
The Romanian Academy discussing National Sovereignty with Prof. Stephen Bowers
On October 19th of 2017, the Romanian Academy, through its Institute for World Economics, hosted Prof. Dr. Stephen Bowers[1], who teaches Government at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA and leads the Center for Security and Science. Prof. Bowers has an extensive background in the Armed Forces and working within the intelligence community and has emerged as an authority on Eastern Europe and low intensity conflicts[2].
His visit at the Romanian Academy was conducted under the auspices of the works of its internal reflection group “GLOBAL 3G – Repositioning the Economic Actors in Globalization, the Geostrategic and Geopolitics’ Impact”, which debates the evolving global landscape. In his presentation, Prof. Stephen Bowers focused on “National Sovereignty in the 21st Century”, a particularly divisive, yet current, topic, which emerges as a principal concern for researchers and citizens alike from the numerous challenges to the status quo that we are facing today – from the disaggregation of developed and high achieving states such as Spain and the United Kingdom to the attempted realization of national ambitions for peoples like the Kurds in challenging security environments. While these phenomena, rooted in historical processes and human nature, are taking place, the world also faces paradigm shifts related to the increased interconnectivity in terms of information, travel and trade, leading technocratic supporters of these trends to advance as inevitable the idea of global aggregation. Sovereignty is increasingly illusory in such an environment, and those who would pair an objective phenomenon of globalization with an ideology of globalism find new possibilities of wealth, efficiencies and good governance in regional or even global administration of key issues at the expense of the nation-state.
There are both opportunities and risks in these developments and, regardless of their direction, statesmanship is more important than ever, even as managerialism tries to take center stage as a driver of new solutions to new problems.
These questions are vital to Romania, not only for the realities of government and governance as we enter a new phase in our development, but also as an indication and possibly a forewarning of where forces and phenomena beyond our control will strive to take us. Whether or not these developments serve the Romanian interests and whether they can be resisted, as the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century and their prescriptions for state and society could not, is a subject that will become a permanent item for debate and discussion. These subjects will also provoke controversy and conflict, as well as becoming further vectors for Great Powers to pursue their interests and agendas.
[1]http://www.liberty.edu/academics/helmsschoolofgovernment/index.cfm?PID=12538