How to create your own country | Hacker News Reader

How to create your own country

bjornmoren.com

When studying international law, I learnt that a "nation-state" (in layman terms: a country) needs to have the following:

  1. A defined territory.
  2. A permanent population.
  3. A government.
  4. The capacity to enter into relations with other states.

In practice, there is one more requirement, which is perhaps the most important of all:

  5. Recognition by other nation-states.

In other words: a cargo ship does not a country make.

Reference: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/explorin...

Here is a reference to the original convention https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Montevideo_Convention

Isn't 5 part of 4? To enter into relations, you first need to be recognized.

No. "Capacity" means enough independence to be able to conduct your own foreign relations.

Whether any foreign powers want to conduct relations with you is point #5!

Here's a more realistic guide with none of the hippie seasteading false optimism:

Step 1) Acquire a large standing army, logistics, and lots of rockets and big radars (the bigger the better, stealth planes are very tricky to detect without massive antennas). Step 2) Nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and stealthy submarines. Step 3) Sufficient infrastructure to support autarchy and the above two steps.

In the current age, without the patronage of a larger state, starting a country ex nihilo with the expectation that it will remain sovereign is not possible (surprisingly you don't hear from Thiel's pet think tanks about the sovereignty problem when it comes to building a country in the middle of the sea, you would think the founder of Palantir should have some creative solutions).

Modern assymetric war doctrine relies on air superiority. Deny other countries the skies and you will be free. You don't really need a conventional navy if you don't plan to project force. Countries like Iran use a large fleet of small boats armed with rockets to counter bigger navies (and more importantly, carriers. Their boat swarm strategy however is untested outside of simulations). A country is built on legitimate violence. At the end of the day, the nuclear triad is the only and ultimate guarantee of true territorial sovereignty. Legitimacy will come naturally when sovereignty becomes absolute.

Sovereignty in political science and international relations lie on a spectrum. Countries like Cuba have quite limited sovereignty[0]. A fully nuclear armed seasteading state may never achieve economic sovereignty due to sanctions by incumbents, but it will definitely have full perpetual control of its territories and in the current multipolar world, there are plenty of opportunities to increase economic sovereignty.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/cuba-the-u-s-and-the-conc...

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011. To my knowledge they don't have nuclear weapons or big raders that can detect stealth planes.

Their Airforce consist of less than 20 aircraft. I don't know if you consider that air superiority.

You are spot on about having a large standing army. According to wikipedia they have 1850.000 enlisted!

"In the current age, without the patronage of a larger state"

The Seasteading Institute does attempt to do legal research on creating countries [1]. I am not a lawyer, so I can't comment on whether the research is substantial or going anywhere.

[1] https://www.seasteading.org/law-and-policy/

> Acquire a large standing army,

Why not get the coronavirus and run it through easy to get mammals like abandoned cats until it's really dangerous. Or buy a plot near a bat cave and collect different viruses from local bats.

Why are bio-weapons not nuclear equivalent? Basically Raven from Snow Crash but with a wider game theory model.

Bio weapons can be devastating, but, unlike nuclear warheads, they are very hard to target.

cripr tech is so cheap I could setup an entire lab for a minuscule fraction of the price of the raw materials for a nuke. I'd argue that the bar for research and development of bio weapons are much lower. The problem is the area of affect which potentially goes much farther than a nuke.

That really depends on the goals. If they don't have any resources anyone wants and aren't going to do anything that upsets any other country then all of that is not really necessary/.

Any of those shoals are identified outside of current EEZ, which is ~250 miles, however any neighbouring country can make claims to all those shoals as soon as they became islands, simply because of extended seabed or any other reasons - one of those is that they simply might not recognize such neighbours. If new owners of shoal can defend their rights from existing nations, then they could succeed, however, this opens can of worms, because most of the ocean is unclaimed and with automation in near future it is possible to make artificial islands regardless of any depth of the ocean - as a side product from deep sea mining.

This post however misses other exciting and less expensive chapters how to make your own country and succeed in doing so:

1. How to invade other country and make it your own?

2. How to organize a coup and overthrow government of already existing country and make it your own?

3. How to steal a country and pretend to rule it?

Ah, the possibilities... most of them are already executed and in action.

Interesting idea, except the hardest part about creating a country will be to make other countries recognize the new country as an independent entity. Which isn’t even mentioned in the article.

Nonsense.

There are many countries which are far more legitimate then a decommissioned cargo ship, yet will never be accepted. In short, unless a lot of other countries have an interest in recognizing your country it will not happen.

If even one legitimate country has a problem with it its almost impossible and will require a war.

That depends on the location and philosophy of the new country. If it's some apolitical organization who is not intent to hurting anyone, I doubt any politician in any country will be able to make a case to declare war on a country of perhaps a few thousand people.

A terrorist organization country might be blown to bits or the terrorists captured by which country they are against in no time.

A apolitical organization has even fewer chances, because it then does not readily make an ally to any incumbents.

Newly independent countries are used to seek patronage from major powers (the West, Russia, China, the Muslim world) immediately, because running a new country, usually after a war for independence, is very hard, you lack resources badly. Also, not being patronized by anyone and having tense relations with everyone may mean that a "peacekeeping force" by incumbents will be deployed to prevent the separatists to gain independence.

Next steps:

  - be recognized by the ONU
  - ask the international postal union for a postal interconnection on their clearing platform
  - ask the ITU for a telephone prefix, and a TLD
  - get clearing agreements with other banks

So interesting indeed !

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