It is possible that America’s decline as the only world Hyperpower could be a factor in Sierra Leone’s recognition reversal. Often smaller nations kiss up to the big dog by voting for whatever they want at the UN, especially issues that don’t particularly affect them [...]
What constitutes water can be scientifically proven beyond any doubt, now what constitutes a nation-state is a far more organic question than it would seem. Each of us is very used to seeing maps with the same countries and lines on it throughout the years and take their existence as a given. But depending on where a map comes from its borders may actually look very different. One of these countries to some and non-countries to others is Kosovo which gradually continues to lose the support of the states that recognized it into existence. Furthermore, this sheds light on how UN doctrine strongly leans the atomization of nations and the recognition of new states rather than long term stability.
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has recently stated that the government of Sierra Leone has withdrawn its recognition of Kosovo as a state. According to Fort Russ News 18 nations have already changed their minds about the status of the small Balkan entity and there is a no indication to believe this trend will stop. Documents received by Serbian state news agency Tanjug explain the motivations behind Sierra Leone’s change of heart.
“The government of the Republic of Sierra Leone is of the considered view that any recognition it had conferred (expressly or by necessary implication) on the independence of Kosovo may have been premature,”
This seems like a polite way of saying the Serbs gave them some unknown good reason to change their minds. Minister Dacic claims that bilateral relations between the nations have improved, but it is hard to imagine that there are critical deep ties being rebuilt between Serbia and this tiny part of Africa. If there is any trade between these two countries it is so nominal that Sierra Leone is not even mentioned in the list of Serbia’s top trade partners, meaning that their motivations for making this change probably have very little to do with “bilateral relations”.
It is possible that America’s decline as the only world Hyperpower could be a factor in Sierra Leone’s recognition reversal. Often smaller nations kiss up to the big dog by voting for whatever they want at the UN, especially issues that don’t particularly affect them. Russia and China do not recognize Kosovo, and Russians see the region as being stolen from their brother/cousin Serbs by their multi-generation enemy the United States. So perhaps there could actually be an element of Russian pressure especially since the Russians are working out plans to make some investment moves in the region.
It is almost impossible to conclusively prove the motivations behind decisions but as it stands now it is a fact that a minority of UN member states recognize Kosovo and others may jump on the boat soon according to the Serbian side.
This leads one to wonder, at what point, if this “unrecognition” trend continues, will Kosovo stop being considered a nation-state? At what point will the English version of Google Maps have to be updated? Where is the cutoff point? The answer may surprise you.
Countries recognizing Kosovo’s independence in 2018
This view of statehood sets the bar as absolutely bottom basement low for recognition. This logic reflects a hyper optimistic towards breakaway states being recognized. If the UN’s mission was to strive for stability/maintaining a global status quo or to suit the needs of the big players then one would expect that the standards for the recognition of statehood would be extremely high, maybe even so high that they would be practically impossible. Change creates instability and the bigger you are the more territory you have the opportunity to lose due to some Catalonia or Scotland getting uppity.
If gaining statehood were to be nearly impossible then this is good for global stability (civil war and breakaways become less viable) and the big dogs’ empires would feel no threat from troubled regions.
The Lakota Indians in the north of the United States, could easily (and may already) meet the extremely loose criteria for statehood as do probably dozens of other regions around the world. In one moment of weakness the Chinese and Russians could do to America via the Lakota Indians exactly what the US did to Serbia and the USSR – recognize everyone who wants to break away. If recognition standards were much higher, there would be “no hope” for secessionists.
Although the prerequisites for statehood are low paradoxically they also mean that it is very hard to delete state from the books. In terms of Kosovo, even if the rest of the world dumped their recognition, as long as the US still had relations with them they could still very well continue along as a recognized entity.
So despite Serbian optimism nation-state recognition is very much on the side of small breakaway states (except for the ones the Russians recognize of course, Russia is always the exception) and even if support for Kosovo continues to erode nothing will ultimately change until Washington changes its mind.
Perhaps it is arrogant from a small Moscow rental apartment to claim that a principle of international relations that has been used for decades is wrong but this optimistic view that any territory that gets a “government” could potentially become a real recognized state is bad for global stability and bad for maintaining large powerful nations that ultimately drive history and humanity forward. The Kosovo “incident” provides a lot of food for thought about how things should be done in international relations, and it may be time to rethink some established reasoning that we simply accept because it has been around for a long time.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
The creation of the First Balkan Alliance against the Ottoman Empire in 1866–1868 in the light of territorial requirements of the Balkan states and nations at the expense of the decreasing power of the Ottoman authorities and the Ottoman state integration was the first political-military treaty on the mutual cooperation by the Christian Balkan states and nations. The secret paragraphs of bilateral military-political contracts between Greece and Serbia and Serbia and Montenegro in regard to territorial inheritance of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans are the most important points of the treaty.Serbia became a leader of the Balkan coalition and ...
Last movie by famous French movie maker Paul Moreira on Canal+ (France) broadcasted 01/02/2016.Some French citizens are now shocked after discovering the truth about the Odessa massacre and the Euromaidan bloody coup in 2013/2014.Interview to Paul Moreira:http://www.humanite.fr/derriere-les-masques-de-la-revolution-ukrainienne-597568Preview screening on January, 20th 2016 at FIPA Biarritz 29th edition, selected out of competition in Reportages and Investigation – Panorama of Creation category.Without them, there would have been no Ukrainian revolution.In February 2014, paramilitary groups fought against the police in the streets of Kyev and ousted President Yanukovych. They settled a new government.According to the western media, they were the revolution heroes. They ...
One of the claims of Albanian historiography is that the Central Balkan tribe – Dardanians, who settled in the southern portion of the territory of the Roman Province of Moesia Superior and northwestern part of the Roman Province of Macedonia, should be considered as one of the Illyrian tribes and an ancestor of the Albanians. With respect to this point, Albanian historians refer to the German linguist Norbert Jokl who wrote, according to the research of historical toponomastics, that the ancient cradle of the Albanians was Dardania, from where they moved westward to their present territories in late Roman times.[1] ...
June 5 marks the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War of conquest. Any objective examination of that war, and the events leading to and following it, make clear that the dominant narrative in the United States is reality turned upside down. It is “fake news” that is perpetrated on the public by the corporate media continually, right up to the present day.The Six Day War began on June 5, 1967. Israel launched the war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan with what could correctly called a “sneak attack,” although it is never referred to that way here. In the vocabulary of ...
The American Civil War The American Civil War (1861−1865) was a military conflict between the northern and the southern states of the USA which initially started as a political-economic revolt and desire for the independence by the southern states which created their own Confederacy not recognized by Washington. However, very soon the conflict was transformed into the war for the abolition of the slavery within the whole territory of the USA. In the first half of the 19th century, there was an increasing number of personalities mostly from the industrial northern states who called for the abolition of the slavery but ...
Uncovering the Western mainstream mass-media lies on Ukraine.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
The US military forces committed a classical example of the aggression on one sovereign and independent state on April 6th, 2017 by bombing a territory of Syrian Arab Republic by 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles killing civilians who are proclaimed as usually as “collateral damage”. A formal excuse for the aggression was based as many times before (from Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya… cases) on traditional political false flags and mainstream media fake news used by the US propaganda machinery to sanction the Pentagon’s hegemonic policy of the Pax Americana.The Fundamental DilemmaThe fundamental dilemma is why the US administrations of Obama ...
Each of the full-blown wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours have carried a great measure of significance. The War of 1948 led to the creation of the modern state of Israel, a cause for euphoria among the world’s Jews in the post-Shoah-era, in contrast to the Nakba inflicted on the Arabs of Palestine.The War of 1967, during which Israel routed three Arab armies in six days established Israel as a regional hegemon while its defeated Arab neighbours stewed in their humiliation and the Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza came under occupation.The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, known ...
In March [1999], the most powerful military force in history attacked tiny Yugoslavia (one fifth the size of Saskatchewan), and after seventy-nine days of flagrantly illegal bombing forced an occupation of Kosovo. Admitting its intention was to break Yugoslavia’s spirit, NATO targeted civilian structures, dropping over 23,000 bombs (500 Canadian) and cruise missiles in a campaign of terror bombing, described recently by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as follows:“I don’t see any difference in the behaviour of NATO and of Hitler. NATO wants to erect its own order in the world and it needs Yugoslavia simply as an example: We’ll punish Yugoslavia and ...
Global Research Editor’s NoteRatko Mladić has recently been convicted to life imprisonment by the the ICTY on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.This detailed account first published in 1998 by former UN Military Observer Carlos Martino Branco casts doubts on the decision of the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) that “genocide was committed in Srebrenica in 1995.”“…Bosnia Serb forces carried out genocide against the Bosnian Muslims (…) .Those who devise and implement genocide seek to deprive humanity of the manifold ...
Has your electric garage door stopped working? Does your dog wake up in the middle of the night and begin howling? Is the weather unseasonably hot, cold, windy, dry or wet? Has your television set (or refrigerator, or sound system or home alarm) inexplicably turned on, or off?If one uncritically viewed the corporate-controlled media and accepted at face value the statements of much of official Washington, especially the Democratic Party, one could easily draw the conclusion that the Russians did it.A paranoid frenzy is gripping the US political and media establishment. A ruling elite that commands the world’s largest economy ...
Bulgaria says there is no Macedonian language but rather it is a Bulgarian dialect. There is academic consensus that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. Albanians claim nearly half of North Macedonia in their project for Greater Albania. North Macedonia is a complex and complicated country, but despite this fact, on Friday, it became NATO’s thirtieth member, with Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, saying “North Macedonia is now part of the NATO family, a family of thirty nations and almost one billion people. A family based on the certainty that, no matter what challenges we face, we are all ...
A „rövid” XX. századot a balkáni lôporos hordó robbanása vezette be, és úgy látszik, addig nem is tud befejezôdni, amíg ezt a hordót jó mélyen és örökre el nem temetik. A koszovói konfliktus új fázisa – ha nem akarunk éppenséggel visszamenni az ôsidôkig, de legalábbis a rigómezei ütközetig (1389) vagy Arsenije Carnojevic és népe nagy elvándorlásáig (1698 – a tartomány szerb lakosága ekkor menekült el a török megtorlás elôl, és ekkor kezdôdött dél felôl az albánok tömeges betelepedése a lényegében lakatlanná vált területre) – nagyjából az elsô balkáni háborúval kezdôdött, és kisebb-nagyobb megszakításokkal tart ma is. A tartomány szerencsétlen helyen ...
Recommended alternative reading list on the Yugoslav studies not used by mainstream corporative Western mass-media and top Western universities dealing with global security, world politics and international relations. Reading proposed readers below you can complete picture on the Yugoslav studies out of the official Western approach.March Pogrom 2004 Book and Photo EvidenceKOSOVSKA GOLGOTA Intervju 198820 Principal Misconceptions on Kosovo IssueThe Srebrenica Massacre Evidence Context Politics Edward S Herman Phillip CorwinLista Diane Budisavljevic 1941 Do 1945 by Владислав Б. Сотировић/Vladislav B. SotirovićJosip Broz Tito Bez Maske! by Владислав Б. Сотировић/Vladislav B. SotirovićHayden Mass Killings and Images of Genocide in Bosnia by ...
Due to the international media’s continued claims about the «annexation of Crimea», it’s been difficult for the citizens of the US and Europe to make sense of the details of the peninsula’s recent history. Exactly three years ago, on March 16, 2014, the Crimeans were offered a choice: to rejoin Russia or to return to the constitution of 1992 that proclaimed Crimea a legal, democratic, secular state whose relationship with Ukraine was based on bilateral agreements. That constitution was unilaterally abolished by Kiev on March 17, 1995, and here’s what’s surprising: no one at that time in the West demanded that the Ukrainian ...
Following the death of President Tito in 1980 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia slid towards chaos. In the 1990s the plunge accelerated into civil war and one of the regions most affected was Kosovo from which Serbia withdrew after a NATO bomb and rocket offensive from 24 March to 11 June 1999. That blitz involved over 1,000 mainly American aircraft conducting some 38,000 airstrikes on Yugoslavia that killed approximately 500 civilians and destroyed much of the economic and social infrastructure of the region.NATO said its air bombardment was essential to halt repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and justified the ...
The German occupation forces were those who have been the first to create and recognize a short-lived state’s independence of Ukraine in January 1918 during the time of their-own inspired and supported anti-Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917−1921. As reoccupied by the Bolshevik Red Army, the eastern and southern parts of the present-day territory of (a Greater) Ukraine joined in 1922 the USSR as a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (without Crimea). According to the 1926 Soviet census of Crimea, the majority of its population were the Russians (382.645). The second-largest ethnic group were the Tartars (179.094). Therefore, a Jew V. I. ...
During the last decade the deteriorating political and military situation in the world have proved the necessity of well prepared Armed Forces.It is obvious that the level of patriotism in Lithuania is high as ever. Many young men are thinking to join the Armed Forces and be useful to the country. The government only should maintain and strengthen this trend. But battling with numerous political and economical problems the government is going to make some changes in military sphere that could have far-reaching adverse consequences.It should be said that today there is a serious gap in providing the national Armed ...
In another grim milestone for the United States and NATO, the Council of Europe (COE) released an explosive report last week, “Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo.”The report charged that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) boss and current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, “is the head of a ‘mafia-like’ Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe,” The Guardian disclosed.According to a draft resolution unanimously approved December 16 in Paris, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights found compelling evidence of forced disappearances, organ trafficking, corruption and collusion between ...
Harry Truman surprised Americans with his call for European-style government guaranteed health care for all, Johnson with the extent of the Great Society reforms, and even Nixon with the avalanche of regulatory legislation and social spending he approved, outperforming Johnson on a number of “Keynesian” fronts. Hillary Clinton will offer no such surprises. Her consistent record in the context of the Party’s rightward gallop allows us to infer with iron confidence what we can expect from the Monstress on both the foreign and domestic fronts.Her coming onslaught against the working population combines neoliberal austerity with some of the dominant strategies ...
