Wow, thanks. That was a lot more information than I was expecting. =)
Many of the smallest countries were inside the US.
There certainly are. The next smallest countries after Vatican City and Monaco are Tuvalu, Nauru, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Marshall Islands, in that order. Those are all the countries of less than 100 sq miles (~ 250 sq km) in area. Andorra is way down the list at 15th smallest.
Quoth Barking Dog:
That’s all that you have to do, but the harder part is getting other countries to recognize you. There’s no such thing as an absolute standard of sovreignity (there are probably countries which don’t recognize the United States), but the more countries recognize you, the stronger your claim is. When you get to cases like Sealand and the Conch Republic, nobody (or almost nobody) recognizes their claims, but nobody really cares enough to actually do anything about it, either.
Incidentally, do Sealand and the Conch Republic officially recognize each other?
There’s the Hutt River Province of Australia.
The man who invented the Segway owns an island off of Connecticut called North Dumpling. He signed a mutal nonaggression pact with President Bush the Elder.
It’s been tried - a chap called Michael Oliver found a coral atol in the Pacific that was just below sea level, so he built it up so it was above sea level then declared it the Republic of Minerva.
Only one country recognised it as an independent state - Tonga - who promptly invaded and annexed it.
The moral is, if you want to set up your own island state, get yourself an army.
Further to clairobscur’s information, it seemed to me whan I visited Vatican City, that the gaudily-dressed Swiss Guards in their Renaissance uniforms (the ones that make them look like circus clowns) were mostly there for tradition’s sake, and for the tourists to photograph.
The real guarding was done by Swiss Guards who were not in such prominent positions, but were still visible, making their rounds. If I recall correctly, they were dressed in modern police uniforms, each armed with what looked like a semi-automatic pistol (9mm Glock?) in a holster, and a few were carrying some kind of machine gun (Ingram or Uzi, that sort of shape).
A little more than just knives, in other words.
But you know, for crowd control, a halberd isn’t so bad. And, I’d guess that since it has territory-eventho small- citizens- and is recgonized by quite a few nations, SMOM really is a country.
Now another aspect- which is the smallest 100% independent nation? Monaco, the Vatican, and others are really “semi-autonomous”. I’d say Luxemburg?
What’s the smallest in the UN? Tuvalu?