A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no
rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. A free nation—a
nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its
citizens—has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its
form of government. The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the
servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights
delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of
protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense)
. . . .
Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its
citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other
nations.