Iran, Greenland, Brexit Britain… does sovereignty still matter?

This debate is part of Battle of Ideas North 2026.

Launched at the end of February, Operation Epic Fury has unleashed a sweeping military assault across Iran – killing the country’s Supreme Leader, plunging the region into open war, and leaving European leaders trapped between international law and their most important ally.

This military campaign comes hot on the heels of the shock of US President Donald Trump demanding US ownership of Greenland, in flagrant breach of Denmark’s sovereignty. These are just two high-profiles examples of a new reality: debates on national interests and self-determination are now centre stage.

For Trump, the overriding motive appears to be America First. The US’s capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro – whether as an alleged drug-trafficker or as a friend to China, Russia and Cuba – essentially aimed to establish a ‘Don-roe doctrine’ of US supremacy in the Western hemisphere. And with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a sovereign nation state, alongside China’s sabre-rattling over Taiwan, national borders are weakening in their ability to protect states’ internal affairs from outside interference by other countries.

Rhetorically, European critics claim these trends fly in the face of international law. But international law has been a fair-weather friend to peoples around the world. The war in Iraq and NATO’s interventions in the Balkans were both justified in legal terms, regardless of national sovereignty.

And this year, as we approach the tenth anniversary of the EU referendum, Keir Starmer has declared his desire to ‘reset’ relations with the EU. But does that mean accepting EU laws with UK citizens having no say? National sovereignty was at the heart of the Brexit vote, in opposition to the EU’s undermining of nation states to further the interests of a transnational political and economic bloc. Starmer is also at the centre of the deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – with little apparent concern for the views of the Chagossians themselves.

What is sovereignty and is it a fundamental right? What happens if a principle of non-interference seems to conflict with human rights or democracy, such as in Iran or Venezuela? Can we have national sovereignty without popular sovereignty? In a world where power is seemingly coalescing into regional ‘spheres of influence’, is national sovereignty becoming meaningless today?