian states with more reliable democratic allies. Russia and China view American support for democratic movements such as the Color Revolutions and the Arab Spring as choosing sides in domestic conflicts, an unwise practice at best. More to the point, Moscow and Beijing hold that such actions violate Westphalian (and international legal) sovereignty by questioning the legitimacy of established states, attempting to undermine their regimes, and fomenting instability. And while emerging norms such as the responsibility to protect have granted the international community greater flexibility in defending the rights of civilians, they have not been able to provide clear guidance on when and where to intervene. While the new security threats should logically provide a basis for collaboration among great powers, contrasting views of sovereignty make cooperation difficult. I recognize that in each country there are diverse schools of thought on international relations, and that these conflicting perspectives have variable impact on the foreign policy behaviors of their respective states. In this paper I am concerned not with delineating all the varieties of theoretical trends, but rather with identifying the dominant perspectives as reflected on official state policies. 5