“I’ve always said to my men friends, If you really care for me, darling, you will give me territory. Give me land, give me land.”
Eartha Kitt had it right: land is critical. It’s certainly unfortunate that global warming is turning the country that gave us “.tv” into a modern-day Atlantis. Even though that sucks, that doesn’t mean submerged island nations will get to dub themselves a “nation” even when their homes dip into the deep blue sea.
The territory requirement is an important one in international law. Without a territory, a number of questions would arise surrounding any putative “state.” If the measure of a government is its exclusive monopoly on force within its own territory, how would we measure the effectiveness of a landless regime? As a sovereign nation, what rights would a landless nation really possess? (After all, the principle of inviolability would become irrelevant.) How would one define members of this transient state? Could anyone simply declare themselves a member — or would a blood test or sacred oath be required? How could a state be considered “independent” (another requirement of statehood) when its people necessarily fall under the control of another sovereign authority?
More importantly, granting statehood without territory would set a troubling precedent. Does that mean that every group of people that lost its territory through troubling circumstances gets to call itself an independent state? Welcome to the UN, Chechnya! Can the Assyrians finally get a seat, too? How about the Sahrawis? And of course, we can all agree that Palestine would be a state, once and for all.
Moreover, the existence of some “sovereign-like” entities doesn’t really help the island nations’ case very much. One could say that the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations also exhibit sovereign-like characteristics. (Heck, the U.N. even controls territory sometimes.) Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone would argue in good faith that these pseudo-sovereigns deserve recognition as ‘states.’ The sandbar idea probably isn’t going to fly either. After all, if there’s no requirement that land be inhabitable for a new nation to form, folks can start forming countries on the fly. I could found Michaeland at the bottom of the Pacific, because who says the land has to be above water?
Unlike Susan, I find it difficult to imagine a future of landless territories. Susan’s conception gives undue weight to a single characteristic of statehood: the capacity to enter into relations with other states. But, as Judge Jessup said, “[O]ne cannot contemplate a state as a kind of disembodied spirit . . . [T]here must be some portion of the earth’s surface which people inhabit and over which its Government exercises authority.”
-Michael
Don’t worry, I’m not at the point where I’d see “granting statehood without territory” to be a viable possibility any time in the next couple centuries. I do, however, think that it would be a much different question if we were faced with a genuine, unambiguously defined state that simply and suddenly lost its territory forever. We obviously have no precedent for this, but the question of maintaining State status is a very different question from obtaining statehood. The former is obviously a lot easier than the latter.
Even your own examples hint at cases today where the black letter law of statehood is beginning to fray at the edges. And how much territory is “enough” under international law? What if Tuvalu bought a couple square miles of mainland territory off of, say, Indonesia, and a couple dozen people were living there when the island went under? Is that sufficient?
In the past, the territory aspect of statehood was not often questioned because for practical reasons there was so rarely an occasion for their to be a “gray area” about the requirements. But that is by no means guaranteed to be the case forever, and over the next hundred years or so, I expect it to change considerably.
For instance, in the future, what if nations began to increasingly settle on Sealand-style complexes out in the sea? Or even farther (much farther) in the future, what about nations that started colonies on the moon? Surely our current conceptions of “statehood” would begin to evolve alongside changing human societies?
Back in the mid-90s, there was a guy trying to set up an Objectivist-Libertarian free state called Oceania somewhere in international waters. His plan was to build an artificial island outside of territorial waters. He had gotten as far as issuing passports, designing currency, and courting investors, but I think that was as far as he got, and the project was canceled in April 1994:
http://oceania.org/
He’s now running something called the Lifeboat Project:
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
Which raises an interesting issue: what are the statehood considerations for a human “lifeboat” bound for deep space after the (actual or presumed) destruction of earth? What if state-based off-planet colonies already exist?
Re: off-planet colonies in modern day, that is not-a-state. For statehood, the overarching consideration will always be, I feel safe in saying, whether mostly everyone else simply accepts that it’s a state without having to think too hard about it. And no one would instantly think “gee, maybe that’s a state,” when faced with the question.
Hence why I think a swamped island nation might actually have a good chance of continuing on as a state under international law, though, at least for a little while, simply through inertia. No island will get swamped overnight, giving the government time to plan and re-establish operations somewhere else, and to forge some alternative means of statehood.
I am curious to see how things will play out, in a case like Haiti, where rather than as the result of a gradual calamity, the state has more or less ceased to exist overnight. The government is not functioning right now. At the moment, Haiti is simply a state because everyone believes it to be one, not because it meets the formal definition of having a government in control of its territory. But how long can that last, both formally and informally? Either some state will take it on as something like a protectorate, or else it’ll turn into the Somalia of the Americas.
Secretly, I am a constitutive theorist, when it comes to statehood. I probably would not officially admit that, because no one really believes in it anymore, but it really is the closest to my own take on it. Also I have a giant man crush on Kelsen, the dude who was the best champion of the theory. In a gender-neutral sense of the word man crush, that is.
Well, the specific condition would be the statehood (or lack thereof) of the remaining colonies and/or ships-in-transit after the Earth’s destruction. At that point, if none of the ships or colonies have statehood, then there are no states in existence.
There might be global warming or cooling but the important issue is whether we, as a human race, can do anything about it.
There are a host of porkies and not very much truth barraging us everyday so its difficult to know what to believe.
I think I have simplified the issue in an entertaining way on my blog which includes some issues connected with climategate and “embarrassing” evidence.
In the pipeline is an analysis of the economic effects of the proposed emission reductions. Watch this space or should I say Blog
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Please feel welcome to visit and leave a comment.
Cheers
Roger
Indeed the “question of maintaining State status is a very different
question from obtaining statehood”. The Maldives and Tuvalu would
certainly be treated differently than Chechnya or the Sahrawis, as the
former are already members of the club of mutually recognized states.
They might not retain the full status of a territorial nation state
but would probably be treated as autonomous or semi-sovereign (like
the Tibetan government in exile or the Sovereign Military Order of
Malta, respectively). I imagine the Maldives and Tuvalu would move
their governments to their various embassies as the Order of Malta did
after losing its island.
If inundated nations are treated differently than Chechnya or the
Sahrawis then a “troubling precedent” would not be set. Also, think
of all the UN members that are small island nations. Would they not
continue to recognize the inundated nations? After all, they could be
next.
Phin MacDonald
Center for Sovereignty Research
http://www.sovereignty-research.org