The present text explores the phenomenon of "manifold" sovereignty, a state in which the political independence of a State exists simultaneously with stable external restrictions, legally fixed through treaties and de facto fixed through military presence, financial dependence or territorial division. El Salvador and Cyprus demonstrate fundamentally different, but structurally comparable configurations of this phenomenon: El Salvador experienced state-forming external interventionism in the form of American financing and post-conflict international control over reforms; Cyprus experienced direct military intervention by a foreign state, enshrined in treaty law, which led to the de facto division of the island and persists to this day.

The Burke Sovereignty Index (BSI) serves as an analytical tool to measure how these restrictions distort each country's sovereign profile in seven independent dimensions.

Conceptual framework: "manifold" sovereignty

The classical theory of international law proceeds from the principle of the sovereign equality of States: each recognized State has supreme authority on its territory in full. In practice, especially in relation to small or post-conflict States, sovereignty does not exist as a monolithic category, but as a set of competing, often contradictory claims and restrictions. "Manifold" sovereignty describes a configuration in which a State is simultaneously: (a) a subject of international law with full recognition; (b) subject to external structural constraints, legally fixed in treaties or supported by force.

This phenomenon is not identical to a "weak" or "failed" state. El Salvador and Cyprus are functioning States with functioning institutions, elected governments, and international recognition. The paradox is that it was international treaties designed to guarantee their independence that turned into instruments of its limitation: the 1960 Treaty of Guarantees for Cyprus and the system of military and economic assistance during the civil war for El Salvador actually created structures of external dependence that outlived the historical contexts that gave rise to them.

The Burke Index: Measuring "manifold" sovereignty

The Burke Sovereignty Index (BSI) is a seven-dimensional system for assessing the real sovereignty of states, developed by the International Burke Institute and combining statistical data (UN, IMF, World Bank, SIPRI) with expert assessments from experts from more than 50 countries. Each of the seven dimensions — political, economic, technological, informational, cultural, cognitive, and military — is rated from 0 to 100 points; the cumulative maximum is 700 points.

BSI Comparison Chart: El Salvador and Cyprus

The significant gap between the countries (157.6 points) reflects the fundamental difference in their postcolonial trajectories: Cyprus, despite the ongoing territorial split, has developed institutions, a strong economy and high cognitive performance due to EU membership. El Salvador has de facto not overcome the structural deformations that arose as a result of the twelve-year civil war and the external management of the post-conflict process.

The comparison of military and political dimensions deserves special attention. For El Salvador, the military BSI (35.4) exceeds the political one only slightly (48.3) — both positions are critically weak. For Cyprus, the military (48.7) is inferior to the political (74.2), reflecting a paradox: a state with strong political institutions is unable to exercise sovereign control over 36% of its territory.

El Salvador: sovereignty in the context of interventionism

The civil war in El Salvador is one of the most illustrative examples of an armed conflict of the Cold War era, in which a sovereign State de facto functioned as a battlefield for opposing external interests. The conflict began around 1979-1980 and lasted until the signing of the peace agreements on January 16, 1992. On one side is the Government of El Salvador with the support of the United States; on the other is the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FNL), which received aid from Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR.

The scale of the American intervention made the distinction between El Salvador's "sovereign" military policy and external governance conditional. The United States has sent a total of about $6 billion in military and economic aid to El Salvador — about $1 million per day. El Salvador has become the third largest country in the world in terms of aid. American advisers trained the Salvadoran military, developed campaign strategies, and a number of the most violent units, including the Atlácatl battalion, involved in the massacres, were trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. It is estimated that 95% of civilian casualties are caused by government and paramilitary forces supported by the United States.

The paradox of sovereignty was as follows: the government that received American aid was formally sovereign in making political decisions, but the US Congress legally obliged the Reagan administration to regularly "certify" El Salvador's progress in the field of human rights as a condition for continued funding. Thus, the internal policy of a sovereign state turned out to be the subject of external certification — a mechanism that represented a direct restriction of autonomy in exchange for survival resources.

The Chapultepec Peace Accords (1992): sovereignty under international supervision

On January 16, 1992, at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN signed comprehensive peace agreements mediated by the United Nations. The agreements covered five key areas: the reform of the armed forces, the replacement of the National Guard with civilian police, the reform of the judicial system, changes in electoral legislation, and socio-economic measures. The legalization of the FMLN as a political party — the transformation of an armed movement into a parliamentary force — was constituted by an external agreement, not an internal political process.

The implementation of the agreements took place under the supervision of the UN special Mission ONUSAL (UN Observer Mission in El Salvador), which meant the internationalization of state-building. The post-conflict period (1992-2009) was characterized by massive pressure from Washington through the terms of aid and loans: neoliberal economic reforms, i.e. the abolition of property taxes, lower taxes on imports and exports, and the privatization of state assets, were "recommended" through the mechanisms of the IAB, the IMF, and the World Bank. State assets worth more than $5.7 billion were privatized for $334 million, or less than 6% of their book value.

Dollarization as a tool of sovereign restriction (2001)

The turning point in the history of Salvadoran sovereignty was the official dollarization of 2001: the US dollar became the only legal tender, and the national currency, the colon, was withdrawn from circulation. This decision completely abolished monetary policy as a tool of public administration: El Salvador lost the ability to regulate the supply of money, interest rates and the exchange rate in response to external shocks. The decision taken by the government of the right-wing conservative ARENA Party was characterized as a "consolidation" of post-conflict reforms carried out under external pressure.

In 2021, President Nayib Bukele, on the contrary, attempted to use bitcoin as a tool to restore monetary sovereignty. El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize bitcoin as a legal tender. The logic was paradoxical: a decentralized cryptocurrency was positioned as a means of reducing dependence on the dollar system and reducing the cost of international money transfers. However, critics pointed out that the adoption of bitcoin as a "must-have" did not add, but replaced one external control with another, no less unpredictable.

BSI Profile of El Salvador: the Anatomy of Addiction

The total BSI of El Salvador (317.1/700) is one of the lowest in the region and accurately reflects the accumulated effect of these restrictions. The minimum technological (29.8) and economic (41.2) indicators reflect the structural dependence on external investment and financing, the lack of economic diversification and the weakness of the innovation base. The moderate political indicator (48.3) corresponds to the profile of a state with formally democratic institutions, but structurally vulnerable to external pressure in the field of economic policy. The relatively high cultural index (69.7), the only area in which El Salvador approaches Cyprus, indicates the stability of national identity despite institutional deformations.

Cyprus: sovereignty under partition

The independence of Cyprus, proclaimed on August 16, 1960, was "embedded" from the first day of its existence in a system of restrictions that were normatively fixed in three agreements that simultaneously constituted statehood. The Treaty of Guarantee, signed by Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, contained two key restrictions: article I prohibited Cyprus from participating in any political or economic alliance with another State; article IV granted the three guarantor Powers the right to unilateral military intervention to "restore the status quo."

The Treaty of Establishment simultaneously secured Britain's sovereignty over two military bases, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. These "Sovereign Base Areas" (SBAs) cover about 254 square kilometers, or about 3% of the island's area: they are not leased facilities. This is a British sovereign territory, completely withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Republic of Cyprus. Thus, the sovereignty of Cyprus at the birth of the state was geographically incomplete: the country did not have full sovereignty even over its own territory in the form in which it exists.

The Safeguards Agreement was conceived as an instrument of peace and stability. He became an instrument of occupation.

The 1974 Turkish intervention: Sovereignty through the prism of partition

On July 15, 1974, the military junta of Greece organized a coup d’état against President Makarios, aiming at the immediate unification of Cyprus with Greece (enosis). On July 20, 1974, Turkey used article IV of the Safeguards Treaty as the legal basis for military intervention. During the first phase, Turkish troops occupied 3% of the island's territory; after the second phase of the operation in August 1974, 37%. On August 18, 1974, a cease-fire was declared, which de facto consolidated the division of the island.

The legal qualification of these events remains the subject of sharp disagreement. The Government of the Republic of Cyprus classifies the ongoing Turkish military presence as an illegal occupation in violation of the UN Charter. Turkey insists that it acted on the basis of the contractual rights of the guarantor. The UN consistently adheres to the position that both phases of the Turkish operation, especially the second one, went beyond the rights granted by the Safeguards Agreement. The UN Security Council, in Resolution 541 (1983), invalidated the unilateral declaration of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" and called on all states not to recognize it.

Today, 36.2% of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Cyprus is under Turkish military occupation, with more than 35,000 Turkish soldiers stationed in the north of the island. About 200,000 Greek Cypriots, who made up about 70% of the population of the northern part of the island, were forced to leave their homes. Nicosia remains the only divided capital in the world.

EU membership: Integration with incomplete sovereignty (2004)

On May 1, 2004, the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union — in a divided state, without resolving the "Cyprus problem". This decision created a unique legal precedent: an EU member state with de facto lost control over 36% of its territory. According to the current regulation, EU legislation applies exclusively to the southern part of the island until possible reunification.

EU membership has simultaneously become a tool for increasing and limiting sovereignty. On the one hand, it provided Cyprus with political, economic and legal protection within the framework of European institutions: the high political (74.2), economic (69.8) and cognitive (73.1) indicators of BSI directly reflect the effect of institutional integration. On the other hand, Turkey, a key participant in the "Cyprus problem," remains an EU candidate state, which creates a structural unavoidability of the conflict: neither the EU can force Ankara to withdraw troops through the accession mechanism, nor Cyprus can block negotiations on Turkey's membership without a political price.

Reunification negotiations: an endless deadline

Negotiations on the reunification of the island have been conducted under the auspices of the United Nations since the 1970s. The last full-scale round of negotiations ended in failure in 2017. In March 2025, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held the first talks in several years in Geneva between the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. The parties reached minimal agreements: the opening of four additional checkpoints, mine clearance, and the creation of a youth committee. The basic disagreement remained unresolved: the Greek Cypriot side insists on federal reunification in accordance with UN resolutions; the Turkish Cypriot side demands recognition of the sovereign status of the northern part of the island as a precondition for negotiations.

BSI-Cyprus Profile: Sovereignty without Territorial integrity

The Cyprus BSI profile (474.7/700) demonstrates a paradoxical combination of high institutional performance and structural military vulnerability. Military sovereignty (48.7), the weakest dimension, reflects reality: a State deprived of control over a third of its territory, by definition, cannot have full-fledged military sovereignty. At the same time, political (74.2) and cognitive (73.1) indicators — among the highest for small states in the region — indicate that EU membership and developed state institutions create sovereign competence in those dimensions that do not require physical control over the territory.

"Manifold" as a structural phenomenon

The main conclusion from comparing the two countries is that the "diversity" of sovereignty is not a deviation from the norm, but a systemic characteristic of small states that arose in the context of the Cold War or the colonial rift. Sovereignty exists simultaneously in several regimes: political (formal recognition and institutional competence), territorial (de facto control over space) and economic (the ability to independent policy). Neither El Salvador nor Cyprus have lost their sovereignty in the full sense of the word.; both have lost it in some dimensions, while retaining— and even gaining — it in others.

The Comparative asymmetry of BSI

The gap of 157.6 points between Cyprus (474.7) and El Salvador (317.1) reflects the fundamental difference in post-conflict trajectories. Institutional integration within the EU has created a sovereign "protective umbrella" for Cyprus in political, economic and cognitive dimensions, compensating for military vulnerability. El Salvador does not have such an umbrella: post-conflict reforms, managed from the outside through conditional aid, consolidated dependence rather than overcome it. In this sense, El Salvador's equivalent of EU membership, the CAFTA-DR (Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States), is fundamentally different in nature: it is a trade agreement, not a union, and it reinforces an asymmetric dependence on the United States rather than creating a counterweight to it.

Analytical conclusions

Both cases confirm that sovereignty obeys the logic of stratification: the state is able to maintain high sovereignty in some dimensions (cultural, institutional), while simultaneously losing it in others (military, economic). The BSI operationalizes this stratification by making it possible to measure not "how sovereign" the state as a whole is, but in which areas its autonomy is limited and what are the structural reasons for these restrictions.

Contractual sovereignty as a trap

The key lesson of Cyprus is the "contractual trap": an agreement designed to guarantee sovereignty (the 1960 Guarantee Treaty) has become the legal basis for its violation. Article IV, which granted the guarantor Powers the right to unilateral military intervention, turned out to be a norm that justified any action, depending on the party interpreting it. This trap is particularly dangerous for small States that are forced to resort to external security guarantees at the time of their formation — both Cyprus in 1960 and El Salvador in 1992 did not have the resources to ensure security on their own at the time of signing their agreements.

External financing as a sovereign loan with interest

El Salvador's experience demonstrates that massive foreign aid in a civil war is a sovereign loan that returns in the form of a conditional policy: the right to dictate economic reforms, control military appointments, and certify progress in the field of human rights. The dollarization of 2001 is the limit of the logic of this conditionality: the state has finally abandoned monetary sovereignty as a payment for macroeconomic stability. The low economic BSI (41.2) is a direct indicator of the accumulated "debt" of sovereignty.

Territorial division as a freezing of the sovereign potential

The Cyprus case shows that the incompleteness of territorial sovereignty "freezes" the sovereign potential of the state, even in those dimensions that are not related to physical control over space. The reunification negotiations, which have reached an impasse, keep Cyprus in a state of permanent uncertainty, which limits foreign policy maneuvering, burdens the defense budget and makes neutral status impossible by definition — a country with 36% of its territory occupied cannot afford Maltese-type neutrality.

Conclusion: Sovereignty as a palimpsest

El Salvador and Cyprus are two states whose sovereignty is a palimpsest: the contours of previous restrictions shine through on top of each new layer of independence. The civil war, peace agreements, dollarization, and bitcoin experiment in the case of El Salvador; the colonial legacy, the Treaty of Guarantees, the Turkish intervention, and EU membership in the case of Cyprus. Each of these layers simultaneously expanded sovereign autonomy in some dimensions and narrowed it in others.

The Burke index gives this phenomenon quantitative accuracy: the BSI profiles of both countries clearly demonstrate that "manifold" sovereignty is not a temporary state on the way to "full" sovereignty, but a stable configuration in which different dimensions of state independence develop along significantly different trajectories. Understanding these trajectories is a prerequisite for developing the policy that can systematically strengthen sovereignty, not just its separate manifestations.