A state depends on existence of cities and an army? So, a place like the Seychelles probably doesn’t count as a state because it doesn’t have anything you’d count as a city?
Nitpick away. Might makes right. Either directly or from allies. If tomorrow, I had a million strong robot army with surface to air missiles and enough robot infantry to cause a million casualties to attacking U.S. Army soldiers, if I declare my home town is a private state, whatcha gonna do. I guess the other nations of the world could refuse to acknowledge it for a while, but it wouldn’t change the fact that
(a) I control my home town and no one is willing to pay the price to stop me
(b) I can enforce laws and collect taxes and provide services
© The United States does not control my home town, ergo, if it isn’t their state territory, then it must belong to me.
I would say in this hypothetical, my “town” is in fact a real state. The reason why people who declare themselves rules of micro-nations are not states is they lack the military force to actually stop the local authorities from showing up and getting their way. In my hypothetical, the million strong killbot army means the local police are *not *welcome and I would patrol the streets with police who obey rules that I wrote.
Guerillas are not states because they can’t hold ground of any sort - they depend on deception. They are forced to flee if the local authorities show up, they can’t stand, fight, and win.
I’ve been looking at what Jurgen Todenhofer has to say after his trip into ISIS, and he thinks it has the characteristics of a state.
He says some pretty alarming things about it too, which I think we will see more of in the near future, including that they plan to wipe out a large proportion of the human race - the atheists, pagans and apostates.
“The terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS. ISIS intends to get its hands on nuclear weapons,” says Todenhofer, calling the group a “nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history.”
I once saw a similar analysis applied to comic book superheroes (or villains.) If Superman declares himself a “sovereign state,” who’s gonna dispute it? His sovereign territory is variable, while we have a tradition of fixed borders, but traditions sometimes change when circumstances do.
My questions above were meant to point out that there are places in the world with far better functioning governments than IS yet they are not states. As others have said, they are not states because other states do not regard them as states. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, IS is in parts of Syria and Iraq. That recognition is the last little bit.
Taken as an aggregate, the responses in this thread make it clear we all recognize there is a continuum toward statehood. A government of a territory aspiring to be a state needs to fulfill many vital functions as it progresses toward statehood. That last little bit they need is to get other nations to recognize their sovereignty. Without it, they can be invaded at will by the government recognized as controlling the territory.
Nobody worries about invading IS territory because it isn’t a state, but they do worry about violating Syria’s territory.
Nobody seriously regards Turkey’s war with the PKK as an invasion of Kurdistan.
Nobody seriously believes Colombia’s war with the FARC is an invasion of their homeland.
Right. I think some people are assuming, for whatever reason, that calling ISIS a state is somehow a simplifying, pragmatic option.
It isn’t.
Nations have many rights and entitlements. We would tie our hands in combat and diplomatically.
Of course you could argue that we could ignore all of our obligations and continue to try to bomb them out of existence, just like Iraq.
However, the difference with Iraq is that many countries still respected Iraq’s sovereignty in many ways. With ISIS, virtually all countries want it to cease to exist. It’s meaningless labelling it as a state while almost all countries will not treat it like one.
Does your theory apply in reverse - that any government in exile has no claim to the legitimacy because they didn’t have a big enough army? As in, you would have not recognized de Gaulle during WW2 because his army wasn’t strong enough?
Allies count. Literally. De Gaulle had the backing of the world’s most powerful nations.
In my hypothetical example, the robots aren’t undefeatable, but they are so lethal that the cost to take back “my hometown” is too much for the USA or any of it’s allies.
the origins of IS looks quite a lot like the post colonial, militaristic, proxy mess that was South Vietnam.
In other words, it counts because according to your personal, arbitrary definition. Just like not doesn’t count toward my personal arbitrary definition.
What are we trying to figure out on the exercise, beyond philosophizing about the nature of a state?
Some people seem to think that agreeing IS is a state will cause it to be taken more seriously. What you call it doesn’t change their reach or other parts of reality. And frankly we tend to treat actual states with a lighter touch (North Korea, anyone?), and with more concern with their sovereignty.
To me, the only thing that really changes if something is a state or not is the role of diplomacy and the use of international organizations. Frankly, I don’t see diplomacy or negotiation as an option, so these two aren’t relevant.
These guys are a bunch of whackos who lucked in to an ungoverned area awash with arms and oil. They get to play post office for a while until they run out of money, attack the wrong grizzly, or self-destruct due to in-fighting.
This is where recognition, or not, comes into play. Even more so, treaty and organizational memberships. IS has none of those, so acknowledging their state(-like) nature does not “tie our hands.”
I think you stand a better chance of defeating an enemy when you are clear about its nature. It’s not only constructs and labels.
I disagree that there would be any issue if we were to decide that ISIL constituted a state, with the caveat that under the UN Charter, no government is supposed to question the territorial integrity of another state – so by saying ISIL is a state, one is actually saying that Syria has been permanently changed.
But the fact is that ISIL is no more a state than are a bunch of nuts who take over an oil platform and declare themselves to be Weedondia or whatever.
They are actually ruling several million people. Inside the recognized borders of Syria and Iraq, but for which the governments of those states have no presence, no effective authority. How can any discussion of “fact” ignore this?
Nobody recognizes the Islamic State, which is pretty much the sine qua non of the four classical elements of statehood. Certainly, though, ISIS territory approximates a nation-state in many ways.
What is, or isn’t, a “state” is a fruitless definitional exercise.
The far more significant question is whether this entity is formally recognized as having the legal attributes of a “state” - such as the ability to make binding treaties, or have sovereign rights that other, recognized “states” feel bound to respect.
Therefore, it is not some list of attributes that is important, but recognition by other states. Or rather, internal attributes are only important in one way - that they are the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions of obtaining recognition from other states already recognized as such (things like ‘a monopoly of force’, ‘unity of government’ and ‘control of a defined territory’).
Part of the issue of recognition is that it has to be mutual - the entity, whatever it is, has to be both willing and able to in effect ‘buy in’ to the system of nation-states (doesn’t mean it has to be nice and moral - can be totally evil - but it at least has to recognize the existance of other states, be caoable of making agreements with them, etc.).
It is sort of like membership in a club - the internal characteristics qualify one for membership, but one has to, in effect, want to be a member, and be willing to at least pay lip service to the rules of the club; and the other members have to recognize you as such (this of course leads to all sorts of problems, where various “states” have terrible emnity against each other, and so refuse such recognition for this reason).
ISIS clearly isn’t a “state” right now, because it isn’t recognized as one in this sense. The more interesting question is whether ISIS could be a “state”. In my opinion, it could not, unless it changed its apparent ideology - because that ideology, as it currently stands, is inimical to the very system of “states” that grants recognition: what it wants is a universal caliphate, not a “state” within a system of states.
Now, such ideological change (de jure or de facto) isn’t unprecidented - after all, the Soviet Union started off somewhat similarly, as a “universal revolution”, but soon enough saw the merits of becomming, efectively, a “state” (as in Stalin’s “socialism in one country” versus Trotsky’s “permanent revolution”). Note that this had nothing to do with Stalin being a good guy - just that he was willing to ‘buy in’, even if for the most cynical of motives, to the state system. ISIS would have to do the same.
Excellent points. Daesh is an illegal entity that, for the time, controls a certain area of two states, but that no other state recognizes as a state. As such, it is like any other illegal entity that temporarily controls some amount of territory.
Because statehood is basically an acknowledgment of legitimacy. The overwhelming number of nations, and the consensus interpretation of international law, is that reigns of terror are not necessarily legitimate.
Our local council isn’t doing a great job. Time to send an all expenses paid council delegation for a two week fact finding trip to Kigale, cocktails and sauna included.
Why are you guys ignoring the physical nature of it? As I said a buncha times, it doesn’t matter if other nations *acknowledge *you have a state, it matters on whether or not you can shoot anyone who disagrees and hold a defined territory that isn’t going to fall anytime soon.
That’s all that matters. If ISIS has a sustainable income and enough military that they will likely be around controlling roughly the same area in 10 years, they are a state. Doesn’t matter if they get an embassy or not.