HEGEL ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS – IS THE WEST DOOMED TO WALK ALONE?

This piece is based off an article written by Tomáš Korda, where he directs his theories on the question: “Is the West doomed to walk alone?” on the realist and progressive philosophical views of Hegel.

As a ethics philosopher myself and a student counsellor and administrator for our IR courses here in Geneva, I feel compelled to promote the concepts of philosophy throughout any IR query and for you to understand as IR students that philosophy is not just on the fringe of what you will be learning, it is the all encompassing foundation of what you will explore from study to career development so, I do hope you consider this as much as possible on your journey!

Here is an intro piece into WHY philosophy is such a relevant add on to any IR discussion or exploration:

Philosophy and International Relations: Why Do States Need an “Other”?

International Relations is often introduced through the language of states, governments, alliances, conflict, diplomacy, security and power. But beneath all of these concepts are much older philosophical questions.

What is a state? What makes a nation legitimate? Why do states cooperate? Why do they fight? What does peace actually mean? And, perhaps most importantly, do we understand who we are partly through understanding who we are not?

These questions take us beyond the immediate events of world politics and into philosophy.

An excellent starting point is the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), whose ideas continue to provoke debate about how states relate to one another. A recent article by Tomáš Korda for the Institute for Human Sciences, Hegel on International Relations: Is the West Doomed to Walk Alone?, explores precisely this problem.

Why should an International Relations student study philosophy?

Philosophy gives us something that political events alone cannot: a framework for questioning the assumptions behind international politics.

Imagine that two countries are in conflict…..

A conventional IR analysis might ask:

Who has greater military power?
What are their economic interests?
What alliances do they have?
What resources are at stake?
What are their strategic objectives?

These are important questions.

But philosophy asks something different:

Why do these states understand their interests in the way that they do in the first place?

That is a much deeper question.

Our political decisions are shaped by ideas about justice, freedom, sovereignty, identity, morality, human nature and even our understanding of history. If students study only what states do, they can miss the ideas that explain why states believe they should do it.

This is where Hegel becomes particularly interesting.

Hegel: Realism or Idealism?

One of the fascinating things about Hegel is that he does not fit comfortably into one category.

Some scholars interpret him as a realist. In this reading, states are fundamentally independent political entities pursuing their own interests, and international politics contains no overarching authority capable of completely preventing conflict.

This resembles the thinking associated with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Niccolò Machiavelli.

But other scholars see Hegel as offering a more progressive or Kantian interpretation of international relations. States are not simply isolated objects competing for power. They can recognise one another, develop relationships and form communities.

This creates a fascinating tension.

Is international politics fundamentally about competition, or is it capable of developing towards cooperation?

Hegel’s importance lies partly in the fact that he does not make the student choose too quickly.

The article argues that Hegel’s philosophy can actually bring these apparently contradictory positions together. For Hegel, contradiction is not necessarily evidence that one side is wrong. Contradiction can reveal something deeper about reality itself.

And this is an enormously valuable lesson for an IR student.

International politics is full of contradictions.

A country can want peace while preparing for war.

A state can defend human rights while protecting its own strategic interests.

Countries can cooperate economically while competing politically.

An alliance can create security for its members while making outsiders feel less secure.

A state can believe it is acting defensively while another state interprets exactly the same action as aggressive.

The contradiction is not necessarily a mistake in the system. It may be part of the system.

The importance of recognition

One of Hegel’s most interesting contributions to thinking about international relations concerns recognition.

States do not exist entirely in isolation. They seek recognition from other states.

To be recognised as a sovereign state is not simply to possess territory and a government. It involves being treated as a legitimate political actor by others.

This introduces a psychological and philosophical dimension to international relations.

A state may ask:

Who are we?

But another question immediately follows:

Who recognises us as who we claim to be?

This is remarkably relevant to contemporary diplomacy.

Recognition can involve sovereignty, borders, legitimacy, political status, national identity and international institutions.

It also means that identity in international politics is relational.

We do not necessarily define ourselves entirely by looking inward.

Sometimes we define ourselves through comparison.

We are democratic because they are authoritarian.

We are peaceful because they are aggressive.

We defend freedom because they threaten it.

We belong to this alliance because we perceive a threat from outside it.

This brings us to perhaps the most provocative argument in Korda’s article.

Can peace itself create an enemy?

Hegel proposes something deeply uncomfortable.

Groups of states can form relationships resembling a “family”. They can develop shared values, institutions and interests. Cooperation can therefore become possible.

But the creation of a group can simultaneously create an outside.

If a group defines itself as us, there is inevitably the possibility of a them.

This means that an alliance can create security internally while simultaneously creating an external distinction.

The article applies this idea to the West and NATO, arguing that the question of who constitutes a common friend or enemy has become increasingly complicated as members of the alliance develop different perceptions of global threats.

Whether students agree with this contemporary application is almost less important than the philosophical question behind it:

Can human communities define themselves without creating someone outside the community?

And if the answer is no, what does that mean for the possibility of permanent global peace?

The paradox of global peace

Here we encounter one of the most interesting philosophical problems in International Relations.

Imagine a world in which countries cooperate peacefully.

It sounds like the ultimate objective.

But if countries form increasingly close communities, those communities may develop their own identities and boundaries.

The more strongly one group defines itself, the more clearly it can distinguish itself from another.

Hegel therefore creates a paradox:

Cooperation can produce peace, but cooperation can also produce exclusion.

This is why philosophy is so valuable to IR.

A political scientist might ask:

How can we create stronger international institutions?

A philosopher might ask:

What happens when those institutions create their own boundaries of belonging?

Both questions matter.

The “Other” in International Relations

This idea of the Other is one that students can carry far beyond Hegel.

Countries frequently construct their identity in relation to something external.

The “Other” might be:

another country;
another ideology;
another religion;
another political system;
another civilisation;
another economic model;
another cultural identity;
or even an imagined future threat.

This does not mean that every enemy is imaginary.

Real threats exist.

But philosophy encourages us to ask whether the way we perceive threats is also shaped by the stories we tell about ourselves and others.

This is particularly important for diplomacy.

A diplomat who sees the opposing country simply as “the enemy” has already narrowed the possibilities for negotiation.

A diplomat who asks:

Why does the other side see the world this way?

has opened a different door.

Understanding does not mean agreeing.

Empathy does not mean surrender.

And recognising another state’s perspective does not mean abandoning your own values.

Instead, it creates the possibility of seeing the structure of the disagreement.

That is one of the foundations of sophisticated diplomacy.

Philosophy teaches students not to accept the obvious

Perhaps the greatest lesson from Hegel is methodological.

International Relations students are constantly presented with apparently obvious statements:

“This country is the aggressor.”

“That country is defending itself.”

“These states are allies.”

“Those states are enemies.”

“This action is in the national interest.”

“Peace is the opposite of war.”

Philosophy asks students to stop and interrogate those statements.

What do we mean by “aggressor”?

Who determines what counts as “defence”?

Why does a country consider something to be in its “national interest”?

Can two countries simultaneously believe they are acting defensively?

Can peace exist without justice?

Can security for one state produce insecurity for another?

Can an alliance survive if its members no longer agree about the nature of the threat?

These are not abstract classroom exercises.

They are questions that diplomats, governments and international organisations encounter every day.

Why this matters for the future diplomat

An International Relations student should therefore not think of philosophy as something separate from their subject.

Philosophy is underneath the subject.

It helps students examine the assumptions behind power.

It asks them to think about morality before making judgements.

It teaches them to recognise contradictions rather than immediately trying to eliminate them.

It encourages them to question their own worldview.

And perhaps most importantly, it teaches them that understanding another actor does not require becoming that actor.

A successful diplomat needs to be able to hold two ideas simultaneously:

I may strongly disagree with you.

and

I need to understand why you believe what you believe.

That intellectual distance is extraordinarily powerful.

The diplomat who cannot understand the worldview of the other side can negotiate only from their own perspective.

The diplomat who can understand both perspectives can begin to search for the space between them.

And this is where philosophy becomes practical.

It teaches us how to think before we decide what to do.

Questions for International Relations Students

Understanding

Why does the article argue that Hegel can be interpreted both as a realist and as a progressive/Kantian thinker?
What does Hegel mean by the importance of recognition between states?
What is meant by the idea of an international “family” of states?

Analysis

Can a group of states create peace among themselves while simultaneously creating an “enemy” outside the group? Give a contemporary example.
Do states define their identity partly through comparison with other states? How?
Is contradiction necessarily a weakness in international politics, or can it reveal something fundamental about how international relations works?

Philosophical debate

Can there ever be genuine global peace if states continue to define themselves through national identities and borders?
Does security for one state inevitably create insecurity for another?
Can diplomacy succeed if we refuse to understand the worldview of our opponent?
Is it possible to have a truly universal international order, or will every international “community” inevitably exclude someone?

The bigger question

If we understand ourselves partly through the people or states we define as “other”, what would happen to international politics if there were no “other” left?

WHEN MONEY BECOMES CODE – WHY TOKENISATION MATTERS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Fintech, digital sustainability and the changing architecture of global power

For decades, international relations has been concerned with the movement of people, goods, resources and ideas across borders. Increasingly, however, we must add something else to that list:

Money moving through digital systems at the speed of technology.

The transformation of global finance is no longer simply an economic or technological question. It is becoming a question of international power.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that tokenisation – the process of representing financial assets and liabilities as digital tokens on programmable ledgers could fundamentally change the architecture of the global financial system. Unlike earlier forms of digitisation, tokenisation does not simply make existing processes faster. It can change how ownership, settlement, liquidity and trust are organised.

For International Relations students, this creates an important question:

What happens to international power when financial infrastructure itself becomes programmable?

From banks and borders to platforms and code

Traditional international finance is built around institutions.

Central banks issue money. Commercial banks hold deposits. Governments regulate financial markets. International organisations establish standards. Banks and financial institutions act as intermediaries between individuals, companies and states.

There are deliberate pauses and layers within this system. Transactions are processed, cleared, reconciled and eventually settled.

Tokenisation potentially changes this model

A tokenised asset can carry information about ownership and transfer directly within a digital infrastructure. Smart contracts can automate transactions, payments, collateral requirements and other financial processes. In some circumstances, activities that previously took days could occur almost instantaneously.

That sounds like an efficiency revolution.

But International Relations teaches us to ask a second question:

Who controls the infrastructure?

If financial transactions increasingly depend upon a small number of digital platforms, blockchain infrastructures or technology companies, power may begin to shift away from traditional financial institutions and towards those controlling the technological architecture.

The geography of finance could therefore become less about where a bank is located and more about who controls the digital rails through which money moves.

Digital sustainability: can faster finance also be better finance?

This is where fintech intersects with digital sustainability.

Digital sustainability asks us to consider not simply whether a technology works, but whether it creates systems that are economically, socially, environmentally and institutionally sustainable over the long term.

Tokenisation could potentially contribute to a more efficient financial system.

Transactions may become faster. Cross-border payments could become cheaper. Financial assets could become more accessible. Administrative duplication could be reduced. Compliance could increasingly be embedded within digital systems.

For emerging and developing economies, the IMF identifies potential benefits including faster cross-border payments and improved access to financial markets.

But sustainability requires us to look beyond efficiency

A system that moves money faster is not automatically a sustainable system.

What happens if faster transactions also mean that financial crises spread faster?

What happens if automated systems make decisions before human regulators have time to intervene?

What happens if the infrastructure becomes concentrated in a handful of powerful platforms?

And what happens to countries whose currencies and financial systems are weaker than the digital currencies circulating across their borders?

These are not merely questions for computer scientists or economists.

They are questions for diplomats, policymakers and International Relations scholars.

The new question of sovereignty

One of the most important concepts in International Relations is sovereignty: the ability of a state to exercise authority over its territory, institutions, population and economic system.

Digital finance complicates this.

Imagine a world in which an individual can transfer a digital asset across borders almost instantaneously, without using the traditional banking infrastructure of either country.

Now imagine that the asset is denominated in a currency that is not the currency of the country in which that person lives.

The transaction may be perfectly legal.

But the political implications are enormous.

The IMF highlights the possibility that rapid cross-border movement of tokenised money and assets could increase volatile capital flows, currency substitution and pressure on monetary sovereignty—particularly in emerging and developing economies.

This creates a new diplomatic problem.

How does a state regulate something that can cross its borders faster than its laws can respond?

Stablecoins and the politics of money

Stablecoins provide an especially interesting example.

They are designed to maintain a stable value relative to another asset, often a national currency such as the US dollar. Their programmability and global reach could make international payments easier.

But they also raise questions about who ultimately stands behind the money.

If people in countries around the world begin using privately issued digital currencies rather than their domestic currencies, what happens to the authority of national central banks?

Could a privately issued digital currency become sufficiently important to influence monetary policy?

Could technology companies become powerful financial actors without being states?

And if financial infrastructure becomes global while regulation remains national, who is responsible when something goes wrong?

These questions demonstrate why fintech has become an international-relations issue.

From diplomacy between states to diplomacy between systems

International diplomacy has traditionally involved governments negotiating with governments.

The digital financial environment is more complicated.

States increasingly have to negotiate and cooperate with:

technology companies
- banks
- cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms
- central banks
- international financial institutions
- cybersecurity organisations
- payment networks
- standards-setting bodies
- investors and multinational corporations

The result is a much more complex international system.

A government may have political authority over its territory, but a technology company may control infrastructure used by millions of people across dozens of countries.

This creates a new form of diplomacy:

The diplomacy of digital infrastructure

International cooperation therefore becomes essential.

The IMF argues that tokenisation requires policy decisions concerning interoperability, legal frameworks, code governance, liquidity backstops and the relationship between public and private money.

In other words, the future of finance cannot be designed entirely within national borders.

When code becomes regulation

There is another profound change.

Traditional regulation is written in laws, policies and institutional procedures.

Tokenised finance increasingly allows rules to be written into code.

A smart contract can automatically execute a financial condition. Collateral can be triggered automatically. Payments can be released automatically. Transactions can occur without a person manually authorising every stage.

This raises a fascinating question for future diplomats:

Can code become a form of governance?

If the answer is yes, then International Relations must begin to think about who writes the code, who audits it, who controls it and what happens when the code produces an unintended consequence.

The IMF has suggested that oversight may eventually need to extend beyond financial institutions to the critical smart contracts and infrastructure on which the system depends.

The political question is therefore no longer simply:

Who governs the banks?

It becomes:

Who governs the systems that govern the banks?

Efficiency versus resilience

There is a philosophical tension at the heart of digital finance.

We generally assume that faster is better but financial systems sometimes need friction.

Traditional settlement periods, reconciliation processes and institutional checks can create time for mistakes to be identified and for regulators to intervene.

Tokenisation could remove many of those delays.

But removing friction can also remove buffers.

The IMF warns that instantaneous settlement could cause liquidity demands and financial stress to materialise much more rapidly. Risks that were previously distributed across financial institutions could become concentrated in the platforms and code supporting tokenised transactions.

This creates an important lesson for digital sustainability:

A sustainable system is not necessarily the fastest system.

It is a system capable of surviving pressure.

That means resilience may ultimately matter just as much as efficiency.

The geopolitical future of fintech

The rise of tokenisation also has geopolitical implications.

Countries are competing not only for economic influence but increasingly for influence over digital standards, payment infrastructures, data systems and financial technologies.

The architecture of tomorrow’s financial system could influence:

Who controls capital.

Who controls data.

Who controls digital currencies.

Who sets technological standards.

Who has access to global markets.

Who can impose sanctions.

Who can monitor transactions.

And who can respond when financial crises occur.

This means fintech should no longer be treated as a specialist subject sitting outside International Relations.

It belongs directly within it!

A new responsibility for International Relations students

The most important lesson is perhaps that technology does not remove politics.

It changes where politics happens.

A blockchain may appear decentralised, but somebody designs its architecture. A stablecoin may operate globally, but somebody controls its reserves. A smart contract may execute automatically, but somebody writes its rules. A payment system may operate across borders, but governments still determine its legal environment and a financial crisis may move at machine speed, but societies still have to decide who carries the consequences.

For the next generation of International Relations students, understanding these systems will therefore be increasingly important.

The diplomat of the future may need to understand not only treaties, borders and international law, but also blockchains, digital currencies, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, financial infrastructure and data governance.

The central question is no longer whether technology will transform international relations.

It already is!

The question is:

Can we design a digital financial system that is not only efficient, but sustainable, inclusive, resilient and accountable?

And perhaps the deepest question of all is this:

When financial power moves from institutions into code, who should have the power to write the code?

Think Like an International Relations Student!

Consider the following:

Sovereignty: If digital currencies can cross borders instantaneously, does this weaken the economic sovereignty of states?
Power: Could technology companies eventually possess as much influence over global finance as some governments?
Diplomacy: Should digital financial infrastructure become a central subject of international treaties and diplomatic negotiations?
Digital sustainability: Is a financial system truly sustainable if it is efficient but vulnerable to cyberattacks, technological concentration or rapid contagion?
Ethics: Who should be responsible when an automated financial system makes a decision that harms individuals or entire economies?
Development: Could tokenisation help developing economies overcome existing financial barriers—or could it expose them to new forms of dependency?
The future of IR: Should fintech and digital finance now be considered core subjects within International Relations education?

Final challenge

Imagine you are advising the United Nations, the IMF or a national government in 2035.

What three principles would you establish to ensure that the digital financial system serves people and states rather than allowing technological infrastructure to become a new concentration of global power?

You don’t have to feed back your answer however, if you wish to comment below, your share will be fed on our social channels anonymously for feedback!

WHAT THE CEUTA BOARDER CRISIS TEACHES US ABOUT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

When Migration Becomes Geopolitics: What the Ceuta Border Crisis Teaches Us About International Relations

A border is never merely a line on a map. It is a site where history, power, identity and human lives collide. The recent crisis in Ceuta has been widely framed as a migration emergency: thousands of people attempted to cross from Morocco into Spanish territory, producing a humanitarian ordeal and a sharp political response in Spain and across Europe. Yet to grasp what occurred requires a deeper inquiry. What if migration is not simply the movement of people, but also a reflection—and sometimes an instrument—of relationships between states?

Ceuta itself makes the point unavoidable. It is Spanish territory on the North African coast, one of the European Union’s most anomalous external borders, sitting directly on the African continent alongside Melilla. Morocco does not recognise Spanish sovereignty and continues to regard the territory as its own. The border is therefore not a straightforward passage from Africa to Europe. It is a passage from Morocco into disputed territory claimed by Spain and belonging, in legal and institutional terms, to the European Union. When people cross it, they step into a space where two competing understandings of territory and sovereignty meet. Migration is the visible story; geopolitics lies beneath it.

An International Relations student learns to look past the immediate images. The instinctive questions—Why are they migrating? Where have they come from? How should Spain respond? Should they be allowed to stay?—remain important. Yet they must be joined by others: What is happening between the states involved? What historical tensions shape their relationship? Who controls the border in practice? Who benefits from that control? Can migration itself become a source of diplomatic leverage? And, most fundamentally, what happens when the interests of states collide with the needs of human beings? It is at this intersection that migration becomes a subject of International Relations.

Borders are political instruments rather than fixed natural features. States decide who may cross them, under what conditions, and invest heavily in their defence because territorial control remains a defining attribute of sovereignty. The frontier around Ceuta is heavily fortified with barriers, surveillance and security forces. Yet a border is effective only when both sides cooperate in managing it. Spain therefore depends on Morocco, which controls the territory immediately outside Ceuta and can either facilitate or impede movement toward the frontier. Legal sovereignty and practical influence diverge. Spain holds formal title; Morocco holds significant capacity to shape events at the edge of that title. The interdependence is real, and it is asymmetrical.

This interdependence raises an uncomfortable possibility: that migration can be used as a form of political leverage. By tightening or relaxing controls, a state can alter the volume of people reaching a neighbour’s border and thereby generate diplomatic, economic or domestic pressure. The phenomenon has been described as the weaponisation of migration and has appeared in disputes involving Turkey, Belarus and Libya, among others. The analytical task is not to assume that every crisis is deliberately engineered. It is to recognise that migration flows can acquire strategic value within international politics, and to weigh competing explanations with care rather than accepting the most dramatic narrative at face value.

History further complicates any purely contemporary reading. Spain’s presence in North Africa is the product of centuries of imperial and colonial engagement. Morocco’s claim to Ceuta is therefore bound up with questions of territorial legitimacy, national identity and the unfinished business of European colonialism. A map records a border; history asks who drew it, politics asks who recognises it, international law asks what makes sovereignty legitimate, security studies asks how it is protected, and diplomacy asks how disagreement can be managed without conflict. One small territory thus becomes a classroom for the entire discipline.

The crisis also sits within a wider regional web. Relations between Spain and Morocco have long been affected by the status of Western Sahara, claimed by Morocco and contested by a Sahrawi independence movement. Policy choices in Madrid regarding that dispute have consequences in Rabat; those consequences can affect migration cooperation; migration cooperation affects border security; border security affects European politics; and European politics in turn shapes relations with other Mediterranean states. Foreign policy is rarely compartmentalised. There is almost never only one issue.

For the European Union the stakes are equally structural. Although Spain is the state with direct responsibility for Ceuta, movement across its external borders quickly becomes a European question because of shared rules on asylum, migration and border management. The result is a persistent tension: who is ultimately responsible for Europe’s frontiers—the individual member state or the Union? A crisis at a small enclave can therefore escalate into a continent-wide political problem, illustrating both the reach and the limits of European integration.

Yet an exclusively geopolitical lens carries its own risk. People can vanish from the analysis, reduced to “flows,” “pressure,” “leverage” and “strategy.” Behind every statistic stands an individual whose reasons for moving are complex: economic opportunity, conflict, political instability, family ties, persecution, climate pressures, or the simple hope of a different future. Some may have been misled by smugglers or misinformation; others may have calculated enormous risks with few realistic alternatives. For many, the border is experienced not as a juridical line between sovereigns but as a physical barrier between the life they have and the life they seek. This produces one of the central ethical questions in the field: where does a state’s right to control its territory meet its responsibilities toward human beings? There is no simple answer, and the absence of simplicity is itself instructive.

Governments legitimately seek to preserve territorial integrity, public safety, orderly immigration systems and national sovereignty. International human-rights law and refugee frameworks simultaneously impose obligations toward those seeking protection. The resulting tensions are genuine. A government may insist on border control; a humanitarian organisation may insist on rights irrespective of the line crossed; an EU institution may seek burden-sharing among member states; Morocco may ask why it should absorb the costs of Europe’s migration dilemmas; and migrants themselves may ask what choices remain open to them. An International Relations education requires the capacity to understand each perspective—not because all are equally valid, but because effective diplomacy begins with grasping the interests and perceptions of the actors involved.

Cases such as Ceuta therefore reveal what the discipline actually studies. It is not only presidents, ambassadors, wars and treaties. It is the question of why people, governments and societies behave as they do when their interests collide. Geography, history, politics, economics, security, international law, human rights, diplomacy, European institutional dynamics and ethics all converge on a single border. The methodological lesson is correspondingly clear. When a headline announces a “migration crisis,” the further questions must follow: Why here? Why now? Why these particular states? What historical relationship exists between them? Who controls the border in practice? Who benefits from the present arrangement? Who holds leverage? What role do international law and the European Union play? What becomes of the individuals caught between competing claims?

Ceuta is a small territory, yet it sits at the intersection of Africa and Europe, national sovereignty and European integration, migration and security, colonial history and contemporary diplomacy. It demonstrates that human movement is often shaped by forces far larger than any individual migrant. Borders are political. Migration can be political. Resources, territory and identity are political. And the relationships between states can profoundly constrain or expand the choices available to ordinary people.

For the student of International Relations the enduring instruction is therefore this: do not study only what happens. Study why it happens, who possesses the power to influence it, and what becomes of those caught between competing interests. The field is ultimately concerned not merely with understanding countries, but with understanding the relationships among them—and how those relationships shape the world we inhabit.

If one were advising Spain, Morocco or the European Union, the practical question would remain open: should priority be given to border security, humanitarian protection, diplomatic negotiation, economic cooperation, or some combination of all four? And the harder question follows: can a migration policy ever be genuinely humanitarian while the geopolitical relationships that surround it remain unresolved?

STUDENTS,

After reading this, here are a few questions for you to ponder in your own time from an IR PERSPECTIVE. You don’t need to submit your responses unless you would like to do so via the comment section below where we will share responses over on social anonymously!

THINK TANK…….

Student Reflection & Assessment Questions

Why does the article argue that the Ceuta crisis should be understood as a geopolitical issue rather than simply a migration crisis?
Identify at least two geopolitical factors involved and explain how they influence the situation.
How does the Ceuta border demonstrate the relationship between sovereignty and power in International Relations?
Consider the roles of Spain, Morocco and the European Union in your answer.
The article discusses the idea that migration can become a form of political leverage. What does this mean, and why might a state use migration as a tool in diplomatic relations?
Give an example from the Ceuta case.
Imagine you are an International Relations adviser to the Spanish government. How would you recommend Spain balance border security, human rights and its diplomatic relationship with Morocco?
Explain your reasoning and acknowledge at least one competing viewpoint.