ABSTRACT
The core organizing principles – sovereignty, formal equality, independence, and non-intervention in each other’s internal affairs – which still govern the international society of states, were laid out in the several treaties bundled together as the ‘Peace of Westphalia’ in 1648.2 Even so, some states have always been more equal than others. Among the nearly 200 states extant in the early twenty-first century, the majority are at most regional powers and most are quite minor countries. Historically, small states seldom exercised major influence on world affairs, and often were not even free to choose their own historical path. On occasions when small states were influential in international relations, they were so usually in a negative sense: they rose in importance if they were objects of aggression or competition among the Great Powers, or pawns in regional constructions of the balance of power assembled by the Great Powers.3 Many small states are historically interesting and important in their own right, and today some play important roles in issues of regional consequence. Yet, despite gales of political correctness which insist that the stories of all nations are of equal moral weight, the truth remains that they are not: the axis around which world history and international relations turns is the concentrated resources and determinative behavior of the Great Powers, whether acting severally or together. For the same reason, the main ethical considerations pertaining to issues of international security also have been, and largely though not exclusively remain, the province of the greatest and most powerful states.
