© Eddie Gerald / Demotix / Demotix / Corbis
Not to get all experiential on you , but what does it mean to be a “ real nation ” ? As it turns out , people have been trying to answer that question for the last 400 year .
In 1648 , a bunch of tiptop potent men — the Holy Roman Emperor , the Habsburgs , King Louis XIV ’s luxuriously - heeled diplomatist , to name a few — got together and sign two pact , which later on became known as the Peace of Westphalia , create an international organisation in which only self-governing state of matter , and no semi - state - ish minor provinces , had the king to engage war and conduct business deal .
Three hundred years afterward , in 1934 , a unlike bunch of powerful men beget together at the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States with a related to schedule : to press out what the heck it mean to be a sovereign state in the first lieu .
The resulting pact specify a commonwealth as having the following :
It noted specifically that “ the political beingness of a state is independent of realization by other state of matter . ” So by that definition , lots of breaking away dominion , like Abkhazia or Somaliland , could be reckon full - fledged state properly now , but some live states – like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta , for example , which has no dominion – is not .
But here ’s the zinger : clause 11 of that pact forbids the utilization of military strength to obtain reign , and by that criterion , nearly none of the breaking away regions in the public would be real country . And for that matter , neither would the United States . Remember that whole Revolutionary War thing ?
Bottom credit line ? Many of the wannabe res publica in the world are already the genuine McCoy by some definition . But they ’ll only get the right and privileges of “ real ” nations when most of the outside community recognizes them , which is what just happened in South Sudan .
