Tuvalu Unfriends Abkhazia & South Ossetia in Wake of Crimean Annexation

Tuvalu, one of the smallest nations in the world, retracted this week its diplomatic recognition of two Russian puppet states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and restored diplomatic ties with the Republic of Georgia, the state most of the world recognizes as having legitimate ownership of the territories.

The two mountainous republics in the South Caucasus achieved de facto independence from Georgia after the fall of communism through ethnic cleansing and the help of Russia.  In 2008, after a brief war with Georgia, Russia established Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “independent states.”  So far they have had diplomatic recognition only from Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and three Pacific island nations: Nauru, Tuvalu, and—briefly and confusingly (as reported in this blog at the time)—Vanuatu.

Taukelina Finikaso, who is Tuvalu’s foreign minister, was in Georgia on March 31st to finalize the transfer of recognition.  Finikaso also holds the cabinet’s trade, tourism, environment, and labor portfolios.  When your country is 10 square miles and has just over 10,000 people, a cabinet minister must wear many hats.  Tuvalu’s main industries are tourism, subsistence fishing, and the leasing out of its coveted Internet domain suffix, “.tv,” which can also stand for “television.”

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, future king and queen,
visited Tuvalu recently.

Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands before becoming independent of the United Kingdom in 1978, established diplomatic relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2011.  Before taking over the reins of government in an election last year, Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga had criticized the previous administration’s granting of recognition, which was done without consulting parliament.  But the crisis in Crimea seems to have forced Sopoaga to act more quickly.  With the international community lining up to condemn Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula earlier this month, being a diplomatic partner to the two Caucasus puppet states may prove to be more of a liability than it had been before.  The world is clearly willing to make more of a fuss over Crimea than it ever did over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Russian (left) and South Ossetian flags

Tuvalu, Nauru, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are also among the 22 nations in the world that have diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan)—a closer neighbor of the Pacific nations—rather than with the People’s Republic of China.

The flag of Abkhazia

Georgia’s foreign minister, Maia Panjikidze, said during the signing ceremony (see photo at the top of this article), “Georgia welcomes the establishment of diplomatic relations with Tuvalu and expresses hope that such decision by Tuvalu will become an example for those states, which recognize Georgia’s occupied regions through violating the fundamental principles of international law.”

[You can read more about these and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

She Recognizes Me, She Recognizes Me Not: Fickle Vanuatu Dumps Abkhazia for Georgia

Ah, fickle youth!  Older nations like the United States and the major nations of Europe are more staid and loyal in their relationships, but young states still in their national adolescence often split up and pair up as their hormones dictate.  Such was the case this week when Vanuatu (age 32) started a relationship with Georgia (age 21) after unceremoniously dumping its former flame, Abkhazia (age 4—a bit young for romance, but, well, kids—what are you gonna do?).

Conflicting reports from different branches of the Republic of Vanuatu’s government last year left it unclear for a while whether the South Pacific island nation (formerly the New Hebrides) would be one of the handful of independent states to grant diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia.  Those two Moscow-aligned countries in the South Caucasus region unilaterally seceded from the newly independent Republic of Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and then were established more formally as independent states when Georgia tried unsuccessfully to reclaim them in a 2008 war with Russia.

Currently, Abkhazia and South Ossetia receive diplomatic recognition only from the Russian Federation (which sponsors them—“puppet state” not being too strong a word for the relationship); from two leftist-governed Latin American nations—Venezuela and Nicaragua—which do so only to piss off the United States; and by the minuscule Pacific island nations of the Republic of Nauru (the third-smallest country in the world), Tuvalu (the fourth-smallest), and, at one point, Vanuatu.  Tuvalu and Nauru are also among the only 23 countries in the world to recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan), and they do so for the same reason, pretty much: to qualify for lucrative development deals with Russia and Taiwan, respectively.  Taiwan explicitly courts western Pacific nations to extend its marine strategic reach, and it is probably these small states’ willingness to forego the economic benefits of ties with the People’s Republic of China for a cosy relationship with Taiwan that brought them to the attention of the Kremlin in the first place as potential “marks.”

Last year the media and the diplomatic world were jerked back and forth by conflicting reports from Vanuatu’s foreign ministry and the prime minister’s office as to whether it recognized Abkhazia in particular.  For a while it looked as though it were firmly in the recognition camp, but now, on March 18th, Vanuatu’s foreign ministry said that it recognizes only the Republic of Georgia, not Abkhazia.

Abkhazia’s coat of arms

There is similar confusion as to whether the Republic of Kiribati—which consists of 32 Micronesian atolls spread across a million square miles of Pacific—recognizes the two South Caucasus mini-states as well.  Kiribati, a former colony of the United Kingdom, is also a diplomatic partner of Taiwan’s.

Official seal of the Republic of South Ossetia

Russia’s sponsorship of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence (to say nothing of Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh) represents a kind of double standard, since it is also stonewalling the Republic of Kosovo’s NATO-sponsored quest for United Nations membership on the grounds that it does not want to encourage separatism within its own sometimes-fissiparous federation.  Vanuatu, during its honeymoon with Abkhazia, seems to have had no similar qualms, despite the fact that its own transition to independence in the late 1970s was complicated by the “Coconut War,” during which three separate portions of the archipelago tried to split away: Tanna (a.k.a. Tafea) in the south, N’Makiaute, and Espiritu Santo in the north (which sought independence as the Republic of Vemerana in an insurrection incited by a Lithuanian-American libertarian millionaire).

Don’t worry.  We’ll protect you from NATO.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

In U.N. Vote, Palestine Gains Nearly the Last Remaining Markers of Sovereign Statehood

Some countries that win their independence get it all at once.  Others achieve it in painful, incremental steps over decades.  The State of Palestine is in the second category.  Yesterday, November 29, 2012, the State of Palestine was admitted as an “observer state”—not member state—in the United Nations General Assembly.  This is the same status that Switzerland had before 2002 and which Vatican City still has—both of them long recognized by the entire world as true, sovereign states in every sense of the word.

What is—or rather, perhaps, will eventually be seen to be as—the date of Palestine’s independence?  1948?  1974?  1988?  1993?  2011?  2012?

Palestinians were offered an independent state after the Second World War, as part of the same U.N. plan that created the State of Israel, but Palestinians did not want their homeland divided and half given away to new arrivals, so they rejected the plan, and Israel filled the entire vacuum created by the United Kingdom’s relinquishment of its Palestinian mandate, and Israel forced aside as many Palestinians as it felt it needed to in order to build a nation in its enlarged allocation.  The seeds of decades of grievance were planted.

Born in two disconnected shards of territory—the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—relinquished by Jordan and Egypt in the 1970s after their defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, the idea of a newly sovereign Palestine arose gradually, with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.).  The P.L.O. was granted “observer” status in the U.N. General Assembly in 1974 as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” but it was not a member state.  The P.L.O.’s government-in-exile declared independence in 1988, and one by one nations around the world, starting with its Arab allies, recognized it.  Not just the Muslim states that never—and in some cases still don’t—recognize Israel, but eventually most of the world.  Perhaps the moment when states recognizing Palestine tipped above 50%, whenever that was (some time in the 1990s?) could be thought of as its independence day.

In 1993, the concrete trappings of statehood—the administration of actual territory—came with the Oslo Accords.  These agreements created the Palestinian National Authority, which now governs Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank.  In exchange, the P.L.O. and Fatah (which governs the West Bank) officially pursue a two-state solution and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

In 2011, Palestine applied for full member-state status in the U.N.—a symbolic gesture, since it was a foregone conclusion that the United States—Israel’s only true ally—would use its veto power as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to block the move, despite the fact that the motion had an overwhelming majority of member states supporting it.

This time around, with a revised goal of observer-state status, vetoes are not possible; it is a clear vote by the General Assembly.  The vote yesterday was 138-9 in favor of admission, with 41 abstentions and 5 absences.

The “yes” votes included the Security Council members Russia, China, and France; and major nations such as India, Pakistan, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia, Spain, Italy, Austria, all of Scandinavia, nearly all of Latin America, the entire Muslim world, nearly all of Africa, etc. etc.

The 41 abstentions included NATO and other U.S. allies such as Australia, the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea, as well as NATO and other western-leaning countries in eastern Europe which are known for their slavish adherence to U.S. foreign policy: Poland, the Baltic States, Slovakia, and so on.  But even these countries would not go along fully with the U.S. denial of the arc of history.

The eight “no” votes were the U.S., Israel, Canada, the Czech Republic (see “slavish adherence,” previous paragraph), four former U.S. colonies (Panama, plus the quasi-independent Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau), and Nauru, an eight-square-mile speck in the Pacific which is the third-smallest country in the world.  If there were ever any doubt that the U.S. was on the wrong side of history on this question, this pathetic list drives the point home once and for all.

How U.N. member states voted on Palestinian statehood this week.  “Yes” votes are in green, “no” votes in red, abstentions in yellow, and absences in blue.

So what does this mean in practical terms?  Not much right off the bat.  Palestine already enjoys diplomatic relations of a sort with much of the world and deals, to all practical purposes, as a sovereign state with nearly every country—even those that do not recognize it diplomatically, including Israel.  But now all of the things Israel does to Palestine—bombing its cities, blockading its ports, building illegal armed settlements in its territory, assassinating its leaders—are acts of aggression by one state against another.  So, of course—and very justly so—are Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.  No longer can Hamas hide behind the legalistic ambiguities enjoyed by “non-state actors.”  In the long term, this is the best thing for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people both; their fates are intertwined, and they both deserve equal amounts of dignity and recognition—and responsibility for being peaceful global citizens.

Meanwhile, not only the terrorists of Hamas but also Israel’s bloodthirsty generals, its unaccountable and amoral intelligence agencies, and its ultra-right-wing fanatical West Bank settlers—who do not represent the Israeli people as a whole, it should be said—all of them are stomping mad about what happened yesterday.  That’s perhaps the surest sign that this was the right thing to do.

Happy birthday, Palestine.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]