This lesson can be easily learned from a glance at the European Union, where countries increasingly cede sovereign authority to the bureaucrats in Brussels.
As all but the most gullible no longer have faith in the European politicians to resolve the increasingly deadly sovereign debt crisis among the PIIGS nations in the Eurozone, the last ditch hope is now resting with the European Central Bank.
Second-world countries also increasingly use sovereign-wealth funds (often financed by oil) worth trillions of dollars to throw their weight around, even bullying first-world corporations and markets.
Sven Behrendt of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut notes that the huge and increasingly sophisticated sovereign-wealth funds of the Gulf states have for the first time turned Arab countries into a big force in the world economy as strategic investors and not just as suppliers of oil.
But with investors increasingly viewing European sovereign debt as a toxic asset, it seems doubtful that the markets will truly calm down until both Italy and Greece do more than apply fiscal bandages and until the European Union can put more firepower in its bailout mechanisms.
These sombre voices are being echoed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G20, as those officials, largely American, who are still calling for more deficit spending are now being drowned out by increasingly desperate European sovereigns, who have caught the scent of public default and national insolvency, and the apocalyptic economic repercussions that would ensue.
"This ceremony highlights an increasingly confident, capable and sovereign Afghanistan," Marine General Joseph, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said.
For the time being, the rescue loans will be piled on to the Spanish sovereign's increasingly weak balance sheet.
Mazarin increasingly involved the young sovereign in affairs of government, encouraging him to stand firm against the Parlement and helping him train a staff of great administrators for his reign: Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Nicholas Fouquet, Hughes de Lionne, and Michel Le Tellier.
As Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital, an investment bank, puts it: "Can the West, with its regulated industry, uncompetitive labour and large government, afford its borrowing-funded living standards and increasingly expensive public sectors?"Sovereign default is far from inconceivable.
