The feared freedom fighter, tdaxp al Mujahid, read Chirol’s post on the coming European microstates with interest. tdaxp al-Mujahid thus chose to ally with the British and Americans, and demand liberation and independence for the proud Kosovar people…

Here, we in the West are missing a big opportunity to engage the new and emerging states. They are looking for help – any help, and not necessarily material help – and support. An active involvement by a small team of “system administrators” can provide it. The cost, politically and monetarily, is much less than what it would otherwise cost to be a guarantor power.

Fortunately, there are some in the think tanks and at the fringes of government who get it. The biggest name in this field is probably professor Michael P. Scharf at the Public International Law & Policy Group which has provided “out of the box” thinking to help new and emerging states like Montenegro and Nagorno-Karabakh

International Crisis Group (ICG) took Kosovo under its wing as early as 1998.

International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty (ICDISS) is currently involved with Transnistria

There are others, too. Taken together, these groups can be more creative and daring with their solution proposals than traditional guarantor powers. This, in turn, allows them to work on a closer, more intimate level with the new and emerging states, for a higher degree of trust. The investment is small and the benefit is potentially as good or better as the traditional guarantor state approach.

Inspired by Scharf, there are now another four or five other teams who are also beginning to work in the same field. It is worth keeping an eye on how it works out because it could be the way for the West to gain leverage when other doors are otherwise closed. If the approach is ignored, we in the West are missing a big opportunity to engage the new and emerging states.

But on the other hand, you might be very poor, but be huge and have a huge number of citizens, most of whom are not educated. Sheer number will help you out.

There are 191 members of the United Nations. Moreover successful amendments need the support of all five permanent members of the SC (China, France, Russia, UK and US).

The UN has been much under attack recently, especially for condemning the actions at Guantanamo Bay on grounds of human rights.

Events! There is already a rule set called the UN Charter. The spat yesterday about whether an imperial power is subject the global rules must surely be resolved first.

+ Neal Stephenson’s enclaves/phyles/tribes
+ The minimal compact: An open-source constitution for post-national states
+ Emergent democracy

I would think the EU government would like to see all the existing European states disintegrate into regional units, or smaller. Then there would be nothing left to challenge it.

Less cynically, it makes sense to be a breakaway state in Europe, under EU supervision. No one is going to come in and massacre you, probably. Slovakia was in the same situation. For a memorable non-European scenario, Katanga tired to secede from the Congo, once upon a time, with less than jolly results. Similar efforts in Gap locations are likely to be met with similar viciousness. A low-tech version of the Chechnya war is likely a better model for potential Caucasian secessions than Montenegro is.

[Chirol warns of the destabilizing rise of micro-states]