Anti-Climacus

LINK: In the weird article file, this one from TNR, on how unfair it is that the Catholic Church has recognition as a sovereign state. It's odd that they're using realism as a cudgel to try and advance liberalism: that is, the complaint mostly seems to boil down to: "it's really unfair that an unelected, non-democratic international organization (the Catholic Church) is generally recognized to be sovereign, because it allows them to unfairly influence the moral stances* of an unelected, non-democratic international organization (the UN)."

Nit-pickery to follow:

"But international law requires states to have four attributes: territory, a permanent population, a functioning government, and the ability to engage in international relations. The last requirement largely builds on the others: Whether a state can engage in international relations is usually decided by whether other states treat it like one."

Now, of course, it's true that the Vatican sees a pretty regular shift in who's there and who's not; then again, so does every other country. If you're going to complain that the Vatican isn't sovereign because they don't really have a permanent population, well, birth and death being what they are, that seems like the same process you have everywhere (except maybe the last place Gulliver visits in Gulliver's Travels).

Also, the article seems to be sort of willfully blind to the fact that international law (unlike, say, the international system) really is just socially constructed, based on norms, and therefore non-foundational. There's nothing law-like about it, if no one finds it necessary to follow.

*In fairness, a few of those moral stances seemed pretty bad. But it's absolutely unclear to me what differentiates the Catholic Church as an international institution from any other such institution (except that it probably has stronger ties to the people who follow it than the UN does).