3.3.3
There are roughly 192-193 current sovereign states in today’s world
There is 192, but number 193 is on the way, and that is East Timor
There is another dozen or two dozen areas in the world that are trying to become Sovereign states either
now or in the very near future
A.
Likely new states: Palestine, will probably have in lifetime, Greenland. Colonial territory of
Denmark
B.
Possibly future states: Scotland: Part of the UK, Quebec: referendums in past to vote themselves
into independence, close votes
C.
Violently trying to be a state: Chechnya in Russia: trying for about a decade, Basque in Spain,
Transnistria in Moldova, The Kurds: Kurdistan for 100-200 years
D.
Can never be states: can never gain sovereignty in today’s standards because in each of their
cases there is a veto-wielding member of the permanent un security council, Taiwan, Kosovo,
South Ossetia, and Abkhazia
Taiwan: little island off the coast of Southeast China. Has for 60 years off and on had independence
movement or petition for independence, at one point it may have had anywhere from 60, 70, or 80
different countries which actually recognized its independence. China vetos any movement for
Taiwanese independence, but recently in the last 20 years China has become more powerful and the
Taiwanese issue has kind of slowly started to slide away. Its down to about 23 countries, the US does not
recognize it anymore
Kosovo is an entirely different matter which is going to cause some contentious issues in the future.
We've talked about this one already in the last lecture. The back story. Kosovo, this little province within
sovereign State Serbia. This mess gets hot when the former Yugoslavia starts to crumble and implode
back in the early 1990s and it becomes Yugoslavia turns into two then three then four then five and six
independent sovereign States of which Serbia is kind of the remnant core of what's left of Yugoslavia And
it was the Serbs, the ethnic Serbs which may or may not have been conducting acts of genocide in
Bosnia. That got the US and NATO involved in that mess in 1995. But of much more consequence for our
story is when the US and NATO got involved in Serbia directly in 1999 when Slobodan Milosevic, the then
President of Serbia and a Serb himself and most of the government was served and most of the military
was served it was claimed that Slobodan Milosevic was picking on, harassing, otherwise intimidating,
beating up, or conducting genocide against the Kosovar Albanians in this little province called Kosovo.
Again, Kosovo inside of Sovereign State Serbia. Nobody is disputing that. This got so bad that people
thought hey, there's a genocide occurring right here in Europe. We can't let this happen the US and
NATO went in and bombed the sweet bejesus out of Serbia to convince them to stop picking on the
Kosovar Albanians. And then officially went ahead and took the place over-took over Kosovo. That is
when NATO troops rolled into Kosovo and subsequently the UN came in and administered the Kosovo
whole province for a decade. Both the UN and NATO said hey we're just here to stabilize the situation.
