Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about interconnection and sovereignty and how that relates to contemporary international conflict.
In contemporary international conflict, we have these terms of sovereignty and interconnection. And sovereignty is for the right and the ability of legitimate governments to determine their own laws and policies and how they are going to run their country and the processes that they're going to do that.
So as an independent legitimate nation, they have the right of sovereignty. And these decisions that are made through sovereignty can have an impact on other nations. And that is what we call interconnection. So decisions that one nation makes can have an impact on other countries. Maybe it's a country right next to it, or maybe somewhere across the ocean or somewhere else within the world that is not directly next to that country.
And because of this interconnection, we are seeing a lot of globalization. So globalization is the increasing interconnection between countries. So in our world, we really are not operating as a single country. Well, we are-- but we are impacted and have relations with countries outside of our own. And so those decisions can have an impact on our country.
So let's look at some examples on this growing interconnectedness that we are seeing throughout our international atmosphere. One would be the economy. We have our own individual economies within our nations. But we also have economies that spanned throughout the world.
And a good example of this would be through trade. We do trade with other countries and we import and export. And if there is a conflict between two countries, then this could affect the trade and therefore economy, whether that's through embargoes or tariffs or raising the tariffs. And this is where we see the tension between a nation's sovereignty, so their right to make their own decisions about their trade policies and how we also are interconnected and how those policies that are made can affect our own nation's economy.
Another example would be human rights. So throughout the world, we have what we call universal human rights. And if one country is having a conflict, whether that's ethnic or through other groups, and we are seeing large scale atrocities over the citizens or the country's human rights, that has an impact on our own country because we value universal human rights.
And once there is a conflict, such as that, again, we are dealing with that nation's sovereignty to determine their own rights concerning its citizens. But also we have this notion of the interconnectedness that we all are experiencing as a world and how those two can clash.
And finally, another example would be through the environment. If one country has really strict environmental policies to preserve their resources or to protect against climate change, and one other country, maybe next door to it, doesn't have such strict policies and doesn't regulate their factories and they cause a lot of pollution, this can have again the tension between sovereignty and interconnection. If one country does not have very good or strict environmental regulations, that can really impact another country's environment, and ultimately the world environment.
If we have a conflict between countries over economies, human rights, or environment, or maybe another example of a conflict, we can go through conflict resolution processes, just like we do between individuals. And we may go through a mediation. Maybe two countries are willing to come together, and it's not a violent conflict, and they can sit down and discuss the issues and maybe come out with a plan.
Also, we see this similar thing through negotiation. Maybe another country will come in and negotiate some terms. And also a good example is through shuttle diplomacy where we usually have, again, another country or a high-level individual that will go back and forth between the two countries and try to come up with some sort of negotiated agreement.
Well, let's look at our key points now here on interconnection and sovereignty. So really we're looking at national autonomy, so the nation's right to have their own laws and policies and processes, and versus the globalization or the interconnection that we are facing within our world, whether that's through economies or human rights or the environment, and the tension that can happen between those two issues and how conflict can arise. And if this happens, we can try conflict resolution processes similar to what we go through on an individual basis.
Well, that's all I have for you today. Here are your key terms. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer.
Thanks for taking the time out. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.
