Power, Democracy, Government and Sovereignty

If politics is about power and power is the use of resources controlled by others to achieve our goals. It can be achieved through cooperation or coercion. Cooperation takes longer, is more difficult to achieve and may require some modification to the original goals or agenda but is ultimately cheaper and more stable. Coercion is easier and faster but unstable and resource hungry to the extent that it may defeat the meaning of the original goal.
Sovereignty is the justification of power. Although routinely connected with territory is universally accepted that it stems from the people and is expressed in a explicit or implicit social contract which can be unilaterally revoked by the people if the government doesn't deliver the protection of the basic human rights of the citizens.
A state is a country with its people, government, political system and territory (not only the government). Of these the people posses sovereignty over a territory with the government responsible for the protection of human rights with security, law and order, private property and equal opportunity among them. The government can legitimately represent the people internationally but only as long as it defends the people’s interests in the best possible way. Almost always that means avoiding war.

Sovereignty means that the people have the supreme right to govern themselves and conduct their domestic and external affairs. The state includes the people and if the government is oppressive and disrespects the will of the people that government cannot claim legitimacy. Following this logic we cannot speak of the state of North Korea as the government doesn't represent the people. North Korea can be discussed only in terms of the oppressive, illegitimate government on one side and the people about whose opinion unfortunately we don't know much on the other. (Ironically the official name of the country has the people mentioned three times as in "people's" "democratic" and "republic" but that doesn't change the fact that the people are not represented by that government.)
Democratic governments where minority rules are not respected also cannot claim sovereignty because they are forfeiting the right of the minority. Therefore the Civil War in the US did not curtail South's sovereignty but helped defend it because there couldn't be a valid claim to sovereignty in the South if the slave's rights weren't taken into account. Legitimacy can be based on the sovereignty of each and every person.
Similarly it is odd to impose economic sanctions against a totalitarian state as they only punish the people and not the governing tyrants responsible for the crime in question. If we assume that the term state means political organisation of the society in a particular country then that certainly is not the case in a country where there is no liberal democracy (meaning a government which is popular, accountable and respects human rights including the rights of minorities. This excludes popular nationalistic governments like Hitler's or Mussolini's and popular non-secular governments. States that are corrupt and failed cannot legitimately claim sovereignty. Also it is cynical to demand payment of debts incurred by a tyrant the fault for such bad debts lies with those who gave credit to a corrupt individual not the people who had no choice or say.
Sovereignty is of the people and for the people. The state can only exist legitimately to defend their right to life, property, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.