The Limits of Declarative Sovereignty

Among the various definitions and understandings of “sovereignty,” two critical points are almost universally identified: exclusive internal authority and legal external recognition. Parastates possess the former but largely lack the latter. Internally, a state is sovereign when it has the ability to execute supreme and uncontested authority over the territory it claims and the people who reside within it. This is most succinctly codified in the criteria of statehood as defined in Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention, which qualifies a state holding sovereignty if it possesses a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and a capacity to enter relations with other states (League 1936, 25). These “declarative” views of statehood have largely defined the nature of sovereignty throughout most of the 20th century and have traditionally been favored by scholars of international law (Brierly Reference Brierly1928; Chen Reference Chen1951; Brownlie Reference Brownlie1980; Harris Reference Harris2010).

However, declarative theories of statehood are problematic for three reasons regarding parastates. First, if the Montevideo Convention is used as a legal starting point in defining sovereignty, it focused on former colonies in Latin America whose statehoods were declared more than a century earlier and had already been recognized by the majority of existing states in the international community at the time (Pahuya 2005). Sovereignty was also recognized for former colonial possessions, all of which were geographically detached from their parent countries. Parastates are neither colonial holdings, nor detached territorial entities. Rather, a parastate that declares independence effectively seeks to separate from an existing sovereign state, which raises the question of whose sovereignty declarative theories defend. If sovereignty is declared by a seceding party, does that negate sovereignty for the existing state it is seceding from, or is the sovereignty of the first state defended against efforts in supplanting its authority? The evidence is ambiguous, as international judicial rulings have favored both sides.Footnote ²

Additionally, granting sovereignty to emerging states has traditionally respected the principle of uti possidetis, which recognizes new international boundaries to be drawn from the borders of preexisting colonial or, after 1991, constituent federal republic units. This not only explains why new states in Africa and the Middle East throughout the 20th century retained borders drawn by European colonial powers decades earlier, but why new entities emerging from federal states like Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia were carved out of sub-national administrative republic boundaries. These boundaries may not have always incorporated elements of a constituent ethnic group, and in the case of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union it created new problems of dividing groups up and placing some minorities in new states, but the legal authority of these internal boundaries served as the first, last, and in many cases only basis for deciding international ones (Ratner Reference Ratner1996). This however, is not extended to parastates, where controlled territory may resemble an autonomous region within a preexisting federal republic, such as Abkhazia and Kosovo, or shaped around new borders created by wartime fault lines such as Transnistria, Northern Cyprus, and the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). In either situation, non-federal units, especially those formed in conflict, are not recognized under international law.

Secondly, while de facto sovereignty over a territory does not necessarily require other states to recognize it, such recognition does come with the ability to join international organizations and be protected by international laws when “statehood” is a requirement for membership. Claiming authority over seized territory does not abrogate the host country’s legally recognized right to the region, which is often upheld by existing treaties in international organizations like the UN or the European Union (EU). Neither organization offers membership to disputed territories, which implies the understanding of sovereignty in the current age to extend beyond simply de facto control of territory. Finally, the number of self-declared territorial entities since the end of the Second World War alone have made recognition, and with it the capacity of declarative states to enter relations with others, an extremely volatile subject. Where and when they do come, recognition of a contested region is a matter of choice for other states to make and comes with diplomatic risks of their own. This might gain them some credibility, but partial legitimacy actually increases regional instability by locking the territory into a contested stalemate while the host state works to isolate, discredit, and, if possible, dismantle the parastate’s statehood. Without the benefits and underpinnings of formal international recognition, individual states are left to decide, often through ad hoc criteria, whether or not recognition is justified.

Thus a second, more constitutive, theory of statehood includes the critically important element of sovereignty being externally recognized through legally binding agreements and, more recently, international organizations that recognize, respect, and uphold the territorial integrity of the state (Lauterpacht Reference Lauterpacht1947; Grant Reference Grant1999; Crawford Reference Crawford2006). Political scientists in general and international legal specialists in particular attribute this arrangement to various coordinated international agreements beginning with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, developing into a modern European state system at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, solidifying into a diplomatic norm at the Berlin Congress of 1878, and finally entering into formal legal conditions in the 20th century in the charters of first the League of Nations and later the United Nations. All these institutional arrangements codified the principles of legal equality between states and the principles of non-intervention, either explicitly or implicitly, of one state in the internal affairs of the other.Footnote ³ Under constitutive theories of sovereignty, it is not just the presence of raw authority exerting control over a region and a people that makes a state; it is also more importantly the collective and communal recognition that said authority is the rightful and legal one—something the Montevideo Convention doesn’t explicitly take into account. This addresses the inability of declarative theories of sovereignty in answering whose sovereignty it is that should be defended: the seceding entity or the existing state. Constitutive theories always give advantage to the existing sovereign state. It does not discount the presence of de facto sovereignty that may exist in any territorial entity that declares its independence. However, the critical point to note is that international law “takes no notice of it before recognition. Through recognition only and exclusively, a State becomes an International Person and a subject of International Law” (Openheim Reference Openheim and Roxburgh2005, 135). Recognition therefore remains the prerogative of the parastate. In so many words: no recognition, no legal sovereignty.

Without parastates highlighting the differences, it might simply be assumed that declarative and constitutive theories of sovereignty are synonymous. After all, constitutively sovereign states are by nature declaratory, and up until recently, entities that declared their sovereignty either did so in coordination with the state it was breaking away from, or with international bodies that provide a sense of uti possidetis legality to the affair. Parastates reveal the discrepancy between the two. As defined in the Introduction of this special issue, parastates are primarily disputed territories that have forcibly seceded from a sovereign country and actively work to supplant the authority of the host state with state-wide institutions of its own. Its quest for sovereignty is rooted in contentious politics, defiant refusals to compromise with the host state over anything less than independence, and is subsequently perceived as insurrectionary by members of the international community. Thus, a parastate’s welcome to the concert of nations is muted and largely ignored by the very group it desires to be a part of. Romantic thoughts of determined freedom fighters struggling for self-determination from an oppressive authority are overshadowed by the sobering reality that rebellious uprisings and seizure of power went out of fashion more than a century ago. States no longer simply exist because those declaring it say it is so.

A parastate may achieve declarative sovereignty because it provides de facto political leadership and authority, but it fails to qualify for constitutive degrees of sovereignty because it lacks de jure authority and formal international recognition (Dugard and Raič Reference Dugard, Raič and Kohen2006). This is almost always predicated on the position of the host state, which under principles of constitutive sovereignty decides on its legality. The newly independent states of Eritrea in 1993, Montenegro in 2006, and South Sudan in 2011, for instance, all coordinated their secession within internationally recognized referenda that the host country promised to formally recognize if the electoral results met the specific requirements. Once met, these countries were subsequently recognized by the majority of the international community and granted membership in the UN all within a month of their respective declarations of independence. The host state’s decision is therefore crucial to the fate of any territorial unit seceding from its sovereign control. Parastates on the other hand neither coordinate nor regulate their intended secession from the host country, and through limited international support achieve separation outside any formally agreed arrangement, leaving recognition a matter of choice for states to make. At the absolute best, parastates can achieve partial constitutive sovereignty through a number of individual recognitions from supporting states. However, no parastate has managed to achieve full international sovereign recognition and earn membership in the UN as a parastate, and no amount of these recognitions is enough cash in for UN membership; especially if opposition comes from at least one permanent member of the UN Security Council.Footnote ⁴

The key here is the emphasis on international institutions providing a final, ratifying, and in many ways sanctifying, approval on the authority, legitimacy, and constitutive legality of sovereignty. In the charters of both the League of Nations and the UN, the decision by participating members of the international community to mutually recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other established a new layer of authenticity that protected member states against violations made by external threats or internal contagion. In this light, the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931, the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 are all regarded as illegal and a violation of another state’s constitutive sovereignty, rather than an extension of the declarative sovereignty of the invading state. Whatever the reason, both the League of Nations and the UN facilitated unwritten policies that any territorial entity seeking sovereignty cannot, as had been done during the previous century and earlier, simply control territory one lays claim to and consider it indisputably theirs.Footnote ⁵ Sovereignty now requires legal recognition by and membership in the UN. Kosovo may have a GDP per capita index comparable to that of Georgia and Algeria (World Bank).Footnote ⁶ Taiwan may have a stronger passport than its mainland counterpart.Footnote ⁷ Northern Cyprus may have a freer government than its Turkish benefactor.Footnote ⁸ Somaliland may be more democratic than Somalia (Hansen and Bradbury Reference Hansen and Bradbury2007). All may exhibit greater degrees of stability and organization than “quasi-states” like Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, or South Sudan with UN membership (Jackson Reference Jackson1990). But the absence of de jure constitutive sovereignty makes them indefinitely contested territories with no chance of entering that coveted community of states.

The importance constitutive theories of sovereignty place on international recognition, and the clearest example of the limited capabilities afforded to the declarative sovereignty of parastates, was established in 2010 when Serbia took the matter of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 to arbitration at the International Court of Justice (ICJ 2010). The advisory body concluded that the declaration of independence by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority did not violate any applicable rule of international law because there is no law prohibiting a political group from declaring independence. However at the same time, the advisory opinion of the court stated it was never asked to decide on “the legal consequences of that declaration” and therefore “does not consider that it is necessary to address such issues as whether or not the declaration has led to the creation of a State.”Footnote ⁹ The ICJ thus recused itself in taking a position on whether “international law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo unilaterally to declare its independence or, a fortiori, on whether international law generally confers an entitlement on entities situated within a State unilaterally to break away from it.” Thus it is possible for a declaration of independence not to be in violation of international law without other states being obligated to recognize it. In a decision that seemed to simultaneously vindicate and undermine the arguments of both sides, a parastate’s sovereignty is effectively the decision of individual states to make, which acknowledged the principles of declarative sovereignty but underscored the importance of its constitutive variant.Footnote ¹⁰ What this meant is that parastates can exist on the map, but there is no legal requirement for countries to recognize them as sovereign states; a nod to the host state’s continued claim to the territory, and an admission of the burden of proof parastates constantly need to provide for legitimacy.

The ICJ’s decision on Kosovo is arguably the closest any international body has come to legally defining, albeit indirectly, the limited capabilities of parastates, and sealing its fate as disputed territory. In what seemed to be a subtle victory for the host state, the ruling reaffirmed the understanding that sovereignty is not legal unless it is recognized by the host state, and that the number of recognitions a parastate can claim outside legal international coordination is ultimately inconsequential. Since 2010, Kosovo has gained a number of additional recognitions, but none that would tilt its leverage closer to UN membership because key countries that had hitherto withheld recognition felt no obligation to change their stance after the decision. At about 100 recognitions and still nowhere near UN membership, Kosovo is the parastate par excellence: its separation from Serbia is nearly assured but its path to international sovereignty is indefinitely blocked (Weller Reference Weller2009).

Since there is no international consensus on their status, parastates also risk the possibility of recognitions being withdrawn if circumstances change. Before being diplomatically downgraded to a declaratory state in the early 1970s, Taiwan was recognized by well over 100 countries.Footnote ¹¹ After diplomatic relations were extended to the People’s Republic of China, which also resulted in it taking Taiwan’s seat at the UN, recognitions have dropped to 14, with Kiribati being the latest state to sever diplomatic ties in September 2019. Likewise, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) once claimed more than 80 recognitions but has lost nearly half of them since the early 2000s. Tuvalu first recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2011, but withdrew recognition of both in 2014. Perhaps most controversial in Western diplomatic circles are the recent withdrawals of recognition of Kosovo by a number of countries (Ker-Lindsay Reference Ker-Lindsay2017).Footnote ¹² The pattern by which recognitions come and go make it a diplomatic battle between parastate, host state, and sponsor state in influencing, pressuring, and in some cases outright bribing countries to lend their decision one way or the other.

Day to Day Life in a Frozen Conflict

Suffice it to say, sponsorship from one powerful state puts the parastate on the map, but opposition from another keeps its borders dotted instead of solid. This not only perpetuates dependency on a handful of sponsor states but it lends credence to the belief that parastates are little more than modern day vassals of great power politics. While it is true that support for independence brings new advantages and benefits that would otherwise be denied if it remained part of another country, the limited sovereignty gained is never enough to achieve full statehood and, at the same time paradoxically, too much to give up and abandon in any negotiated settlement. Support lent to parastates may be formally argued in terms of some interpretation of international law, but this usually masks self-interested politics and particular strategic ambitions. Both the USA and Russia have been instrumental in sponsoring breakaway entities, but predicate that support on national interest. Washington has been openly opposed to any self-determination in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Donbas Region, or the Palestinian Territories, largely because of the friendly relations they have with the host states. When challenged on their support for Kosovo’s unilateral secession from Serbia however, the United States cites ad hoc justifications of irreconcilable differences and fait accompli situations that are taken on faith to be as sui generis as they are irreversible. Likewise, Russia considers Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence to be a violation of international law, yet directly intervened in the sovereign affairs of Georgia and Ukraine in the name of preventing what it saw as a humanitarian disaster for ethnic minority communities.

Arguments in favor of, or in opposition to, the support of a breakaway region need not make sense beyond the self-justifications states and organizations lend them. Within the diplomatic frenzy that followed the short-lived independence push by Catalonia in late 2017, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker opined that Catalonia cannot be compared with Kosovo because its people do not have a history of being victims of state-wide repression; which is true only if one ignores the brutality of the Spanish Civil War and four subsequent decades of Francoist rule (B92). This opposition is further reinforced in the UN Security Council where vetoes, or even threats of vetoes, keep parastates from achieving full sovereignty: Kosovo is blocked by Russia; Taiwan by China; Palestine by the United States. This also helps explain why parastates cannot simply enter the UN though a majority-vote in the General Assembly. Any indication one of the five permanent Security Council members will threaten with veto automatically nullifies such an effort.

Still, some parastates manage to obtain membership in certain international non-governmental organizations. Kosovo is both a member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. More recently, it achieved membership in the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Despite controlling only one-third of Western Sahara, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is a member of the African Union. Taiwan and Palestine are also members of FIFA and the IOC, and Palestine is a member of the League of Arab States (LAS), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and even has observer-status membership at the UN; the closest status any parastate currently holds toward full international recognition. Yet membership in what is effectively a series of non-governmental organizations does little to further the cause of the parastate’s quest for sovereignty. The World Bank, IMF, FIFA, and IOC all have members that include internationally recognized countries as well as various territories and regions. Kosovo, Palestine, and Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) share IOC membership with autonomous regions and territories like Hong Kong, American Samoa, and Guam, while Kosovo’s recent induction into the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) came with a simultaneous inclusion of Gibraltar to a community that already included non-sovereign entities like Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Northern Ireland.Footnote ¹³ More recently however, Kosovo’s bid for membership in Interpol was rejected in 2018 and withdrawn in 2019, dealing a significant blow to its credibility as an international actor.

Alongside diplomatic obstacles and limited international membership, military deterrence is another reason for a parastate’s frozen status. This deterrence is reinforced by internationally brokered peace settlements that almost always call for the removal of armed groups in the region as a prerequisite to ending the war and stopping the violence. This not only forces the host state to withdraw, but it removes nearly every element of its authority from the region, while indirectly empowering wartime forces with control of the contested area that prevent the host state from reasserting control over the disputed region (Downes Reference Downes2004; Licklider Reference Licklider1995). By most observations, the host country could easily overrun the comparatively smaller defenses of the parastate and reconquer the territory in a matter of days. However, support afforded to the parastate from international sponsorship is usually accompanied by military assistance to balance out, and in many cases outweigh, any potential military incursion from its opponents. Though Serbia has officially stated it has no intention of using its military to retake Kosovo, the territory is secured by NATO troops that preserve the status quo of an international protectorate. Northern Cyprus and Abkhazia enjoy the comparatively superior protection from Turkish and Russian armed forces deterring Greek Cypriot and Georgian militaries from engaging. Azerbaijan’s efforts at regaining control over Nagorno-Karabakh are checked by Armenia, while Ukraine is prevented from entering the eastern Donbas region by paramilitary forces financed and equipped by Russia. Yet while this external support provides critical protection to the parastate, it also serves as a way of preventing the parastate from developing conventional military capabilities of its own, which often consists of second-hand weapons and lightly-armed vehicles from these neighboring sponsors. Thus, while parastates govern territory as the de facto authority, the ability to defend itself, a critical element of any sovereign state, is almost always provided, equipped, or financed by someone else.

The Blocked Path to Sovereignty

Locked in limbo as they are, parastates will effectively remain frozen conflicts unless one of four scenarios happen: the host country finally recognizes the parastate’s independence which paves the way toward full sovereignty; the parastate negotiates a reincorporation into the host country and affirms the territorial integrity of the state; the parastate merges with or is annexed by a supportive neighboring country; or the host country reconquers the parastate and nullifies its sovereignty. The very nature and definition of parastates makes the first two scenarios highly unlikely, the third nearly impossible, and the last incredibly risky. Consequently, the parastate will continue to exist within a political and diplomatic impasse because none of these scenarios can be met (Kolstø Reference Kolstø2006; Anderson Reference Anderson, Caspersen and Stansfield2010).

With regards to the first scenario, host countries are nearly unanimous in refusing to recognize the sovereignty of any unilateral breakaway region, citing internationally-recognized laws upholding the territorial integrity of the state, as well as opposing what they regard as the illegal seizure of sovereign territory by a group of militant separatists. Under pressure from international efforts to negotiate a resolution to conflict, they may offer some form of autonomy as a way of compromise, but adamantly reject the notion that decision-making in these regions can ever exist outside their own constitutional law, however rhetorical it may now be. As mentioned above, the decision of the host country is therefore instrumental in determining whether the region in question can become a sovereign state of its own, or remain a disputed territory. Serbia’s acceptance of Montenegro’s referendum on independence in 2006 and its opposition to Kosovo’s makes the former an internationally-recognized sovereign state with UN membership and EU prospects, while the latter has remained in diplomatic limbo since its unilateral declaration of independence in 2008.Footnote ¹⁴ A similar case can be seen with Timor-Leste (East Timor), which achieved internationally-recognized sovereignty after a UN-sponsored referendum on independence received support from the host state of Indonesia in 1999 following the end of the Suharto dictatorship.Footnote ¹⁵

Host states that successfully refuse to recognize the independence of breakaway parastates often rely on diplomatic support of their own. Though it has lost effective control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia feels it is under no pressure to recognize the independence of either, knowing it has diplomatic support from the United States and members of the EU. This support is extended to efforts at isolating the breakaway regions through border checkpoints, economic embargoes, limits on real estate transactions, and warnings to any state, region, or territory in treating both entities as separate from that of the Republic of Georgia (ICG 2010a, 2010b). Likewise, the Ukrainian government has received overwhelming support from the United States and EU members for its territorial integrity against what is perceived to be a clear violation of a country’s sovereignty by Russia in first annexing Crimea and later supporting separatist factions in the Donbas region (ICG 2016). More recently, the attempted unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalonian Government in 2017 was met with quick condemnation by the EU which stood with Spain’s staunch opposition to the move.

On the other hand, Serbia has not been afforded the same support over its loss of Kosovo and has been pressured for years by the United States and key Western European powers to come to terms that it will not return to its control. This pressure is often accompanied by veiled threats of EU membership being delayed or denied if it does not. Yet Serbia still enjoys the sympathy and support from more than a dozen powerful countries that have opposed Kosovo’s non-negotiated path to independence; many of which have, or perceive to have, separatist movements of their own. Among more than 90 countries that support Serbia’s position, Kosovo’s main obstacle to full internationally recognized sovereignty includes five countries in the EU, and two in the United Nations Security Council that effectively block it from being admitted to both international bodies.Footnote ¹⁶ To date, non-state entities are unable to qualify for EU membership; a situation plainly visible in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus which remains outside the organization while the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia achieved membership in 2004 (ICG 2014). Unlike Northern Cyprus, Kosovo signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU. But even this achievement is little more than symbolic at the time of this writing since its status remains contested. As long as this support remains, whatever pressure Serbia is under to give up claims to its wayward southern province remains unenforceable.

Scenarios in finding solutions for reunification between parastates and host countries have been equally unsuccessful. This is not only because of the steadfast refusal of the parastate’s government to “capitulate,” but also, ironically, from the host state that sees the terms of reintegration as far too costly. The case of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus demonstrates the difficulties of a state regaining territory that had been operating independently of it for years, if not decades, and suggests the high price that must be paid for its reincorporation; a price that in the absolute least would demand disproportionately high levels of autonomous decision-making that would be unsustainable for the host country to accommodate. Prior to Cyprus’ accession to the EU, the UN proposed a solution of a loosely federated state based on consociational power-sharing between Greeks and Turks that took both the 1974 Turkish invasion and subsequent 40 year division of the island at face value and, at least according to officials in Nicosia, sought to graft much of the separately-functioning institutions of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus into a united Cypriot state on equal footing with the internationally recognized Greek authorities (Basis for a Comprehensive Settlement of the Cyprus Problem 2003; ICG 2014). Additionally, Turkey would be allowed to retain influence in the Turkish districts, and Greek Cypriots displaced by the 1974 invasion would have been largely limited in their ability to reclaim lost property and other damages inflicted from conflict. What is more, whatever restitution of property Greek Cypriots could reclaim would remain under the authority of the local Turkish Cypriot government. Thus, while it was not surprising that many Turkish Cypriots voted in favor of the Annan Plan for reunification, the Greeks, realizing they stood to lose more than gain, rejected it in referendum. For them, “reunification” really means, as it has meant for more than four decades, reabsorption and the dismantling of the Turkish northern Cypriot state. Power sharing would not only reward the agents of separatism, but legitimize the invasion and subsequent seizure of territory and property. That the EU accepted Cyprus’ membership in 2004 without 40% of its northern half has effectively left the island indefinitely divided and the Turkish-occupied area isolated.

The other side of the dilemma in reincorporation is convincing the parastate leadership that it has more to gain as part of another country than going alone. Just as the host country would have to make concessions for reincorporation, negotiated settlements often diminish the power and reach of the parastate, particularly in diplomatic and military matters. This means relinquishing de facto control over territory and effectively abandoning years of efforts in seeking national aspirations; especially if said parastate holds a number of international recognitions. Reintegration might guarantee reincorporation into international networks. But parastate governments see no guarantees these arrangements will last and often have to contend with hardliners in their own communities who would feel their leaders “sold out” to the very state a war of independence and struggle for self-determination was waged.

Stopping the violence is much easier to accomplish than putting the country back together, and wars of secession contain one highly inconvenient truth: the leadership of what emerges as a breakaway region often has no interest in being reabsorbed into the host country. Agreements calling for a peace settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, for instance, would grant autonomy to the region and undoubtedly a number of political concessions to the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan. But all internationally-sponsored peace proposals in finding a solution to the conflict from the 1994 Bishkek Protocols to the 2007 Madrid Principles envision autonomy only for the previously-existing Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast while calling for the gradual withdrawal of Armenian forces from six neighboring districts—roughly an additional 9% of Azerbaijani territory—outside Karabakh that have been part of the declared Republic of Artsakh since 1991. Since this means effectively giving up about half the territory incorporated into the self-proclaimed republic, most of which includes lands linking the original oblast with Armenia, leadership in Stepanakert, Karabakh’s capital, refuse to make any concessions to Azerbaijani authorities in Baku, who likewise rule out any proposals that extend autonomy to additional territories (Cornell Reference Cornell2002; ICG 2005; Cheterian Reference Cheterian2012; Geukjian Reference Geukjian2014). After years of stalemate caused by the inability of reaching any final arrangement, reincorporation is seen as defeat, not progress, for an entity previously operating within some form of self-management. With local authorities controlling taxation, education, political administration, the civil sector, police, law and jurisprudence, and some security apparatuses, people living in parastates see it as their home and country (Herrberg Reference Herrberg, Caspersen and Stansfield2011; King Reference King2001).

A third scenario often mentioned but rarely, if ever, implemented, is allowing the parastate to be annexed to a supporting, neighboring country. This almost always means incorporation into a country of similar ethnic and cultural identity: Kosovo merging with Albania; Nagorno Karabakh joining Armenia; the Donbas region being annexed by Russia. Supporters of this idea rationalize that if sovereignty cannot be achieved, then the sovereignty of an existing state can and should be extended to the parastate, eliminating the presence of any disputed territory (Mearscheimer and Van Evera Reference Mearscheimer and Van Evera1999). Much has been written on the concept of “homeland nationalism” and the desire of territories separated by historical “injustices” to be reunited with its parent kin country (Brubaker Reference Brubaker1996). After all, most state borders are the result of historical circumstances and settlements that might no longer hold up to current geo-political challenges and instabilities. Thus, argue its supporters, sometimes it's best to redraw boundaries and accept new realities for the sake of long-term peace. Borders need not be sacrosanct, and if redrawing them prevents long-term and open-ended conflict, it's an option worth considering.

Allocating a parastate to any country other than the one it broke away from is the most dangerous scenario to entertain because of the proverbial “Pandora’s Box” that can be opened once borders are changed that add to one country’s territory at the expense of another. Not only would this enable other parastates to seek similar arrangements, but it effectively gives credence to any “Greater X” idea envisioned by an ethnic group’s hardline nationalists. In short, merging a parastate into a neighboring co-ethnic state—even exchanging territory between states or with parastates—alters borders considered untouchable by international law and effectively rewards bad behavior by legitimizing irredentism and the ethnic wars that are waged in its name. With the exception of Russia’s unilateral annexation of the one-day old Republic of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, no self-declared parastate has been able to merge with its co-ethnic kin country. Even the international support lent toward Kosovo’s statehood is adamantly opposed to any ideas of merging with Albania and leaves out any discussions of Albanian communities in the neighboring Preševo Valley in Serbia proper. Thus, international support for parastates is just as much designed to prevent its absorption into one country as it is in being reabsorbed by the host state (Rossi Reference Rossi2018).

If the host state will not recognize, the parastate will not reintegrate, and borders cannot be changed, the only other option in ending the diplomatic deadlock of the parastate is for the host country to forcibly regain control. As noted above, this is an extremely risky gamble to take due to military and diplomatic deterrence from more powerful countries in the region that support the parastate and is almost impossible if the parastate has diplomatic recognition from at least one powerful country. Yet there are a few notable exceptions when this scenario not only happens but ends in decisive victory for the host country: the reincorporation of the State of Katanga into the Belgian Congo in 1963, the end of Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, the collapse of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by Russian forces in the early 2000s, Sri Lanka’s victory over Tamil Eelam in 2009, and the Malian conquest of the short-lived State of Azawad in 2012. This may suggest that the military option is the only solution, but these cases are more exceptions than trendsetters, as they meet a number of unique conditions and circumstances.

First, a military takeover is most likely to come if the region cannot rely on consistent international sponsorship. Both Biafra and Tamil Eelam may have initially enjoyed some external support, and in Biafra’s case even earned a number of international recognitions; however, none of them could count on a sponsor state powerful enough to prevent the host state from gaining diplomatic leverage a few years later and regaining lost territory. Second, military incursions tend to result only after repeated attempts at negotiated ceasefires have failed. Tensions may still be high in Karabakh, Kosovo, and Somaliand, but open conflict has largely stopped and parastate forces have at least laid the groundwork for civilian government. In the examples listed above, the region existed in a perpetual state of war where living conditions deteriorated to such points that necessitated international support for intervention; if not in the name of territorial integrity than in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. Key here is the ability of the parastate to develop, or at the very least imitate, some rudimentary elements of democratic statehood to garner credibility and legitimacy, even if it received no formal support or recognition (Caspersen Reference Caspersen, Caspersen and Stansfield2011; Owtram Reference Owtram, Caspersen and Stansfield2011). This leads to the third criteria: the withdrawal of external support for the breakaway region from erstwhile sponsors. Whether it is deterioration in relations between a territory and sponsor state, as was with India withdrawing support for Tamil Eelam after the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber in 1991, or the realization that support for a breakaway entity in a civil war is yielding no progress, like Katanga or Biafra, the loss of any external support is a death sentence for a parastate; especially if it is still in open military conflict with its host state. Deprived of external aid and diplomatic assistance, the parastate quickly falls to the host state regaining total control of the region. A similar situation befell Republika Srpska Krajina in 1995, but its nature and composition does not make it a parastate.Footnote ¹⁷

The fourth and final condition that makes military incursion into parastates more likely is if the parastate is either led by or has close links with terrorist organizations. Knowing no state will formally recognize an entity founded on repression, genocide, and especially terrorism; and knowing that no efforts are considered in negotiating a peace agreement with groups that condone violence against civilians, a military option against a terrorist parastate is the only strategy to take. This not only explains the isolation and eventual collapse of Tamil Eelam after a 25 year conflict with Sri Lanka, but also the lack of international support lent to the breakaway region of Chechnya that was initially able to seize control of territory from Russia in 1996, but was eventually retaken by Russian forces by mid-2000.

More recently, a similar recapture of territory occurred in 2013 when the government of Mali, supported by French military assistance, successfully neutralized a Tuareg separatist movement that had taken control of most of northern and central Mali the year before and declared the controlled region of Azawad an independent state that April (see Baldaro and Raineri in this special issue). International support was swift once the so-called National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) received support and co-optation from the Islamist group Ansar al-Dine, an affiliate of al Qaida, which in addition to imposing Shari’a law over the areas it controlled, threatened to destroy Mali’s cultural and historic sites in the renowned city of Timbuktu. With the Malian government’s retaking of most of the rebel-held territory, a ceasefire was declared and a peace agreement signed in June 2013 (Arieff Reference Arieff2013). Finally, the most current examples of a military option to dismantle a parastate founded on terrorism were efforts by the Syrian and Iraqi governments and their international supporters in defeating the Islamic State (IS). While not previously discussed, IS met most of the criteria for being a parastate. It possessed de facto authority over the territory it controlled, and though it was not formally recognized by any state, it managed to conduct informal political and economic arrangements with its neighbors (see Castan Pinos in this special issue; Solomon, et al Reference Solomon, Chazan and Jones2015; Wood Reference Wood2015). As of late 2019, the Islamic State has been destroyed, having lost control of all of its possessions in Iraq and Syria, including Raqqa, its de facto capital.

The military solution though, while hypothetically effective, comes with enormous risks if the parastate relies on military support from sponsoring countries. The failed attempts by Georgia to regain the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008 resulted in the intervention of Russian military forces that severed Tbilisi’s control and led to both regions declaring their independence later that month. More recently, Ukraine’s attempts at regaining control over its eastern breakaway regions only intensified conflict and increased military support from Russia, which overran Ukrainian forces and established firm control of the Donbas region. Lastly, organized Armenian military leadership in Nagorno Karabakh has frequently repelled Azeri forces, making it one of the most heavily fortified regions in the Caucasus. Thus, while military incursion may be the most direct way in dealing with a parastate, the continued support given by allied states through diplomatic recognition, military deterrence, and political investment to develop some type of representative government, makes this option rare and highly costly to achieve for host states.