Given the strong economic gains possible through openness to migration, why do advanced industrial states advocate openness with respect to trade and capital flows but not to international labor mobility? In this article I explain this anomaly using a statist model of political behavior based on perception of threat and its effect on the equilibrium between security's three dimensions-military, material, and societal. Emphasis on one dimension of security over another depends on the type of threat perceived. While external threats prompt an equilibrium sharply skewed toward security's material and military poles, the changing ethnocultural characteristics of increasing international migration flows has generated increasing societal insecurities in receiving states since the mid-1960s. Examining migration trends and border policies in the United States and Europe since 1945, this analysis explores the relationship between external and internal security interests and identifies those elements of international migration that generate perceptions of societal threat. Because societal interests clash with the material objectives of the state, especially given the growing importance of services and skilled labor as well as the economic benefits of an elastic labor supply, policy makers in advanced industrial states increasingly attempt to finesse societal fears while pursuing an overall grand strategy seeking economic maximization through openness. 2 I. Trading States and MigrationRichard Rosecrance (1986) argues that the world has transformed into a system of trading states, where power is increasingly based on Ricardian notions of comparative advantage, factor mobility, and free trade. As gains from trade and interdependence increase, as they have under the past half-century of American hegemony, the use of a military-territorial strategy is a less appealing means of maximizing state power, especially since war has become increasingly costly, complicated, and destructive (Cf. Morgenthau, 1948;Kennedy, 1988;Mueller, 1989;Kupchan, 1994). Proponents of "Washington consensus" neoliberalism argue that liberal trade policies and laissez-faire treatment of international factor flows moves economies toward a Pareto-optimal frontier, one that will create a "rising tide to lift all boats" in both developed and developing nations, though perhaps not evenly (Krugman, 1995;Krugman and Venables, 1995;Krugman and Obstfeld, 1997). Considerable evidence supports the argument that trading state globalization has emerged as a global norm and as a widely accepted basis of state grand strategy since World War II. Since the 1940s, successive rounds of the GATT (now the WTO) have resulted in consistently lower tariff rates that have helped stimulate world trade. From 1980-1998, world trade has grown anywhere from 4.2% to 10.3%, and between 1990-1999 world trade has grown at over three times the rate of global output (World Bank, 1998; WTO, 2000).Moreover, financial transactions, once an adjunct of trade, now tower of trade flows by...

From the notorious “killing fields” of Cambodia to programs of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the grizzly nature of ethnic and identity-centered conflict incites horror, outrage, and a human desire for justice. While the drive to humanize warfare can be traced to the writing of Hugo Grotius, current efforts to establish an atrocities regime are unparalleled in modern history. Combining approaches in international relations theory and international law, I examine the role political factors (norms, power and interests, institutions) and legal factors (precedent and procedure) play in the development of an atrocities regime. International tribunals have convicted generally low-level war criminals in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, but they have had much more limited success in achieving their more expansive goals—deterring atrocities and fostering national reconciliation in regions fraught with ethnic violence. This analysis reveals additional institutional modifications needed to construct a more effective regime and highlights the importance of placing this new regime within a comprehensive international strategy of conflict management.

In an age marked by economic globalization, regional integration, and increasing transborder flows, some have questioned the continued viability of state sovereignty and territorial borders. This essay examines the conditions of sovereignty and borders in a world of trading states, exploring how conceptions of sovereignty are reflected in the grand strategy of advanced industrial democracies. By disaggregating sovereignty into its constitutive parts, the essay not only provides insights into how these facets affect modern statecraft but also reveals an underconceptualized dimension: societal sovereignty. Whereas sovereignty is willingly ceded by states to gain economically from increased trade and capital mobility, public concern over the social, political, and economic effects of high levels of international migration indicate a growing sensitivity to the maintenance of sovereignty over access to social and political community. In this process, borders serve an increasingly important symbolic function in maintaining stable conceptions of national identity that constitute the cornerstone of the nation‐state.

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