Fighting Terrorism and Fighting Humanitarian Emergencies: Two Approaches to ‘Elastic’ Sovereignty and International Order

This article aims to articulate how humanitarian action and counter-terrorism could be influencing the current shape of international relations through an examination of recent discourses on terrorism and internal displacement. These discourses have produced two corresponding approaches to state sovereignty that share the need to view sovereignty as measured in terms of the degree to which a state discharges its ‘sovereign responsibilities’ and yet that propose conflicting prescriptions for action against states deemed to fail in exercising such requirements. As internal sovereignty increasingly becomes challengeable by external sovereignty, this article concludes by suggesting how the two approaches can be synthesised in a fruitful manner.