A “Retour” of State Sovereignty?
by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval
pp. 46-63 Issue 17 (9,1) – January-June 2022 ISSN (online): 2539/2239 ISSN (print): 2389-8232 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14718/SoftPower.2022.9.1.3
Abstract
The russian aggression against Ukraine is a brutal reminder that state sovereignty has its own logic, irreducible to that of economic globalization. Despite appearances, the European Union itself is no exception. The new «taxonomy» relating to the classification of «green» energies enshrines the interests of power (gas for Germany, nuclear power for France). It is a very prosaic matter of orienting the flow of capital and, in this objective, of allowing each State to exercise its sovereignty. Since the 18th century, far from breaking with the logic of sovereignty, liberalism has combined the «spirit of power» and the «spirit of commerce. This is obviously even more true of neoliberalism. What has changed is the function of the state, which must create on its own scale the most favorable conditions for the transnational circulation of capital. This is the new «reason of state».