"Should the world be organized into sovereign territorial nation-states?"

The world should be divided up into sovereign territorial nation-states. This is so because it seems the most suited for keeping long time peace. “The Nation-State and Global Order” describes a nation state as “distinct geographically defined territory over which it exercises jurisdiction: second, has sovereignty over its territory, which means that its jurisdiction is theoretically exclusive of outside interference by other nation-states or entities; third it has a government made up of public offices and roles that control and administer the territory and population subject to the state’s jurisdiction.” This is how people want to be governed, they don’t want opposing forces coming in and telling them what to do and what to think.

There are a few exceptions of city-states such as Singapore and the Vatican. City-states might work but we wouldn’t be as technologically advanced as we are today. It would be harder to establish relations with other city-states because there would be so many, making it difficult for scientists to communicate and share ideas to create anything such as medicine or faster ways of travel, in a nation-state system they would be from other parts of the world but this wouldn’t matter. There are also a few exceptions for tribes like the Kurds who live in the mountains in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. If we had tribes I think they would eventually ally with each other creating larger tribes and in a sense city-states and/or nation states, but life with in a tribe would be much harder, we wouldn’t have any of the amenities we have today. Empires in these days would mean total war with the advanced military technology we possess. The last true empire was the Japanese Empire and they didn’t last as long as a traditional empire.

As history has shown us empires are always trying to expand by taking over any land they haven’t been to yet. They don’t recognize any country, city-state or tribe that is not their own and will go to war with one if it does not succumb to it. If the world was split up into empires today, the world would most likely end because of the weapon technology that today’s countries possess. It would only work if we decide to create a boundary, but that’s not the mentality of an empire. We would be at war until there was one empire standing; empires also usually impose their ideals on the people they conquer which no one likes. City-states would probably be run by warlords and have constant skirmishes, every now and then a few might come together forming a small kingdom, then fall apart much like early European ones in Christendom. Tribes would eventually ally with each other and form confederations like the “Iroquois Federation” for protection.

In conclusion being divided up into sovereign territorial nation-states is best for our world. People don’t want ideals forced on them from an empire or to live without the amenities we have today. It seems that even if we weren’t nation-states we would become them, empires would crumble into city-states and tribes who would form nation-states because it is the best and easiest way to govern.