Akkleptos wrote:Say, what if someone created an artificial island on international waters, went there with a lot of friends, family and like minded followers; then found the secret for practical cold fusion and traded that technology for international recognition as a Free State? Would that really qualify as a State?
That reminds me of the Principality of Sealand. The linked wiki article makes the following claims regarding its legal status:
Wikipedia wrote:The claim that Sealand is an independent sovereign state is based on the contention that a 1968 decision of an English court, in which it was held that Roughs Tower was in international waters and thus outside the jurisdiction of the domestic courts, is a further de facto recognition of Sealand's sovereignty.
In international law, the two most common schools of thought for the creation of statehood are the constitutive and declaratory theories of state creation. The constitutive theory was the standard nineteenth-century model of statehood, and the declaratory theory was developed in the twentieth century to address shortcomings of the constitutive theory. In the constitutive theory, a state exists exclusively via recognition by other states. The theory splits on whether this recognition requires "diplomatic recognition" or merely "recognition of existence". No other state grants Sealand official recognition, but it has been argued by Bates that negotiations carried out by Germany constituted "recognition of existence". In the declaratory theory of statehood, an entity becomes a state as soon as it meets the minimal criteria for statehood. Therefore recognition by other states is purely "declaratory".
In 1987, the UK extended its territorial waters from three to twelve miles. Sealand now sits inside waters that Britain claims as its territory.
According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, there is no transitional law and no possibility to consent to the existence of a construction which was previously approved or built by a neighbouring state. This means that artificial islands may no longer be constructed and then claimed as sovereign states, or as state territories, for the purposes of extension of an exclusive economic zone or of territorial waters. However, Sealand was founded in 1967 and "lex retro non agit" - laws cannot affect actions taken before these laws were written, before 1982 in this particular case.
As I've never studied law, I'd appreciate commentary on the above from those with more expertise to either corroborate or dissect these claims. If this is legitimate, I'm curious how artificial constructs would be considered if their purpose is to retain (rather than extend) an exclusive economic zone by, for example, the Marshall Islands.
Time makes more converts than reason. -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Sealand is a joke and not recognized by any state. The only reason the marines have not paid them a visit is that they are harmless.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Well, according to Wikipedia...
The convention permits nations to enforce taxation, immigration and customs regulations out to 24 miles, so within that distance any government with a mind to could probably argue jurisdiction. Beyond that, you could call yourself a sovereign state and be left pretty much to your own devices... until you tried commercial fishing, drilling for oil or deep-sea mining without getting a license, because exclusive rights to exploit the seabed and the water on top of it extend out up to 200 miles from the edge of territorial waters.
Beyond that point, you are free to do as you see fit, though I believe the deck of a ship is treated as the territory of whichever nation it carries a flag for.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Zaune wrote:
Beyond that point, you are free to do as you see fit, though I believe the deck of a ship is treated as the territory of whichever nation it carries a flag for.
Maybe so, but that didn't stop us from boarding every Dhow we came across on my deployments.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
Well, yes. I need hardly add that the letter of the law means very little when one side lacks the power to enforce it.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like someone said above, the Dutch should have the know-how and technology to save the nation. Reclaiming land is what they do. Either dam off the islands or raise them by a few feet and they should be safe for decades. It'll be expensive, but I doubt it's impossible.
