Today, in what we like to think of as a postimperial age, no political tenet commands more audible assent than that of national sovereignty. “We” aren’t to be ruled by others, captive to a foreign occupation; “we” must be allowed to rule ourselves. This simple ideal is baked into the concept of the nation itself. It helped to propel the collapse of empires and the era of decolonization. Maps were redrawn to advance the cause; even in our own time, borders have given way to it. It remains a vaunted principle of our political order. And yet this ideal has an incoherence at its heart. That is the
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