We were still colonies of Great Britain
and missed The Thirty Years War,
since G.B. had her own problems
and wasn’t meddling on the continent.
So we didn’t sign the Treaty of Westphalia,
the first treaty negotiated without the papacy,
that established sovereignty since the treaty declared:
‘One nation shouldn’t interfere
with the internal affairs of another nation’.
The signers didn’t respect it for very long
and by the time we became big enough
to interfere with the affairs of others
we weren’t obliged to respect their sovereignty,
since we never signed it in the first place.
As long as we had sufficient power
we never let ideas of sovereignty
hinder our aggressive expansion
as we interfered in the affairs of others.