World Divided into Sovereign Territorial Nation-states?

As we have seen from the book, The Nation-State and Global Order, there are many types of politico-military rule, but the most widespread and prevalent form in today's world is the nation-state. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that a world organized into sovereign territorial nation-states is right, although we accept it in such a fashion. There are costs and benefits, strengths and weaknesses to all politico-military rules and nation-state is not an exception. Although it has become a dominant form of rule in today's world, the system of a sovereign territorial nation-state contains many problems within it and these problems casts doubt to whether the world should be organized into sovereign territorial nation-states.

One of the biggest problem of a world organized into sovereign territorial nation-states is that each nation-state requires recognition of other sovereign powers, which would be other nation-states in our case. This fact that sovereignty and territoriality, two main pillars of a nation-state, needs recognition of other parties with power, this makes the nation-state system a subjective one. For example, Republic of China, more often referred to as Taiwan, and People's Republic of China both claim that mainland China and island of Taiwan are under their sovereignty and at the same time denies each others claim of sovereignty and territoriality of these lands. Under these circumstances, PRC threatens to cut diplomatic ties with any country that forms a diplomatic tie with Taiwan, and with its power in global stage behind it, PRC is able to successfully promote non-recognition of Taiwan. However, this mutual non-recognition results in a tension that has the potential of a war. Other cases that fall in the similar category is the conflict of North and South Korea, and between Palestine and Israel. The situations shows one flaw that is inherent in a nation-state; conflict is inevitable when one nation-state denies the sovereignty of another nation-state and views them as a illegitimate, and there is no way of preventing these conflicts since recognition of sovereignty and territoriality, as mentioned before, is subjective. Thus, it would be difficult to maintain peace in a world organized into nation-states, unless all nation-states recognized each other, which would be difficult to achieve, when historical feuds fuel these conflicts.

Another weakness of a sovereign territorial nation-state is one of its fundamental aspects; territoriality. This concept can be basically defined as control over a certain area and exercising sovereignty within the limits of the nation-states borders. This fuels ethnic and/or cultural conflicts by either placing two ethnic groups in one territory under one rule or by separating a ethnic group, as was the case in Nigeria for the latter and Rwanda as an example of the first situation.

There are some strengths to adopting a nation-state; power is centralized, the institutions are efficient, when everything is constant except for the type of politico-military rule, and people are united to a sense of national identity. However, despite being the norm of politico-military rule in today's world, nation-statehood carries with it inherent problems. As long as there are historical tensions that lead to non-recognition of nation-statehood, then world organized into nation-state is not only almost impossible, but also full of tensions and most likely, a world full of war over sovereignty and territories.