TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, one side is often painted by the other with the blackest of black. It is normal for the side which seeks its freedom to be called radicals, extremists, rebels and separatists - among some of the milder smears - by those who ruled them before and still have aspirations to rule over them in the future.

This is the problem which Pridnestrovie faces. In 1990, the people of the region voted in a referendum to declare their own independence. As a result, on 2 September 1990, their self-declared and self-proclaimed republic came into being. The leaders of the Moldavian SSR, a Soviet republic from which they seceded, did not recognize this act as legal or valid. Neither did the Soviet Union (of which the Moldavian SSR at the time was a component part) ... but then again, the Soviet Union wasn't exactly known for its devotion to independent-minded thought, democracy and letting everyone be free to choose their own future outside of the collective.

A year later, the newly minted Republic of Moldova, which like Pridnestrovie also self-proclaimed its own independence from the Moldavian SSR and the Soviet Union in 1991, maintained this stand: Its leaders refused to recognize the independence of the territory to its east.

Today, although Moldova does not claim to be the successor state to the MSSR, Moldova nevertheless says that it is the "rightful owner" of Pridnestrovie ... and that merely the opinions and decisions of the people of the breakaway region can never be enough to create a new state.

So how, then, are new states created under international law? The U.S. Declaration of Independence, which Congress passed on 4 July 1776, asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume political independence.

This basically means that a majority of the population in any given territory has the right to freely and democratically decide its own future under the self-determination principle. This radical idea, which became known as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, means that they - and no one else - can declare their independence unilaterally and decide how they want to govern themselves.

Sovereignty, to the founders of the United States, was the belief that the state is created by and therefore subject to the will of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is only through the consent of the governed that a state can have any real legitimacy. The state (or in the case of Moldova, claimant state) which does not have such legitimacy is an illegitimate or illegal state in the territory which it pretends to govern.

"Self-proclaimed" = "illegal" ?

Moldova has lobbied hard in Strasbourg and Brussels to get the European Parliament to pass some non-binding resolutions which are basically written in Chisinau and then automatically voted for by EU parliamentarians who doesn't have the time or knowledge of the region to get up to speed on what they are rubberstamping.

Tell-tale signs of such texts which originate from Moldova include extreme language referring to "the illegitimate self-proclaimed "authorities" of Tiraspol", complete with the use of scare quotes around the word 'authorities'. There is of course never any explanation as to why the elected officials of Pridnestrovie are any more illegitimate than officials in Chisinau, Moldova, whom the people of Pridnestrovie have time and time again made clear that they don't want governing them.

Legitimacy or not boils down to a single question: Who is authorized to decide whether or not any given government is legitimate?

Is this a decision which is made by large powers only, such as the United States, Russia, or China? If so, why them? They have sometimes created countries out of places where no countries existed before. But the majority of the countries in the world were not created that way.

Or is this decision made in the United Nations? A few countries in the world have been created after joint decisions in the United Nations, with examples including Namibia and East Timor. Soon, Kosovo may be added to the list. But the United Nations is not in the business of creating new countries, and the majority of the countries in the world were not created this way.

So how were the majority of the countries created? The same way that Moldova was: By a unilateral declaration of independence.

The Republic of Moldova started life on 27 August 1991 as a self-proclaimed state. It was created when its parliament singlehandedly took it upon itself to proclaim independence on its own. No one else created it - in fact, the still-existing Soviet Union (which Moldova was part of at the time) specifically had rules for self-determination which Moldova did not follow. Unlike Pridnestrovie, Moldova did not hold any referendum so it can't even be said that the newly minted Republic of Moldova was "created by its people".

Moldova was, is and will always remain a self-proclaimed republic. This was how it came into being and this can not be undone.

There is nothing wrong with being a self-proclaimed republic. Moldova is one, and so is Pridnestrovie to the east of Moldova, as well as Ukraine still further east, and many more of the new countries in the region.

Chisinau's speech writers only show their hypocrisy when they try to pull the wool over the rest of the world's eyes by juxtaposing "self-proclaimed" and "illegal" in the same sentence. They only do this when they refer to Pridnestrovie - or Transnistria in their language - and they do so to somehow infer that the mere act of self-proclamation means that their smaller neighbor is not a legal country.

International law as well as centuries of legal precedent does not support such a conclusion. Self-proclamation is the most widely used method of state creation under international law. Moldova used it, Pridnestrovie used it, Ukraine used it, and so did over a hundred other countries in the world, including the United States of America.

The rise of the USA from a lowly rebel nation to a global superpower shows that "self-proclaimed" states are just as real in world affairs as any other states.

Legitimacy of a sovereign state

Jean-Jacques Rousseau highlighted these ideals of "general will" and popular sovereignty. Legitimacy of rule or of law is based on the consent of the governed, said Rousseau. Popular sovereignty is thus a basic tenet of most democracies.

With Rousseau, sovereignty is bound up with “the people:” Rousseau says that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people, through freedom and democracy, and no one outside power.

A self-proclaimed state, which is what most countries in the world are today, is based on Enlightenment principles of democracy, citizenship, and inalienable rights.

Sovereignty rests on the people's ability to adopt its own basic law (a constitution), and propose and adopt amendments to the basic law (the same constitu­tion).

If the people has these powers, it may institute any other changes it desires. If it doesn't have these powers, however, it is unclear how it can be legiti­mately said that the government rests on the supreme authority of the people.

Consent of the governed

Rule by consent is today a requirement for the legitimacy of any state and, especially, for a state which claims a territory that it has no control over.

" - A nation has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants," wrote the economist Ludwig von Mises in Omnipotent Government (p.90).

Both natural law and the Judeo-Christian tradition understands this well. The Bible sums it up quite nicely and again not coincidentally: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12, 31), and "And as you would like that men would do to you, do exactly so to them." (Luke 6,31). In other words; since you like to control your life, let others control theirs.

To most people these truths seem so self-evident that they need not be argued. However, more than 200 years after the American Declaration of Independence the individual "pursuit of happiness" that seemed self-evident to its framers, and that still seems self-evident to ordinary people today is still met, as it was 200 years ago, by enormous resistance among would-be rulers in places such a Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

Lack of recognition does not equal lack of legitimacy

Those who oppose the free right of Pridnestrovie's population to choose its own future say that since Pridnestrovie is not currently recognized as a country, it does not exist. A variant of this claim is that the lack of recognition means that Pridnestrovie is illegal, illegitimate and void of status as an entity under international law.

This is factually incorrect, however. All states, whether they are recognized or not, have a legal personality under international law and other states run the risk of being in breach of international law for failing to observe the norms of civilized interaction with an unrecognized state such as Pridnestroivie.

Numerous legal precedents have amply demonstrated that international law applies even among states which do not recognize each other.

The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States has been signed and ratified by the United States, and by numerous other countries in the world. It applies to any country - recognized or not - which meets four basic requirements: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Recognition is not a requirement for any country to be covered by the treaty or by international law in general, as article 3 of the Montevideo Convention makes it clear:

"The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states."

A lack of recognition does not imply any illegality in the existence of a state. The United States was a self-proclaimed country which was not recognized by anyone else in the beginning. It took eight years before the United States became a recognized country. Later, the Soviet Union suffered the same fate. Despite being the largest country in the world, the self-proclaimed Soviet Union was an unrecognized country in the beginning. It took 16 years before countries like the United States would recognize it. Even immediate neighbors like Romania, which at the time shared a border on the Dniester river with the Soviet Union, did not extend recognition until 17 years after the Soviet Union self-proclaimed its own existence.

Some of Europe's strongest proponents of international law have similar skeletons in their closets. EU stalwart Holland is one of the countries where, for better or worse, the young state had to pass through a period of non-recognition in the beginning. Today, Pridnestrovie is in the same boat but working hard to overcome the hurdle and find its proper place as a responsible member of the international community.

What is a sovereign state?

There are a number of definitions of what makes a territory become a sovereign state. None of them says that it has to be declared by an outside power in order to be "legal", and that if it isn't declared by someone else then it is somehow "illegal."

Nor are there are rules that a separation has to be agreed-upon in advance by the states when they separate, as the case of the U.S. declaration of independence from Britain shows - followed by numerous other unilateral declarations which have since been made throughout history in the face of opposition from the former metropolitan states, just like Moldova currently still opposes Pridnestrovie's independence.

Likewise, no rules say that the United Nations is empowered to create new states, or even that UN agreement is needed for such state creation under international law. This would only be appropriate or required when the status of a would-be state's territory was the result of prior UN action; such as the cases of Kosovo today and Namibia in the recent past.

The rules for reaching statehood under international law have been defined for hundreds of years and are simple: A new and emerging country has to have a defined territory, a population and a government which, in its ideal form, has what political scientists call "a monopoly on violence" (the use of force).

International law springs from natural law and the current system of Westphalian sovereignty, upon which the international system is based, dates back to definitions by Swiss legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel in his 1758 work "The Law of Nations":

§ 4. What are sovereign states.

"Every nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without dependence on any foreign power, is a Sovereign State, Its rights are naturally the same as those of any other state. Such are the moral persons who live together in a natural society, subject to the law of nations. To give a nation a right to make an immediate figure in this grand society, it is sufficient that it be really sovereign and independent, that is, that it govern itself by its own authority and laws."

See also:
» MP: A country is not "unrecognized" if someone recognizes it [1]
» Is Pridnestrovie a state? [2]
» Romania at the Dniester: 17 years of Non-Recognition [3]

On the web:
» Emmerich de Vattel: The Law of Nations [4]