While a lot of attention is given to how countries come into being,
rather less attention is given to how they cease to exist.
As I'll explain in this video, traditionally there have been three main ways that the country can become extinct.
However, as I'll also show, another form of state death is now emerging.
And it's a form of extinction that we should be especially worried about.
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Hi. Welcome to Independent Thinking.
A channel dedicated to international relations, statehood, independence and the origins of countries.
My name is James Ker-Lindsay.
The question of how states die is a topic that gets relatively little attention.
In general, there's far more interest in how new states are created than in how old ones cease to exist.
However, the subject of state extinction is a fascinating topic.
For a start, it is the history of global change.
Look at the world map today.
It's very different to the map that we would have seen at the start of the nineteenth century.
Indeed it's been said that almost half the countries have existed in 1816 no longer exist
- or else exists in radically different forms.
But how exactly do states become extinct?
Traditionally, there have been three broad ways that countries cease to exist.
The first form of state death is through conquest or annexation by another country.
This is in fact being the most common form of state extinction.
History is littered with cases of empires, kingdoms, khanates, principalities and duchies
that were militarily defeated by another power and thus ceased to exist.
However, this form of state death has actually been in steady decline over the past two centuries.
Indeed, since 1945 it ceased to exist as a recognized form of state death.
International law no longer accepts that conquest or annexation of a country leads to its extinction.
For example, the Soviet Union's annexation of the three Baltic Republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -
during the Second World War was never formally recognized by many countries.
Rather than seen as dead countries, they were instead regarded by many as occupied independent states.
Therefore, when Latvia declared independence,
the United States stated that had recognized the country without interruption since 1922.
However, following the reestablishment of its independence,
the US was prepared to resume diplomatic relations.
Perhaps the best example of this in modern times was Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait, in 1990.
This was swiftly condemned by the Security Council, which authorized the use of force to liberate Kuwait.
Following the First Gulf War, Kuwait's sovereignty was fully restored.
The second form of states extinction occurs when two countries merge.
This can in fact happen in two distinct ways.
On the one hand, one of the states can voluntarily be absorbed by the other.
The most obvious example of this in recent history was German reunification,
which took place in 1990 following the end of the Cold War.
The German Democratic Republic, otherwise known as East Germany, ceased to exist and was incorporated
into West Germany, formally known as the Federal Republic of Germany,
which continued as today's Germany.
Alternatively, there are mergers where the two countries both formally ceased to exist
as separate independent entities and an entirely new country is created.
This is perhaps the rarer form of union.
The best modern example of this is the case of Yemen.
In 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen,
better known as North and South Yemen respectively,
united to form the Republic of Yemen.
Although both had been full members of the United Nations, the North joining in 1947 and the South in 1967,
they both became extinct with unification.
Yemen was admitted as an entirely new UN member on 22 May 1990.
The third form of state death occurs when a country breaks apart.
This too can happen in two distinct ways: voluntary or involuntary dissolution.
The best example of a voluntary dissolution was Czechoslovakia.
The constituent parts of the country decided to go their own separate ways,
thereby creating two entirely new states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
They were admitted as new UN members on 19 January 1993.
Even today, this is seen as a model of peaceful state dissolution.
In contrast, involuntary state dissolutions can be extremely violent.
The most obvious example of this in recent times was the collapse of Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
This resulted in a bitter and brutal war in the Balkans,
which eventually saw the creation of six new UN members:
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.
In addition, Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008,
is also hoping to eventually join the organization.
Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet Union sits in between the cases of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
What started as a process of involuntary state disintegration became voluntary
with the support of Russia, the most important constituent Republic of the USSR.
As well as leading to the re-establishment of the independence of the three Baltic Republics,
and the creation of the Russian Federation, which inherited the Soviet Union's seat at the UN,
the dissolution of the USSR saw the creation of eleven other new states:
Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
While traditionally conquest, merger and dissolution had been the three forms of state death,
there is an entirely new form of state extinction on the horizon.
A form of state death that has never been seen in the modern world.
This is the loss of statehood through loss of physical territory.
In a previous video, I talked about the four key attributes of a state.
The first of these is a defined territory.
Under international law, a country cannot exist without land.
However, until now, this has never been considered an issue.
While states have died through conquest, merger and dissolution, the land on which they existed has,
by and large, remained intact.
Instead, a new country merely asserts sovereignty over that land.
But what happens when the very territory that the state is created on ceases to exist?
In the past, this was seen as a hypothetical situation.
However, this is no longer the case.
This is actually a very real possibility.
As global warming leads to a rise in sea levels, this could see a number of countries disappear
as defined territories on the world map.
Already at least four countries are understood to be at threat from this:
the Pacific island states of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
Yet more could follow.
If this happens, it will pose unprecedented challenges to the international community in the years ahead.
Unlike other forms of state death, which are well understood legally and politically,
this would present an entirely new set of problems.
I'll look at this in more detail and explore the issues it raises in a future video.
In the meantime, as I've shown, there are three traditional ways that countries can die.
The first of these - conquest and occupation - is now seen as obsolete.
The second and third forms - mergers and dissolutions - remain very real forms of state extinction.
However, looking ahead, climate change could well mean that we face the emergence
of an entirely new - fourth - form of state extinction as a number of island states sink beneath the rising oceans.
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Thanks for watching and see you again next time.
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