National sovereignty is an inseparable legal and political attribute of each state. National independence associated with national sovereignty is now a global trend, especially in the current context of globalization, every nation, whether big or small, aspires to affirm their national values, such as the right to decide their social system, economy, development orientation, and the equality between countries in international life. However, this task has been facing numerous threats from different theories and actions from the world’s powers, despite the national sovereignty and national independence. Therefore, protecting national sovereignty in the context of globalization has become a top priority for countries in the world, especially middle powers and underdeveloped countries, including Vietnam.
Defending national sovereignty is the combination of organized actions of the entire political system and citizens, led by specialized forces, under the leadership of the ruling party, the centralized and unified administration and direction from the State,in order to implement and secure national sovereignty, against all acts of violation of national sovereignty recognized by international law, as specified in national law.
Globalization is going on rapidly and intensively on a worldwide scale, countries are promoting integration, ina wide range of fields and complex scales. This process offers numerous opportunities but also creates unpredictable challenges in ensuring national sovereignty, independence and security. Therefore, it is vital to identify the following two basic issues: First, national sovereignty is ultimate, can not be shared or demonstrated while resolving domestic or foreign affairs; there has never been and will not be a global subject above nations, which completely abolishes the national sovereignty and peoples; Second, protecting sovereignty does not mean isolation from the world, yet countries need to effectively defend their sovereignty while opening their gates to integrate with the world; international integration is for better protection of sovereignty. In this relationship, there is hardly any room for sacrifice or mutual limitation.
The main contents of protecting national sovereignty in the globalization context need comprehensive consideration in all fields of social life: Regarding politics and diplomacy, through group decisions, or at least a joint agreement by a group of influential states, international community may initiated advocate to pressurize or directly interfere in a certain country’s domestic affairs which other countries consider incorrect yet unable to defend. Reasons for these interventions are diverse, even non-objective yet set up for the purpose of interfering and violating national sovereignty and other countries’ sovereignty protection. For instance, in2011 Resolution 1973 of United Nations Security Council on “establishing no-flight zones” imposed on Libya was passed after 13 members of the United Nations Security Council approved, Russia and China abstained. This resolution has caused Libya’s sovereignty to be almost eliminated during the time of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) airstrikes, on the grounds of implementing the 1973 Resolution.
Regarding nationalism, in some regions of the world, despite the fact that fights for national independence or request to separat one part of its territory into an independent state still persist, this is not the core issue in nationalism. The more central and common one is national sovereignty and real equality between peoples in globalization context. The reason is although most countries and peoples are now independent by name, for many, that independence is incomplete, unstable and superficial, both in economics and national sovereignty and security. Dozens of wars in the late twentieth century under the name of defending human rights, yet in fact to punish nations which refused to follow the “leadership stick” were evident examples.
In economics, economic rights, especially the right to make policies and laws, to control and regulate resources, manage production, business, import and export activities of developing countries are under strong influence and bound of international institutions, by powerful countries, transnational organizations. Various laws of the market, currencies, and global information entitle seemingly imperative power to governments, at least indispensable factors that cannot be ignored unless leaving the protection of sovereignty and national interests in passive state.
Economy and politics have a dialectic, dominant and interactive relationship in which economics decides politics and politics creates influence on economy. Economic dependence will result in political dependence. Accordingly, it can be interpreted that fighting for rights and economic independence is and will be the crucial and important means of struggle. This is a challengingand complicated struggle because it is unlikely to close the economy and stand out of globalization; on the contrary, participating in globalization is an essential path to develop and protect the national interests. The most decisive issue is each country needs to actively outline their integration path, in which they must be consistent in the independence of national development path and strategy, the autonomy and self-control of development timeline, development sectors and relation partners.
Regarding culture and society, the protection of national sovereignty should go side by side with protecting national cultural identity, to avoid cultural invasion, as a remote and early defense measure against foreign intervention. Globalization entails extensive exchange between cultures and civilizations. If this process takes place naturally and voluntarily, national sovereignty is not violated. However, acquiring unsuitable and incompatible foreign cultural trends and unselectively adapting cultures and lifestyles may erode local cultural values, which means the loss of vital foundations of national sovereignty.
Therefore, it is compulsory to actively identify and be vigilant to imperial cultural schemes and policies, not to underestimate cultural security, even though cultural-ideology protection is not a simple task in the trend of globalization and international integration – an evitable path for all countries.
Protecting sovereignty in any field: politics, culture, economics, national defense, security and foreign affairs should identify its specific subjects aswell as appropriate strategies and plans. Acts of violating national sovereignty are not only carried out by the state but also by non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and foreign individuals. The subject can infringe sovereignty via military – security activities, and non-military activities, both by “hard power and soft power”. Therefore, the defense of sovereignty should not only be carried out by armed measures but also by non-military ones; should be a solid and flexible combination between management and protection, cooperation and fights in all fields.
It can be affirmed that globalization has been and will be an objective trend that offers both opportunities and challenges to mankind, all countries should sooner or later participate in this common trend of our contemporary world. And in this trend, the most pressing and challenging task of developing countries is to protect national independence, sovereignty and national interests from the negative effects that globalization may bring about. More than ever, countries need to actively identify their relevant international issues, in order to outline timely and appropriate policies on the basis of identifying the duality and domination of capital powers during the process of globalization. In addition to boosting cooperation and economic development with foreign ones, countries must constantly be vigilant to work on comprehensive and resilient struggle to defend themselves against the ever-diminishing pressure of imperialism.
