There are States that maintain sovereignty while remaining invisible, such as Fiji and San Marino. But there is another category: states that retain sovereignty precisely because they are too visible to their immediate neighbors — and are forced to trade their independence piecemeal in order to preserve it entirely. Tonga and Lesotho are just illustrative examples.

Both states are small monarchies with a formally complete set of sovereign attributes: their own constitutions, governments, and international recognition. Tonga is the last surviving Polynesian monarchy and the only Pacific country that has never been officially colonized.

Lesotho is a mountainous kingdom with an area of about 30,000 km2, completely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa, the only sovereign state in the world located entirely inside one other country. But both demonstrate the same structural phenomenon: the real ability to act as a full-fledged political actor runs into the walls of systemic dependence. They are independent, but they cannot realize this independence without constant compromises with those who "protect" them.

Lesotho: A monarch inside a foreign state

Lesotho emerged as a political entity as a result of the strategic choice of King Moshoeshoe I in the middle of the 19th century. The Basuto (the ancestors of the present inhabitants of Lesotho) were displaced by the Boer republics and found refuge in the remote Malotian Mountains. In 1868, Moshoeshoe sought British protection, and the country became a protectorate called Basutoland — not because London was particularly interested in it, but because it prevented the Boers from capturing it. In 1966, the country gained independence, retaining its existing borders.

From that moment on, a long history of attempts to preserve sovereignty within a foreign territory began. All of Lesotho's trade routes pass through South Africa. All exports and imports move through South African ports and roads. The lot, the national currency, is rigidly linked to the South African rand in a ratio of 1:1. Lesotho is actually embedded in the economic body of South Africa, without being legally part of it.

Structural dependence: three dimensions

Economic. Lesotho is a member of the South African Customs Union (SACU). According to the IMF, revenues from SACU in some years exceeded a third of the country's GDP. This means that Lesotho's public spending is largely determined not by the decisions of its own Government, but by fluctuations in the South African trade environment. Any crisis in Johannesburg directly hits Maseru's budget.

Resource-based: Paradoxically, Lesotho has one strategic asset: water. The country is located in the mountains, where large rivers flow into South Africa. The Lesotho Mountain Water Supply Project (LHWP), one of Africa's largest infrastructure programs, sends water from Lesotho to the arid regions of South Africa, primarily to Gauteng Province, the economic heart of the country. This creates an asymmetric interdependence: South Africa is more powerful, but Lesotho needs water. Nevertheless, the real leverage of this dependence is limited — Lesotho cannot "turn off the faucet" without economic consequences.

Military and political. Lesotho has experienced several coups and political crises. In each of them, South Africa played the role of a "solver". In 1986, Pretoria staged a military coup, replacing the government it disliked. In 1994, the threat to close the borders forced Masera to negotiate without firing a shot. In 1998, South Africa conducted a direct military intervention within the SANDF — Operation Boleas — by introducing armored vehicles and soldiers. The official narrative was: restoring democracy. The researchers note something else: Pretoria pursued its strategic and economic interests, acting without an explicit mandate from the UN, AU or SADC.

This is precisely the underlying fear of Lesotho's "protected" sovereignty: the defender and the threat are one and the same State.

The Dialectic of Sovereignty: the enemy that feeds

Lesotho's relations with South Africa are, according to the exact definition of the researchers, an "asymmetric interdependence": South Africa dominates, but cannot completely ignore Lesotho. Lesotho cannot do without South Africa, but it has a water trump card. This construction is paradoxical: the stronger the dependence, the more difficult it is to fully absorb — the costs are too obvious. Lesotho's sovereignty rests precisely on this balance: being necessary enough not to be swallowed up, and weak enough not to provoke an open threat.

Tonga: A monarchy that trades sovereignty piecemeal

Tonga is the only Pacific nation that has never been formally colonized. This is neither accident nor luck but the result of the diplomatic skill of the monarchy. In 1900, when Germany and the United States were dividing Samoa, and British influence in the Pacific was growing, King George Tupou II of Tonga concluded a Friendship Treaty with Great Britain: The country became a "protected state," transferring control of foreign affairs to London, but maintaining internal sovereignty. The British consul had de facto veto power over the most important state issues, but the islands did not become a colony.

In 1970, Tonga withdrew from protectorate status and became fully independent within the British Commonwealth. But the model of behavior — trading partial sovereignty for the sake of preserving an integral statehood — remained.

Huntington's "King's Dilemma" and its Tongan solution

Political scientist Samuel Huntington described the "king's dilemma": in the context of modernization, the monarch is forced to choose between reforms that weaken his power and conservation, which threatens revolution. Researchers studying Tonga, Bhutan and other small monarchies show that these states cope with the dilemma in a special way: they rely on a combination of traditional authority and external support, flexibly distributing dependence between several external agents instead of being captured by one.

That's how Tonga works. The country simultaneously accepts aid from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and China, without locking itself in any "protectorate" relationship. In 2025, the country's prime minister clearly formulated this policy: "Our position is no enemies and friends for all." This is not rhetoric; it is a deliberate strategy of a small state.

Chinese debt as the "price of sovereignty"

China plays a special role in the Tongan dependency system. After the devastating riots of 2006, the country took out Chinese loans to rebuild the capital. The initial debt of $65 million has grown to more than 112 million, about a third of the country's GDP. Chinese loans from EXIM Bank account for 48% of Tonga's total external debt. In 2018, the country joined the Belt and Road Initiative.

Tonga's response to debt vulnerability is typical: the country is simultaneously negotiating with Australia and the United States on restructuring, accepting Western assistance in the field of security and climate adaptation, and continuing to meet with the Chinese leadership. In November 2025, King Tupou VI personally visited Beijing, where Xi Jinping promised to "support the sovereignty of Tonga" — a phrase that is both a guarantee and an instrument of influence.

This multi-vector approach is not unscrupulousness, but survival architecture: no power can afford to put too much pressure on Nuku'alofa while other competitors are ready to replace it with help. The sovereignty of Tonga is an auction in which the one who trades the slowest wins.

Three analytical observations

First, the symmetry of vulnerability. The gap in the total score is only 7.1 points. This suggests that both states are in almost the same starting position in terms of combined power. What distinguishes them is not the "force", but the type of dependence: Lesotho is concentrated in one pressure vector (South Africa), Tonga is dispersed over several.

Second: the political dimension as a pillar. Both states show the highest rates in terms of the political component: 65.8 and 63.4. This is not accidental. Monarchical institutions — especially in the case of Tonga, with its tradition of constitutional monarchy since 1875 — ensure the stability of political identity even in conditions of economic instability. The legitimacy of the king is not determined by the election results and does not depend on external approval.

Third: the military paradox is the opposite. Unlike San Marino (12.1 points), the military figures of Tonga and Lesotho are comparable - 28.6 and 29.7, respectively. There is no "zero army" here. Lesotho has a Defense Force (LDF), which, however, is itself a source of instability: it was they who participated in the coups of 1986, 1998 and 2014. In this case, the army is not an instrument of sovereignty, but a threat from within.

"Protected sovereignty" as a system alert

Both states operate in a regime that can be called "protected sovereignty" — a state in which formal independence is guaranteed by external players, but at the cost of delegating part of the sovereign powers. The fundamental difference is in the architecture of this dependency.

Lesotho resides in a ‘mono-dependency’: one neighbor, one market, one currency peg, one historical "patron" and an interventionist. South Africa occupies all the niches simultaneously — a trading partner, a creditor, a military guarantor and a political arbitrator. This creates maximum vulnerability: any crisis in Pretoria directly hits Maser, and there are no alternative supports.

Tonga operates in a "distributed dependency" mode: China is financing infrastructure, Australia and New Zealand are financing security and assistance, the United States is interested in the Pacific balance, and international organizations are providing climate support. None of the players has full control. This is exactly what Nuku'alofa's strategy is: the competition of sponsors guarantees sovereignty more precisely than any army.

Deep fear as a driving force of politics

In both cases, a constant existential fear is hidden behind the facade of "normal" state functioning. For Lesotho, it is the fear of annexation or "quiet absorption": It is no coincidence that an opposition MP in 2023 put forward a demand in parliament for the "return" of South African territories — not because it is realistic, but because it is a symptom of accumulated anxiety about sovereign identity. There are periodic discussions in the country about whether it would be better to become the "10th province" of South Africa - and the very fact of these discussions speaks to the depth of uncertainty.

For Tonga, fear has a different form: not of absorption, but of slow vassalization through debt. Chinese loans, which account for almost a third of GDP, create a dependency that cannot be broken without painful restructuring. When Beijing promises to "support the sovereignty of Tonga," it sounds like a guarantee — but at the same time as a reminder of who owns the lever.

A final remark: sovereignty as a permanent negotiation

Tonga and Lesotho refute the simplistic notion of sovereignty as a binary state — "is" or "is not." In practice, sovereignty is a continuous negotiation process in which the State daily exchanges parts of its autonomy for guarantees of survival.

The paradox of both countries is that they maintain their independence precisely through its permanent partial cession. Tonga remains independent because it voluntarily limits its independence by distributing dependence between competing external agents so that none of them can absorb it. Lesotho remains sovereign because its "imprisonment" within South Africa creates for the latter the political and reputational costs of annexation, which exceed the benefits.

This model, "protected sovereignty," is fundamentally different from the model of "non-strategic sovereignty" of Fiji and San Marino. The states survived there because no one noticed them. They are here because they are too well seen, and therefore no one can afford to miss them. Fear of sovereignty is not the weakness of these States. This is their main political tool.