EMERGENCE OF SOVEREIGN STATES FORM EXISTING NATION STATES
In discussing the acquisition of sovereignty through successful wars of secession we are referring to the delinking or excision of part of an existing sovereign state, declaring that part a sovereign state, and getting a majority of the members of the international system to recognize it as such. This process usually involves armed struggle since territories inviolability is normally regarded as an integral part of state sovereignty. Besides, secession or any internal declaration of independent status by any political cleavage within a sovereign nation –state is usually regarded, and treated as an act of rebellion, which must need be suppressed by force of arms. So the success or otherwise of most
secessionist bids is usually decided by the outcome of such armed struggles or wars of secession.
While some examples of successful wars of secession can be cited that had resulted to emergence of sovereign states form existing nation states, other attempts had ended in futility. For example in 1971. East Pakistan broke away from Bangladesh . With help of Indian troops, it was able, after a brief war of secession, to defeat the Pakistani army, and be recognized as a sovereign state by the international community. Eritrean independence and Southern Sudan sovereign status have also been recognized by the international community following a prolonged civil war of secession that ended in 1991and 2011 respectively.
Following the new world order, and the demise of state communism in the former soviet union, the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania declared themselves independent of the soviet union and resumed their somewhat “suspended sovereignty”. A sovereignty that had been suppressed by the revisionism of soviet power in the 1940s . This precipitated as at yet, the only known instance of voluntary in violation of a states territorial sovereignty with the dissolution of the soviet state following the unsuccessful coup d’etate of august 1990.
Closely related to this was the case of former Yugoslavia which experienced the successful secession of two of its Republics-Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 , and the recognition of their sovereign status first by Germany, and then later by other members of the European union on 15 January 1992.
Instances of unsuccessful secessionist bids abound as we inferred earlier. In Nigeria, the attempt by the erstwhile eastern region to secede from Nigeria and assume sovereign existence under the name Republic of Biafra, suffered a devastating failure after a fratricidal civil war that lasted for almost 3 (three) year (1967-70) . In post communist Russia, Chechnya’s attempt to follow the example of the Baltic republics has remained a mirage after years of horrendous bloodletting that has recently degenerated into terrorism by both Russia and Chechnya.
In the Arab Middle-East South Yemen’s attempt to secede from Yemen in the 1980s pitched to the two geographical regions of the country’s North and south in a fratricidal conflict that eventually ended in the defeat of the South by the North. This defeat put paid to the South’s bid for a sovereign existence. East Timor and Tamil Tigers Elam are yet to achieve their aims of sovereign statehood from Indonesia and Srilanka respectively, after decades of conflict and bloodletting.
The con-federal states of the South in the Untied States engaged the federalist new England northern states in a five year war of attrition in the 19th century of establish an independent sovereign existence for that part of the United States of America, it however turned out a forlone aspirations the north defeated the southern con-federal states in 1865. several other examples could be cited, but the point must be made: any successful war of secession will most certainly result in the acquisition of sovereignty by the territory concerned, though such sovereignty must await the formal recognition by a majority of the members of the international system to become valid.
Related Posts: HISTORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATION (H.I.R), POLITICAL SCIENCE
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