Before COVID-19, there were three trends occurring in the world that challenged the Westphalian notion of nation-states with complete sovereignty over citizens within their borders. The Westphalian ideal is the pattern of nation-states, with a rule of law defined by geographical borders, that emerged out of the Thirty Years War in Europe and replaced a patchwork quilt of overlapping medieval loyalties with more solid blocks of unitary rule under the rule of a sovereign.
