The United States and many other countries do informally ‘recognize’ Taiwan–that is, treat it as a state in (virtually) all but name.
Er… that’s kind of my point: practical matters–physical facts, and real relationships, apart from technicalities and doublespeak–are what matter most. If the US turns it back on Taiwan, nothing has changed by constitutive theory–Taiwan was not formally recognized either way–but practical reality has.
So we are agreed.
Yes, and one of those “real relationships” (and, in fact, the only really important one) is - wait for it - recognition by other states!
This has nothing to do with the debate between “declarative” and “constructive” academic legalism - at least, not on my side. To my mind, de facto “recognition” is just as important as de jure.
ISIS, of course, will get neither (unless it changes its goals in the future). No significant state will willingly treat as a “state” an entity that, by its very nature, has no respect for the concept of state sovereignty. How can they?
The boundaries are in flux, but much of the territory and population has been firmly theirs for over a year. Including Raqqa and Mosul, whatever Wikipedia says.
Right. I suspect that, ironically, their chances of success may be the greater because some parties don’t want to acknowledge how much they’ve already done, how state-like their operation is.
Look at the overthrow of the Afghan Taliban in 2001. That was a generally unrecognized* state, but the Bush II administration ‘recognized’ (understood) that it was a state, and didn’t worry too much about the formal details. Bush himself called it a “regime,” and referred to Afghans as “its own people,” and similar phraseology as used for wholly recognized authoritarian governments. More to the point, the campaign to depose them was undertaken as a war on a state.
Do you honestly not see the direct contradiction here?
No. What is “directly contradictory” in stating that recognition, whether it be de facto or de jure, is the most important thing?
Until then it wants to be a state, hence calling itself Islamic State.
Is The Atlantic on Ravenman’s list of approved sources ? Otherwise I’m afraid you’ll have to find something Worthy and True to quote.
I would suggest you concentrate on improving your argument as opposed to worrying which sources of journalism I like.
I suggest you hold your fingers away from your keyboard when it comes to vetting other people’s sources without the necessary insight to do so.
Man, you’re treating a few sentences I wrote criticizing Cockburn as if I violated the hadith prohibiting depictions of Mohammad.
Bush II is a pretty terrible example of how to go about foreign relations. It’s like citing Chef Boyardee as an authority on fine dining.
I don’t think you’re on target with this line of argument. Literally everyone recognized Afghanistan as a state, but only those countries you mentioned recognized the Taliban government.
There’s a very long history of countries recognizing that a chunk of land between various borders is indeed a state, but disagreeing as to who constitutes the legitimate government of that state.
This is in contrast to our current debate, in which the question is whether land under the military control of a terrorist organization ought to be recognized as no longer part of the country of Syria.
You’re getting all worked up about nothing, just let the current affairs info flow freely and you’ll be much better off.
“Islamic state” doesn’t have the same meaning as a “state” does in normal usage. Basically, they mean a government that rules strictly in accordance with Islamic law. Their actual goal is not a “state” as we know it, but a worldwide caliphate.
The “Islamic State” currently claims territories that belong to a bunch of other states and are not contiguous (for example, it claims bits of Egypt and the North Caucasus). It makes no sense to call these bits “parts of the Islamic State” if it was a state as we know states, but makes perfect sense to call them “parts of the Islamic State” in their view of an “Islamic State” - namely, they are bits of the caliphate-to-come.
And here all these people are arguing over whether to apply the normal usage or not.
You might have just shown everyone for fools who should properly check what ISIS itself means by state. 
What* do* they mean ?
It’s aspirational. They were calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, well before they had control of any meaningful portion of Iraq.
An “Islamic state” is an entity that governs itself by Islamic law (this can, and does, include entities which we think of as “states” - but is not necessarily limited to them).
ISIS clarified exactly what form of entity they wanted to become when they proclaimed themselves to be the Caliphate.
This was a bold step in Islamic jurisprudence - even al-Quida never actually proclaimed itself the Caliphate.
Hence, the “Islamic State” doesn’t exist in just one place (although actual control of at least some territory was nesessary as a precursor for its proclamation). It exists in Syria, but it also exists in the Caucasus (even though the latter is still formally owned by a “state”).
Any quotes from them on what they mean ?
Eh, ISIS can’t really do that for doctrinal reasons. Their leadership would not even accept recognition from other States, or they would denounce/mock it if it was offered. Additionally, they control a patchwork of territories in Syria and Iraq, some of which they exercise fairly consistent control over while others they hold because one of their patrols “subjugated” the area and no one else has been through again to “take it away.” Some areas they only control for the purposes of levying tolls on passerby or collecting oil from oil fields in said area. It’s missing a lot of the working pieces to sit down and become a state in the first place.
Not to mention it is actively fighting the Iraqi military in Iraq, supported by airstrikes from the United States. It is also actively fighting the other rebel groups in Syria and to a lesser degree Assad’s forces (Assad’s territory largely doesn’t directly border ISIS territory, yet–but if the recent influx of Russian support leads to large losses for the non-ISIS rebels it will eventually.) It is fighting Kurds in Northern Iraq and Norther Syria. There’s like 5-6 entities it’s actively at war with if not more and it’s going to be unrealistic that the West saying “we’re okay with ISIS” is going to make those entities stop fighting ISIS and sit down and settle up a stable state–assuming in your scenario ISIS had any interest in doing that.
I don’t really think that is true. No one has denied or is unaware of the fact that in parts of their territories (mostly the large cities that they’ve held continuously over time), they enforce civilian laws using their draconian brand of Islamic law, or that they collect taxes, or that they run oil fields, or that they collect tolls etc.
But Statehood is a very modern concept. While it can possibly be applied to forms of government from hundreds or thousands of years ago, it often, or even most of the time, doesn’t make sense to do so. The Frankish Kingdom that was ruled by Charles Martel (as Mayor of the Palace–the crowned King in said Kingdom was akin to the Shogunate era Japanese Emperor in that he had no actual power) actually fits all modern definitions of statehood, as did the Roman Empire or even areas controlled by the Mongols under Genghis Khan. But as a matter of practicality those ancient governments were so materially different from government and “states” today that most people just consider them pre-modern civilizations and don’t dig too far into trying to apply modern conceptions of statehood to them. A big problem with all of those I mentioned other than the Roman Empire is land wasn’t really associated with a legal entity like a state, but with individual rulers, and when they died the ruler(s) (usually more than one) who succeeded them often now ruled land with dramatically different borders. This is because the land, the people, and the government were essentially based on feudal personal ownership concepts and it’s hard to mesh modern concepts of statehood with those realities.
I’d argue in resurrecting a very pre-modern form of government, ISIS is best thought of in those terms. They’re much more akin an ancient war band that has subjugated some territory than any modern state. Ancient warlords collected taxes and enforced laws and did other things as well, but they didn’t really sit atop a legal/political entity we’d call a state.