Not sure if this is really GQ, but I guess I’m not sure where’s better, for now.
Bouvet Island is an unihabited, pretty much unapproachable, island located between Antarctica and South Africa. It belongs to, of all nations, Norway. As far as I can tell, there are no reasons for any commercial interest in the island. Norway just has it because…they do. A Norwegian ship landed there, they claimed it, it’s theirs.
Now, if some significant militia group decided that they were going to take over the island and declare it their own country - what would Norway do about it? Other than the fact that it’s bad form to let anyone walk in and take your country’s territory, is the Norwegian navy going to fight for a rock that has no Norwegian citizens in residence, and no exploitable resources? Does Norway have any military units operating from bases anywhere close to Bouvet - and by “close” I mean anywhere south of the equator? (Or perhaps they’d depend on NATO’s mutual defense structure to use UK units based in the Falkland Islands?)
In a nutshell, what’s in it for Norway to have that remote and mostly (if not totally) useless island be their territory, and how far are they likely to go to keep it that way?
Norway gained Bouvet Island during the same decade we were laying claim to every bit of the Arctic and Antarctic* that was available, and some that weren’t. In part this was motivated by Norway’s economic interests in whaling and sealing, in part it was an extension of the spirit of Arctic and Antarctic exploration a decade after everything had been done, and in part it was pure nationalism.
Bouvet turned out to be utterly useless, except for giving us a claim to a large bit of ocean around it that I don’t think is used for anything at the moment, and the current Norwegian focus is on research and protecting a vulnerable ecology.
If anyone decided to take over the island and declare it their own country Norway would:
Not accept the claim.
Demand that no other nation accept the claim.
Recommend they leave.
Beyond that I expect we would:
Leave them there to play house if they weren’t doing any harm.
Find the best approach to remove the occupants that didn’t wreck the island if they were a threat to the environment. Perhaps send down a vessel to blockade the island.
But why would anyone want to take it over in the first place?
*(Bouvet is technically to far north to be part the Antarctic.)
An answer that comes to mind might be for the Exclusive Economic Zone that comes with land ownership. Per the wiki, the EEZ entitles the owner to certain exclusive rights, within a 200 mile radius of the shoreline. Often, with oil and fisheries, those rights have significant economic value. See, e.g., the Spratley Islands. Or the fishery fights in the North Atlantic.
However, for Bouvet, I don’t know if the fishery has any real value, and messing around with Google Earth doesn’t show me any sea bottom closer than around 7500 feet from the surface. True, you can drill for oil that deep now, set up a FPSO, etc…but it’s a pain and therefore expensive. And, being in the Furious Fifties, the weather & waves down there are excruciatingly unpleasant, which makes everything even more expensive. Finally, you’re a long way from anything there, which makes supplying the drillship and FPSO a PITA, and, again, very expensive.
So, it’s probably a case of “just because.” I believe Norway’s Antarctica claims in Queen Maud Land have nothing to do with Bouvet; they just happen to lie within the same longitude boundaries, and so losing Bouvet wouldn’t cripple any claims that Norway has in Queen Maud Land. This might be important if the Antarctic Treaty ever got rescinded and large, economically exploitable mineral deposits were discovered in Antarctica
RE: the what Norway would do if it was taken? question. What happened with regards to NATO during the Falkland Islands crisis in 1982? Could the U.K. have relied on its NATO privileges to obligate the other NATO countries to assist it against Argentina? I understand that, for national pride and other reasons, that wasn’t done, but could the U.K. have used the NATO treaty to force other signatories to assist it?
NATO’s charter only applies to Northern Europe, North America, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer:
The UK couldn’t invoke NATO during the Falklands War because of this; although other NATO member nations can offer their support of their own volition; they’re just not required to by treaty.
The “rocks” portion of UNCLOS Article 121, I thought applied to such rocks as were awash or submerged at high tide, like Kingman Reef? I didn’t think it applied to islands the size of Bouvet. I’d love to see some UNCLOS Arbitration rulings on what exactly is a “rock” vs. an uninhabited island.
Here is the chart deposited with UNCLOS detailing Norway’s claim to Bouvet’s EEZ. (.PDF, and the UN’s server is glacial.) Link to UNCLOS listing of all charts of Norwegian EEZ’s deposited with UNCLOS.
Hmmm, maybe it wasn’t a EEZ until they did this, as I thought there was a chart deposit requirement in order to claim the EEZ? Looks like someone might have found oil after all…especially considering this quote from the Executive Summary of the Continental Shelf Submission of Norway:
Thanks for the NATO quotes/links, wevets. Ignorance fought.
Ron: “Oh this place just screams lair. Look at all the chrome. And you’ve got doors that go ‘whoosh’”.
Senor Senior, Sr.: “I like the ‘whoosh.’ It’s the door saying, ‘I am closed.’”
Wouldn’t be very secret if you declared it a republic now, would it? If you wanted it secret you’d leave us Norwegians thinking everything was hunky-dory.
There’s some precedent for reactions to claiming an island that’s not yours. We can start with the Falklands War of 1982. Yes. the Falklands are much more economically important, less isolated, less hostile a climate, and the dispute was between two nations with large militaries. But, still, it’s just silly to expect a nation to roll over and play dead for anyone. Yes, the republic of Sealand still endures, but other sea platform nations have been reclaimed by the closest nation.
When the island of Surtsey rose from the waters around Iceland, before it was considered safe to land, French reporters from Paris Match magazine landed and planted a French flag, as a joke. The Icelandic government didn’t find the joke funny.
You’d have to make sure the vast underground labyrinth was clear of Predators and maybe Aliens as well!
That’s where the first Alien vs Predator movie was set…
If you want to camp out on a few square miles of lava fields, 93% of which is covered by permanent ice, knock yourself out.
This is a Straight Dope perennial. Every few months, someone has the bright idea of finding an uninhabited island and setting up their own country. Except the problem with setting up your own country is that nobody will care. You’re free to declare your living room a sovereign nation, and you know what the United States Government will do about it? Absolutely nothing. Unless you stop paying your taxes, or try to build a machine gun tower without a permit, or grow pot, or shoot people who set foot on your territory.
Since no one else will recognize your country, the value of the exclusive economic zone around “your” island is zero, because when Exxon sets up a drilling platform they aren’t going to pay you anything, they’ll pay Norway, or whatever actual country claims the islands.
Other than that, you’re free to move to any uninhabited area in the world and set up camp there. Just expect to be arrested if you violate the laws of the real country that claims the territory, if they ever find out about you and if they bother. As for moving in with a militia and defending yourself against the police force of the claiming country, well, how are these militia people getting paid? What do they eat? Where do they live? How do they get resupplied? These uninhabited islands are uninhabited for a reason, they don’t suddenly become economically valuable just because there’s no law enforcement there.
Countries are fictions that only exist because everyone agrees to act as if they exist. So you can’t create an independent country just by proclaiming one, you have to convince everyone else to agree that you have an independent country. And why would they do that? What’s in it for them?
For that matter, even uninhabited islands are claimed by at least some country. If memory serves, the only land areas on Earth that are not claimed by any country are a wedge of land in Antarctica (which nobody wants because it’s inaccessible, even by Antarctic standards) and Bir Tawil, a small quadrilateral of land on the Egypt-Sudan border.