The Sovereignty Revolution

The Sovereignty Revolution is the late Senator Alan Cranston’s analysis of the problems created by our current conception of sovereignty, with every nation supreme inside its own borders and acknowledging no master outside them. As such, it is the last testament of a senior statesman with a deep moral commitment to nuclear disarmament. This book is an impassioned argument that these conceptions of sovereignty, and in turn the role of international institutions, must change before humanity can effectively resolve the world’s increasingly global challenges, from international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to climate change and poverty. Cranston argues that for humanity to survive the twenty-first century, we must adopt a more encompassing understanding of sovereignty, one that acknowledges the primacy of the individual, while emphasizing the importance of strengthening international law and increasing the authority of multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations. The book includes a foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev, an Introduction by Jonathan Schell, and response essays by Jane Goodall and Jonathan Granoff.