VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
14hr ago
China would be more interesting, IMO. There are two obvious states that claim the be the rightful rulers of the mainland. We give billions of dollars of military aid to China (Taiwan), but also recognize China (Beijing) in terms of foreign relations. Neither is willing to consider a "two state solution" formally, either.
You're not going to like this, but in practice it's that other states see it as legitimate. You're trying to engage in prescriptivism, but in practice international statecraft is essentially descriptivist. "Is Israel a legitimate state?" Is like trying to ask "Is 'color' spelled properly?". Answers will vary ('colour'), but I doubt you'll get many takers for 'kolor' or 'culur'. If it were a purely technical definition, Sealand and sovereign citizens might count. They don't.
And this doesn't require any sort of commutativity: we recognize Argentina, but not it's claim to the Falklands. Or Ireland, but not it's claim to Belfast. Or that functionally two states claim to be "China", both with advanced economies. States just are, and definitions are an attempt to describe what is, not what ought to be.
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