If you take a careful look at the world map of today, and compare it with that of, say, the mid 1960s, you will at least notice one thing: The number of sovereign states has augmented drastically. In the 1960s, depending on the year you are looking at, the number of states amounted to some 170. As of today, there are 206 states: Judging by the membership at the United Nations, there are now 193 undisputed sovereign nations, and additionally there are two observer states, and 11 other states, which are not recognized by several or numerous other member states.
This growth is most evident in Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as in Central Asia, as consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia. Many of the new states have numerous factors in common: They emerged when unscrupulous figures fomented or abused the nationalism, irrational or justified, of their populations. Many states have remained dominated by autocratic or downright despotic regimes. The alleged democratic and state structures, in particular justice and law enforcement, that in some cases were built after the independence are weak and most times controlled by elites that have become enormously rich in a suspiciously short notice.
These states typically have small territories and practically no or decaying industries, suggesting that they will have enormous difficulties to survive as economically feasible states. Many are ridden by ethnic conflicts. In some cases, the territories are historical curiosities, such as the island of Cyprus, divided between Turkish and Greece populations; the northern part of the island is a state nobody recognizes as sovereign — except Turkey. In others, the emergence of new states was consequence of geopolitical considerations, such as in Kosovo, which gained independence from Serbia in 2008, despite the evidence that the new entity is most likely unable to survive as a sovereign state and, worse still, that the territory is controlled by thugs and serves as basis for organized crime.
Something similar occurs with South Sudan: The new state emerged only in 2011, after a long struggle, and was rapidly recognized by practically all other world states, although it was clear that the brutal ethnic conflicts that have characterized the Central African region, and the multiple foreign interests that complicate the crisis, would lead it to the present nightmare. Western states fueled the conflicts, for they have been providing weapons to the numerous ethnic groups since decades.
Both in Kosovo and in South Sudan, the rapid recognition of the new states found surely favor in the fact that the countries which suffered the amputation of their territories — Serbia and Sudan — were international pariahs. Sudan, an oil rich country, is ruled by Omar Bashir. Serbia throughout the 1990s and until the year 2000 was ruled by the notorious Slobodan Milosevic, whom the western countries officially consider the sole responsible for the bloody secession wars that destroyed Yugoslavia.
It is not a coincidence that the very same western countries did not have scruples to supply military and financial aid to controversial protagonists of the conflicts: To Franco Tudjman in Croatia, a despotic nationalist, who certainly contributed as much as Milosevic to the balkanization of Yugoslavia; and to both Salva Kiir Mayardit and Riek Machar in South Sudan; both lead the now confronted factions that maintain the country as a killing field.
Beyond the apparent myopia of western nations to support such suspicious figures, what strikes the most is the swiftness with which both states, Kosovo and South Sudan, gained international recognition. The pace of these processes suggests that if there is political will among the most powerful political global structures, it is possible to create and support the emergence of a new state rather rapidly.
Another striking finding of the comparison of the world Atlases of 1965 and 2014 is the dramatic shift of the borders between Israel and Palestine. In 1967, before the Six Day war, Palestinian territory was divided in two parts: the West Bank and Gaza, mostly following the Green Line, the demarcation border established in 1949. After the Six Day war, Israel gained control of a substantial chunk of the West Bank and of Jerusalem, and has been expanding this occupation ever since, under the friendly supervision and direct or indirect aid of the United States and Western Europe.
As of today, the Israeli leftover of the West Bank territory consists of a myriad of more or less small patches of land, many of them unconnected to each other, many of them isolated by walls or barbed wire. It does not need to be remarked that a future Palestinian state constructed upon this disparate territory would constitute an intolerable mockery. And yet, very few western leaders dare to refer to the borders of 1967 as condition sine qua non for a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine.
And when they do, as US President Barack Obama has done several times, they have experienced the powerful retaliation that Israel has ready for anyone courageous (or silly?) enough to urge it to respect international law.
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