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WEIRD IR
DEVIANT CASES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
David Bell Mislan and Philip Streich

Weird IR
David Bell Mislan · Philip Streich
Weird IR
Deviant Cases in International Relations
David Bell Mislan Philip Streich
American University School of Human Sciences
Washington, DC, USA Osaka University
Suita, Osaka, Japan
ISBN 978-3-319-75555-7 ISBN 978-3-319-75556-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4
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Preface
The Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park

was an inauspicious place to inspire a book project. Every Thursday,
Ph.D. students from the Rutgers Political Science department would
take over the bar because it was the cheapest place to get a beer. We were
among them. Those Thursdays were one of the brighter spots of our
weekly routines because it was a chance to talk about office politics, reg-
ular politics, and political science.
Not too long into those Thursday night sessions, we began to tell
funny stories about international relations. We told stories about stupid
things that leaders said or did; bizarre loopholes in international law;
diplomatic incidents; and generally, we waxed on the unanticipated con-
sequences of the politics among states. Naturally, we spent most of our
weeks trying to find the best possible anecdotes to share on Thursdays.
Maybe we should have been spending more time on our dissertations.
Then again, if we had, this book might not have happened.
At some point, we realized that our beer-fueled storytelling meant
that we were also amassing a large catalog of amusing anecdotes. After
we left Rutgers with our degrees and took positions as professors, we
also learned that we could use these weird Thursday night stories in
our teaching. We discovered that they held the potential to inspire new
research questions for ourselves and for our students.
Even though we went our separate ways after Rutgers, our accumu-
lated knowledge of Weird IR stayed with us. In fact, it became some-
thing of a co-vocation for each of us.
v
vi Preface
Fast forward to 2012, when we realized that we were getting older

and dumber. Thus, we created The Weird IR Blog in order to preserve
all of the stories that we had collected over the previous decade. We
knew that we had coined the term “Weird IR” and that we were the
only academics working on something like this. We were not prepared,
however, for the attention that the blog received. As we continued to
collect, research, and post some of our favorite stories, the blog’s read-
ership grew. By 2017, we were getting a few hundred daily visitors to
our website. We had no idea that so many people would be interested in
Weird IR. So, we did what any reasonable author would do. We wrote
this book.
Even though a few of our favorite vignettes made their way into this
volume, it is not a collection of recycled blog posts. We think that we
are better than that. We found new stories. We followed new leads and
conducted interviews. Most importantly, we grouped our vignettes by
themes that we feel are interesting, useful, and perhaps, understudied by
IR scholars.
In that sense, this project has matured substantially since we started
trading funny stories over beers in Highland Park. After a decade of
experience as researchers and teachers, we realized that Weird IR can
make a valuable contribution to our discipline. By paying more atten-
tion to deviant cases, researchers are more likely to question the key
assumptions that underlie existing explanations. As a result, scholars and
students alike might develop new and useful research questions. They
can also conceive of better research designs and use them to explore
established topics. By using Weird IR in the classroom, instructors can
encourage students to think critically and creatively about a multitude of
relevant subjects.
Naturally, we think that Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International
Relations is worth reading. It is useful. We should also note that it is
not normal, either.1 We wrote it with multiple audiences in mind.
Researchers and graduate students will find inspiration from our
vignettes and will ponder how extant theory can or cannot explain them.
Undergraduates will enjoy the stories and relate them to the classic IR
concepts (e.g. sovereignty) and paradigms (e.g. realism) they study in
1 Did you really expect a book called Weird IR to be written like every other boring IR
monograph?
Preface vii
class. Anyone, whether in academia or not, can appreciate the subtle and
overtly bizarre nature of Weird IR. Because our goal is to make Weird IR
as accessible and useful as possible, we wrote it with the old journalist’s
maxim “show, don’t tell” in mind. We understand that this might be sac-
rilege in the social sciences, where scholars are expected to explain and
interpret everything for the reader. We do nothing of the sort here. As
much as possible, we leave the inferences up to you.
Accordingly, we have some unsolicited advice for reading this book.
If you want to be entertained and do not care about the scholarly study
of international relations, skip the introduction and epilogue and read
chapters two through twelve. Alternatively, if you are interested in more
scholarly pursuits, start by reading our introduction and think deliber-
ately about deviant cases and their role in what we do as researchers.
Then, read the rest of the book and we expect that you will have a dif-
ferent experience. Of course, your mileage may vary, but we think that
there are different lessons to take from this book based on your own
goals and how you approach our work.
We would like to acknowledge the support that made this book pos-
sible. We are both indebted to Palgrave Macmillan and its editorial staff,
particularly Dr. Anca Pusca; our colleagues at our home institutions
and throughout the discipline; Ashby Henningsen; Saizeriya; Kratz (the
snack food); Krat (the feral cat); Mario Kart; and our supportive friends
and families, especially our infinitely patient significant others.
While we have your attention, David has a few things he needs to get
off his chest. First, he wants to thank his first-year seminar students, who
provided useful feedback on this project. He also needs you to know
that someone at Yokohama City University drank a Strong Zero in the
faculty lounge and had the audacity to leave the empty in the recycling
bin. Philip wants you to know that he could not have written this book
without migrating to Japan so that he could leave heavy teaching loads
behind and work at a research university. Special thanks to the nice folks
at Japanese Immigration!
We always found it funny to see scholars dedicate long, tedious mon-
ographs on war or trade to their significant others or their parents, so we
decided to take a different route. David dedicates this book to Philip,
and Philip dedicates this book to David. Welcome to Weird IR.
Washington, USA David Bell Mislan

Suita, Japan Philip Streich
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 To the Sea! Sealand and Other Wannabe States 15

Philip Streich
3 Beers at the Border Bar: No Shirt? No Passport?

No Service! 29
David Bell Mislan
4 Stupid Things Our Leaders Say and Do 43

Philip Streich
5 DPRKLOL 59
Philip Streich
6 SCREAM (Soccer Rules Everything Around Me) 81

David Bell Mislan
7 Terra Nullius and the Neutral Zone: Not an Indie Band 99

David Bell Mislan
ix
x Contents
8 Island Living Ain’t Easy 117

Philip Streich
9 Gone to the Birds? Turkey Tails, Chicken Taxes,

and the Global Economy 131
David Bell Mislan
10 Diplomatic Immunity…Revoked! 147

Philip Streich
11 What’s in a Name? 161

David Bell Mislan
12 Epilogue 175
Appendix A 185
Appendix B 187
Index 193
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 The Principality of Sealand in all its majesty

(Source Wikicommons—Ryan Lackey) 19
Fig. 7.1 The only way to get from the US to the Fort Brown
Memorial Golf Course 106
Fig. 7.2 The author after a particularly bad performance
at the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course 109
Fig. 11.1 No cheating. Which one belongs to New Zealand? 167
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International Relations is a collection of

strange phenomena related to diplomacy and world politics. The many
cases comprising the chapters of this book come from years of collecting
bizarre but true stories taken from the world of international relations,
which we then foisted on the unsuspecting students in our International
Relations (IR) classes.1 Some of these stories are contemporary, well
known, or both. Others, such as the “Second Korean War” of the 1960s,
are more obscure and presumably new to most students of international
relations.
Those familiar with our blog already know that we started the project
in 2012 as a way to remember and catalog the funny and strange stories
we have collected over our short careers. There, you can still find some of
our favorite classic stories, like that of the Yellow Fleet—an international
collection of ships that were stuck in the Suez Canal for eight years.
As avid consumers of world news, we also noticed the number of
bizarre stories that occur on a regular basis, like NBA Hall of Famer
Dennis Rodman’s pseudo-diplomacy with North Korea. We realized
our challenge was two-fold: We had to document the strange past of
Weird IR, while also keeping up with new stories as they emerged.
Between both tasks, we eventually had enough stories to justify writing
this book.
1 We regard foisting to be synonymous with teaching.
© The Author(s) 2019 1

D. B. Mislan and P. Streich, Weird IR,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4_1
2 D. B. MISLAN AND P. STREICH
Apart from simply writing about some funny stuff, our book seeks to
accomplish two objectives. First, we think academics can be both useful
and fun; we want to engage and excite readers with our weird stories.
Just as people love odd news stories, students and scholars in our field
love odd IR stories. Weird IR is also written to appeal to people outside
of academia who are interested in international history and politics.
Second, we aim to start a conversation with our colleagues in the
discipline about interesting and useful cases that are unknown to, or
understudied by, IR scholars. Although our book’s title and prose might
sometimes seem flippant, we are truly trying to do something that we
think is important and thoughtful. Weird IR is a methodological con-
tribution to the field; it is a collection of deviant cases that challenge the
conventional wisdom on international relations and the constitutive con-
cepts that underlie it.
This chapter will reintroduce the idea of a deviant case and provide a
pithy rationale for incorporating deviant cases into our professional craft.
It is worth nothing that deviant cases are not necessarily cases of devi-
ance, such as the Other World Kingdom, a Czech femdom/BDSM club
located on a large estate that declared its sovereign statehood in 1997.
The Other World Kingdom maintained its own currency, passports,
police force, legal system, state flag, and state hymn. Unfortunately for
some, it closed in 2008, depriving the world of one of its more imagina-
tive aspirant states.
More generally, when we discuss deviant cases, we refer to cases that do
not conform to the predictions of existing theories. The idea of deviant
case study research has been around for a while, but the scholarly literature
in IR is missing a collection of actual deviant cases. If nothing else, this
is what Weird IR contributes to the discipline. Naturally, our project did
not arise from nothing; it benefits from and extends some prominent work
on qualitative methodology in political science and international relations
(King et al. 1994; Gerring 2004; George and Bennett 2005; Elman 2005;
Geortz and Levy 2007; Levy 2008; Brady and Collier 2010).
About Deviant Cases

The idea of a deviant case is the foundation of our project, but it rests upon
some basic truths about social science. First is the notion of a theory—a
scientific explanation of phenomena in the natural or social world. In
the scholarly study of IR, theories explain events, behaviors, or any other
1 INTRODUCTION 3
consequence of the politics among states. From theories, scholars derive

testable hypotheses—educated guesses that can be confirmed or discon-
firmed through observation.
Good theories do not emerge from the ether; they survive rigorous
empirical tests and require scholarly agreement. Of course, not all schol-
ars support every theory. In fact, the disagreements among scholars over
preferred explanations can occasionally be petty and destructive. In a
sense, we are comfortable with the competition. After all, a scholar dissat-
isfied with one theory has a good incentive to build and test a new theory.
A good theory does not need to explain all similar phenomena, either.
A quest for a grand unified theory of IR is both naïve and unsupported
in our discipline. With so many theories available, it is easy to assume
that, if something happens in the world, then there must be at least one
theory that can explain it. We are not comfortable with that claim. There
are myriad phenomena that cannot be explained by extant theory.
Many cases from international relations will support any number
of rival theories. But some cases fall through the cracks and are not
explained by any known theories. These ones that fall through the cracks
are what we call deviant cases.
An Epistemological Rationale for the Study of Deviant Cases

We maintain that the study of deviant cases is an underutilized way to
assess the progress of research programs, a concept borrowed from the
philosopher of science Imre Lakatos (1970). In his seminal essay on sci-
ence and the accumulation of collective knowledge, Lakatos avers that
any assessment of the usefulness of an individual theory in isolation is
misleading because scientists sometimes rewrite theories to hide ear-
lier claims that were falsified by evidence. In other words, scholars will
update a theory to explain a previously unexplained case, thus invali-
dating the whole point of testing theories in the first place. Lakatos also
notes that theories are often based on similar or overlapping ontologies,
thus making it difficult for researchers to determine which theory might
be superior to others. Thus, he develops the idea of a scientific research
program (SRP), which is a cluster of theories concerned with a common
problem and that share a hard core of constitutive and guiding assump-
tions. Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP) is a
prominent tool for how IR scholars assess the progress of our collective
efforts to explain our subject.
Kenneth Waltz, the dean of modern American IR, calls into question
(2003) whether or not IR scholars were correctly invoking Lakatos and
his metatheory of scientific progress when making their own theoretical
and methodological choices. Put simply, Waltz wonders whether or not
scholars were choosing their cases and theories in a way that advanced
our shared knowledge of IR. It is an important and useful question that
often goes unasked, especially when scholars are rarely incentivized by
universities and publishers to pause and reflect on their work.
Lakatos tells us that we need to think deliberately about whether our
theories are extending our collective knowledge. Waltz points out that
in IR, we are not. Notwithstanding a few solid efforts at the turn of the
century (Elman and Elman 2003), we suspect that Lakatos and Waltz are
correct.
Indeed, it is difficult to assess whether a discipline is making pro-
gress. In political science, where most IR scholars are trained, research
projects are developed haphazardly. Which questions are asked?
How are plausible answers hypothesized and operationalized? How
are inferences assessed and compared? There is no shared answer to
these questions in IR, nor is there one in political science or even the
entire social sciences. We do not advocate ontological, epistemolog-
ical, or methodological homogeneity, but we do emphasize that the
vast diversity and lack of coordination in our discipline means that
assessing and achieving progress is problematic. It also means that
new research projects are not always designed to progress a scientific
research program.
Instead, new research (and new knowledge) is more likely to reflect
the “scientific paradigm” envisioned by another philosopher, Thomas
Kuhn. Kuhn (1962) sees the march of scientific progress not as an inten-
tional, goal-driven enterprise, but instead as a type of mob mentality.
Scholars share a particular world view, which they reify by developing
new theories and then testing them against the same reality that inspired
them. As a result, theories are rarely wrong and rarely advance collective
knowledge. In essence, science is a self-fulfilling enterprise where scien-
tific truth is more of a reflection of a shared mentality than a rational
attempt to build knowledge.
Kuhn writes that paradigms might shift and worldviews might change,
but they do so because of changes in the subject, not because of the
failure of an SRP to progress objective knowledge. One illustration of
Kuhn’s metatheory is the end of the Cold War, when the collapse of
1 INTRODUCTION 5
the Soviet Union and the bi-polar system created a crisis of confidence
in neorealist theory. IR scholars flocked to social constructivism, previ-
ously an obscure set of concepts, which up to then languished on the
fringes of the discipline. Constructivist theories went from zero to hero
status because they were much better equipped to explain the changes in
Soviet society and the international system that realism failed to explain.
Confirming Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm shift, the next decade saw
a boom in constructivist scholarship and the abandonment of neorealist
theories that were previously front and center.
How do deviant cases fit into all of this? We have a simple suggestion.
Whether IR scholars are rational (Lakatos) or irrational (Kuhn) scien-
tists, they can all progress their research programs and improve theories
by studying deviant cases. Regardless of one’s epistemological perspec-
tive, we maintain that the use of deviant cases in research designs can
ultimately improve extant theory. By continuing to ignore deviant cases,
scholars might be redundantly confirming and reconfirming the stronger
parts of their theory while passing on opportunities to put the weaker
parts to the test, which would be much better for those who seek to
advance knowledge.
What Is a Deviant Case and How Can It be Used?

Deviant cases are those that cannot be explained by extant theories.
What can we learn from deviant cases? We have yet to see. Unfortunately,
case study research that explicitly utilizes deviant cases has been few and
far between. In the mid-twentieth century, there was some talk though
about the use of deviant cases among sociologists (Cantril et al. 1940;
Komarovsky 1940; Horst 1941; Gordon 1947; Merton 1947; Kendall
and Wolf 1949).
One example of early sociological research that utilized the devi-
ant case approach is Cantril et al. (1940), who investigated listen-
ers’ reactions to Orson Welles’s 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio
broadcast, which famously scared listeners with its realistic “breaking
news” approach to the H.G. Wells alien invasion tale. Approximately
one-third of the listeners believed that an alien invasion was taking
place, but many of those listeners had tuned in to the program after a
disclaimer was played at the beginning of the show. Still, Cantril et al.
revealed that nearly 15% of people who listened from the beginning and
heard the disclaimer still believed an alien invasion was occurring. This
group represents the deviation. Their investigation uncovers one reason

to explain this deviation—since the 1938 Munich crisis radio listeners
had become accustomed to breaking news interrupting scheduled pro-
grams. The 15% thought that real breaking news was interrupting their
broadcast of “War of the Worlds”! Thus, their work uncovered a new
variable, the anticipation of breaking news, previously not considered by
extant theory (Cantril et al. 1940; Kendall and Wolf 1949, 154).
In another early example, Komarovsky (1940) researches male author-
ity within the family of men who lose their jobs. The deviation was that
some men who based their family authority on their employment and who
lost their job still managed to maintain their authority afterward. By inves-
tigating these deviant cases, Komarovsky finds that in such cases the wives
were afraid of their husbands, a new variable for the predictive model.
For these researchers and others, cases falling outside the expla-
nation of a theory meant that the theory had not been fully specified.
Therefore, deviant cases presented opportunities to improve theories
and operationalizations.2 The sociologists Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Patricia L.
Kendall, and Katherine M. Wolf, contemporaries of Robert K. Merton,
were early advocates of deviant case study research.3 According to
Kendall and Wolf (1949, 152–153), Lazarsfeld argued in his lectures at
Columbia University that deviant cases, rather than being a “source of
embarrassment to the researcher…can, and should, play a positive role
in empirical research, rather than being merely the ‘tidying-up’ process
through which exceptions to the empirical rule are given some plausi-
bility and thus disposed of.” Kendall and Wolf describe two functions of
deviant cases:
The first function of deviant case analysis, then, is to correct the
over-simplifications of predictive schemes by demonstrating the relevance
of additional variables. The second function of this type of analysis is not
to add anything to the scheme but rather to refine the measurement of
statistical variables used to locate the deviant cases (Kendall and Wolf
1949, 155).
2 See for example, Milton Gordon, “Sociological Law and the Deviant Case,” Sociometry
10 (1947), 257.
3 Among many other things, Robert K. Merton is famous for his theory of deviance (also
known as strain theory). Deviance theory, which explains why some people commit crimes,
should not be confused with deviant case analysis. But he also conducted deviant case anal-
ysis in his work (such as Merton 1947).
1 INTRODUCTION 7
When scholars operationalize theoretical variables, they seek the best

possible measurement of a complex social factor. Often, the measure-
ments are proxies for what is truly being theorized and, thus, they sel-
dom completely and perfectly adhere to the abstract, theoretical ideal.
Deviant cases might be deviant because of the crudeness of how our dis-
cipline operationalizes important variables. Kendall and Wolf state that
the “War of the Worlds” case captures both of these functions of devi-
ant cases. One, the model did not take into account the possibility of lis-
teners being trained to anticipate breaking news interruptions (the model
was under-specified). Two, it assumed that tuning in from the start of the
broadcast indicated that listeners had heard the opening announcement of
the broadcast and understood it to be fiction. On the latter point, some
listeners indicated that they regularly disregarded opening announcements
and commercials, hence Kendall and Wolf made an unfortunate measure-
ment error they would only discover later (1949, 157).
Deviant case analysis debuted in political science later in the twentieth
century (Lipset et al. 1956; Molnar 1967; Lijphart 1971). Molnar’s arti-
cle, “Deviant Case Analysis in Social Science,” attempts to update and
improve upon the logic of deviant case analysis. First, he suggests that
the stochastic nature of statistical analyses assumes the existence of devi-
ant cases (i.e. outliers) and dismisses them as inexplicable noise. For
deterministic studies, like those that conceptualize independent varia-
bles as necessary and sufficient conditions, deviant cases simply discon-
firm the hypothesis, but only if they are appropriate cases to study in the
first place.4 Determining whether a deviant case actually falls within the
scope of the study is a “crucial element in deviant case analysis” (Molnar
1967, 8). Lijphart (1971) extends the discussion by adding to the func-
tions of deviant case study analysis the idea that deviant case studies can help
theory-building scholars develop stronger concepts. Deviant cases can: (a)
help to refine definitions of important concepts; (b) reveal variables that
can generate new hypotheses; (c) uncover empirical data that was over-
looked as a result of measurement error, which can then provide new
support to existing theories; and (d) serve as an “experimental group,”
with non-deviating cases serving as the “control group” (Lijphart 1971,
4 Though it must be said that there are no actual laws in the social sciences as there are in
the natural sciences. Regarding IR, Jack Levy (1989, 88) states that the Democratic Peace
is “the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations.”
693).5 All in all, deviant cases have many applications for imaginative
researchers. We maintain that there is a tradition of deviant case analysis
in the social sciences that IR scholars can, and should, follow in their
own work.
Plan of the Book

Despite the benefits shown in the existing literature, there has been
a dearth of deviant case analyses in international relations. Our book
attempts to make up for lost time by presenting as many weird, deviant
cases from international relations as we can fit into this book. Hence, our
volume is not a single, focused research project with cases that deviate
from one theory. Instead, it is large collection of deviant cases arranged
thematically by chapter.
So, just how does a book full of deviant cases without a unified the-
oretical focus work? First, each chapter describes multiple amusing
vignettes. We follow them with a small set of questions and some sug-
gested readings. The last chapter, the epilogue, places the preceding
chapters in a broader theoretical context.
The next chapter, “To the Sea! Sealand and Other Wannabe States,”
covers aspiring states that surface up around the world. A lot of people
want to rule the world, but some people just want to rule their own
tiny state. Sealand, established on an anti-aircraft gun platform off the
coast of England, is just one of a few dozen aspirant states around the
world that have declared independence on privately held property or
unclaimed slices of territory. Why do states fail to recognize their efforts
but also refrain from suppressing them? Does it make sense that Monaco,
Andorra, the Vatican City, and Lichtenstein are considered legitimate,
but Sealand is not? By telling these stories, Philip questions the seem-
ingly arbitrary and non-generalizable nature of what makes a state and
what does not.
David covers strangely drawn borders in “Beers at the Border Bar.”
Borders can be a mundane and overlooked subject, but they are also an
integral part of the definition of the state. Borders tell us who belongs
5 In contemporary IR scholarship, examples of deviant case studies that deliberately
attempt to improve theory are too few. For a good example, see Timothy Crawford,
“Wedge Strategy, Balancing, and the Deviant Case of Spain, 1940–41,” Security Studies 17,
no. 1 (2008): 1–38.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
within the state and who does not. The function of borders is to set
a definitive boundary that will head off future conflict, but Chapter 3
highlights cases in which just the opposite occurs. Simply put, some bor-
ders defy common sense. This chapter highlights some of the stranger
borders in the world. It looks at a bar in the former Yugoslavia that is
split between two countries; at enclaves, counter enclaves, and the
world’s only counter-counter enclave; a little patch of Scottish territory
in the Netherlands; and other captivating stories about borders that defy
common sense. It concludes with an explanation of the US–Canada bor-
der that began with Benjamin Franklin’s poorly drawn map. David raises
questions about the sanctity of borders and whether or not they are
always the result of rational, goal-driven state behavior.
Chapter 4 is called “Stupid Things Our Leaders Say and Do,” refer-
encing a short-lived sitcom featuring William Shatner. In terms of con-
tent, the title says it all. The vignettes about idiotic leadership behavior
raise some useful questions: When it comes to IR, how much do the
personal characteristics of leaders matter? How do personal relationships
between leaders impact politics among states? In what circumstances do
personal antagonisms between two leaders undercut the pursuit of the
national interest? As of late, we have seen some off-the-wall leadership,
with the likes of Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Cristina Fernandez
de Kirchner, and Robert Mugabe, et al. giving us some eyebrow rais-
ing moments. Never more timely than now, this chapter will capture
all the cringe-worthy moments in which a president, prime minister, or
dictator said something or performed some action that affected pub-
lic opinion or led to even more consequential results. Philip starts with
President Donald Trump, the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. In the
spirit of bipartisanship, we also discuss Barack Obama’s penchant for get-
ting overly friendly with female foreign leaders. Of course, he goes well
beyond the water’s edge to highlight some of the weirdest examples of
stupid leader behaviors.
What do you do when a nation-state is so weird that you feel it
will dominate every chapter? How do you deal with North Korea,
which behaves so strangely that you must assume that the common
denominator is its own regime? You give it its own chapter, of course.
Philip assembled some of the weirdest IR vignettes imaginable into
“DPRKLOL,” our fifth chapter. Perhaps the ultimate deviant case,
North Korea could be a bizarre outlier that defies any explanation.
Alternatively, it could be the exception that proves the rule. Philip covers
some of the DPRK’s most outrageous actions in the international arena,

including the series of intrusions in the late 1960s, including the 1968
raid on South Korea’s Blue House, which some have called the Second
Korean War. He also describes some more recent behaviors, like Dennis
Rodman’s booze-fueled basketball diplomacy; the assassination of Kim
Jong Un’s estranged half-brother; and the Kim brother who passed on
leading the country because it impeded on his obsession with the guitar-
ist Eric Clapton. Chapter 5 complements the earlier chapter on the idio-
syncrasies of individual leaders.
David gets to write about soccer and international sport in “SCREAM
(Soccer Rules Everything around Me),” our sixth chapter. International
sports do not receive much coverage in IR scholarship, but he suggests
that they might be a cause and effect of international relations. Where
else do you get the tension of international rivals and enemies going
face to face with each other (besides during wartime, that is)? Soccer,
or football as it is known elsewhere, is the world’s most popular sport.
It is only natural that international soccer matches should rack up more
than their fair share of international incidents, such as the 1969 Soccer
War between El Salvador and Honduras, or the Christmas Truce foot-
ball match of World War I. Chapter 6 collects many of these instances in
which soccer was something more than just a game.
Chapter 7 returns to the topic of borders, but with a twist. David
offers “Terra Nullius and the Neutral Zone: Not an Indie Band,” which
focuses on the places in the world where borders are ambiguous, incor-
rect, or absent. Cases discussed include the Neutral Zone; the land
between Croatia and Serbia that neither side wants; the so-called Google
War; and David’s investigation of an American golf course that was
strangely left on the wrong side of the US–Mexico border. The chap-
ter concludes with a few strange instances where two or more states
agree to share territory, calling into question some common assumptions
about how states manage their sovereign territory.
Philip presents his research on island disputes in the next chapter,
“Island Living Ain’t Easy.” Territorial disputes are the most common
casus belli, but he shows that island disputes are less likely to lead to war
than continental territorial disputes. Hence, island disputes are anoma-
lous cases of territorial disputes. Islands are territory, but unlike land that
lies between two neighboring disputants, islands are geographically iso-
lated, making them harder to invade, defend, and justify fighting over.
Also, the remoteness of many disputed islands brings together strange
1 INTRODUCTION 11
and unexpected disputants. While students of IR would not be surprised

to learn about adjacent countries fighting over a shared border, they
might be shocked to know that Canada and Denmark have been trading
barbs over an uninhabited rock off the coast of Greenland for forty years.
What would prevent two allies and generally nice countries from coming
to a mutually agreeable compromise over a trivial dispute? Philip suggests
that states hate to give up territorial claims, despite the fact that island
disputes are too costly to fight a war over.
Chapter 9 finds David discussing some uncommon trade deals. “Gone
to the Birds? Turkey Tails, Chicken Taxes, and the Global Economy”
shows that Argentina is not the best trade partner and that its reputation
for accumulating sovereign debt encouraged Ghana to seize one of its
warships. More broadly, this chapter shows that states can slide backwards
into protectionism in weird ways. As if navigating arcane trade rules is not
enough, managing business relationships across cultures can be down-
right treacherous, too. Just ask Robert Kraft, whose ignorance of Russia’s
unique way of doing business is precisely why Vladimir Putin stole his
Super Bowl ring. Chapter 9 demonstrates what decades of IR research on
trade have failed to reveal: Trade can be interesting when it is weird.
In Chapter 10, Philip discusses his and David’s favorite teaching
aid, the Mel Gibson movie, Lethal Weapon 2, specifically the part about
“Diplomatic Immunity…Revoked!” Philip describes instances when
states revoked diplomatic immunity or stretched it to cover some strange
circumstances. The use and abuse of diplomatic immunity might speak
to larger issues regarding power. This chapter is awash in hypocrisy—
powerful states applying different standards to themselves and others.
Did a teacher ever mispronounce your name in front of the whole
class at the start of the semester? How did that make you feel? Angry?
Embarrassed? Did it make you want to change your name? Well, imagine
if you represented Kazakhstan at an international sporting tournament
and the host honored you by playing the fake Kazakh anthem from
the 2006 comedy smash, Borat. We think you would feel pretty lousy.
Mistaken identity, disputed identities, and strange national symbols are
the focus of Chapter 11, “What’s in a Name?” Beyond Borat, David
looks at the politics of a national name change, the bitter row between
Greece and Macedonia over Alexander the Great, and countries that are
sick of being confused with each other.
The book concludes with Chapter 12. Our epilogue wraps up the
preceding chapters by returning to the discussion of deviant cases and
placing our collection of weird stories into a broader context. How do

these vignettes contribute to the scholarly study of IR? What theories do
our stories engage and critique as deviant cases? How could scholarship
progress theoretically to address these critiques?
Whether you read Weird IR from the perspective of an IR student,
IR scholar, or a fan of weird stories, we hope you find what follows to be
amusing, engaging, and useful. Stay weird, IR.
References and Suggested Readings

Brady, Henry, and David Collier, eds. Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools,
Shared Standards, 2nd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
Cantril, Hadley, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Herzog. The Invasion from Mars.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1940.
Crawford, Timothy. “Wedge Strategy, Balancing, and the Deviant Case of Spain,
1940–41,” Security Studies 17, no. 1 (2008): 1–38.
Elman, Colin. “Explanatory Typologies in Qualitative Studies of International
Politics,” International Organization 59 (2005): 293–326.
Elman, Colin, and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds. Progress in International
Relations Theory: Appraising the Field. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
George, Alexander L., and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory
Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
Geortz, Gary, and Jack S. Levy, eds. Case Studies and Necessary Conditions
Counterfactuals. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practice. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Gordon, Milton. “Sociological Law and the Deviant Case,” Sociometry 10
(1947): 250–258.
Horst, Paul. “The Prediction of Personal Adjustment,” in Social Science Research
Council Bulletin 48. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1941:
17–18.
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations:
Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. New
York: Routledge, 2010.
Kendall, Patricia L., and Katherine M. Wolf. “The Analysis of Deviant Cases in
Communications Research,” in Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, edi-
tors, Communications Research, 1948–1949. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1949.
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry:
Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
Komarovsky, Mira. The Unemployed Man and His Family. New York: The
Dryden Press, Inc., 1940.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1962.
Lakatos, Imre. “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research
Programmes,” in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, editors, Criticism and
the Growth of Knowledge: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the
Philosophy of Science, London, 1965, volume 4. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1970: 91–196.
Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics in War,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore
K. Rabb, editors, The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
———. “Case Studies: Types, Designs, and Logics of Inference,” Conflict
Management and Peace Science 25 (2008): 1–18.
Lijphart, Arend. “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,”
American Political Science Review 65, no. 3 (1971, September): 682–693.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, Martin A. Trow, and James S. Coleman. Union
Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographers Union.
Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1956.
Merton, Robert K. Mass Persuasion. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.
Molnar, George. “Deviant Case Analysis in Social Science,” Politics 2, no. 1
(1967): 1–11.
Waltz, Kenneth N. “Foreward: Thoughts About Assaying Theories,” in Colin
Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, editors, Progress in International Relations
Theory: Appraising the Field. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003: vii–xii.
CHAPTER 2
To the Sea! Sealand and Other

Wannabe States
Philip Streich
Fans of Family Guy will surely remember the episode entitled,

“E Peterbus Unum,” in which Peter Griffin turns his home into an inde-
pendent state named Petoria. Peter discovers that his New England-based
property was mistakenly left out of the USA in the eighteenth century, so
he uses his newfound sovereignty to invite many of the world’s dictators
over to his house, including Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Having offended the sensibilities of most Americans, he then invokes dip-
lomatic immunity to get out of paying his tab at the local bar. Eventually,
after annexing his neighbor’s pool, the US government forcibly reinte-
grates Petoria back into the USA. There was also a musical montage that
fans of MC Hammer would love. This entertaining half-hour foray into
international law and politics might be the closest you will ever get to
these topics on American television. And all of it might make you won-
der: What would you do if you could make your own state?
Paddy Roy Bates knew what he wanted to do, and he did it long
before Family Guy.
In 1967, Bates, a pirate radio broadcaster and retired British Army
Major, declared an abandoned military platform lying off the English
coast to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. Bates and his fam-
ily have been holding on to this “sea fortress” ever since. They suffered
through gun battles, takeover attempts, court appearances, and a large
fire for the glory of their tiny country. Through thick and thin, they still
claim to be the rulers of the Principality of Sealand today.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4_2
16 P. STREICH
To be sure, the British military had abandoned the sea fort in the
first place for good reason. Consisting of a steel platform sitting on top
of two hollow concrete columns, Sealand has only 0.025 km2 of living
space. Occupants and supplies must travel 12 km from the coast in fre-
quently rough waters, only to then face the prospect of being lifted onto
the platform by wench. If you want to visit Sealand, you will have to sit
in a playground swing-style seat dangling in a biting wind while being
pulled up several meters. Plus, you will pay $2000 for the privilege. Life
on the platform is not easy either. Danger comes from scurvy, vicious
weather, lapses in being resupplied, and worst of all, boredom. If your
supplies fail to reach you and you want to leave…well, you will not be
getting back to dry land by yourself.
Sealand does not generate a whole lot in the way of revenue. It does
not drill oil or gas, although the Bates family does break even by selling
passports, honorary titles, and merchandise through their online store.
The Bates’ claims of sovereignty for Sealand go entirely unheeded by the
British government and the rest of the international community. At least
London has not smashed this minor insurrection yet.
One might have good reason to think of Sealand as a trivial case
unworthy of close attention. After all, it is a man-made, nonpermanent
structure resting on top of the seabed. Habitation is not self-sustainable
and there is no permanent population. The only people living within its
borders are a rotating roster of family members, friends, and sympathiz-
ers who maintain a 24-hour presence on the platform. (All of the Bates
family members have homes in Britain.) By the standards of current
international law, it does not pass the requirements to be a state.
Yet Sealand’s attempt to gain statehood has relevance for the Chinese
artificial islands in the South China Sea; other land reclamation projects
taking place around the world; and the burgeoning seasteading move-
ment, a libertarian crusade that aims to create long-term floating habitats
outside of any state’s territorial waters. Any change in international law
and diplomacy modifying the status of Sealand could impact the other
developments, and vice versa.
The international status of Sealand is relevant for other legal reasons
that concern state authority: The Bates family has been involved in sev-
eral (unsuccessful so far) schemes to host offshore servers for gambling
websites, data storage, and the digital content website, Pirate Bay. So,
even if international recognition is not forthcoming, the spread of auton-
omous offshore entities is still a concern for states and international law.
2 TO THE SEA! SEALAND AND OTHER WANNABE STATES 17
Sealand is only one of dozens of wannabe states around the world.

Some are based on islands, some on individual private properties, others
on artists’ collectives, and some are entire villages. Should their claims be
dismissed simply because many of the claims exist within the territories or
territorial waters of existing states? Any new state established today, such
as the internationally recognized Republic of South Sudan (est. 2011),
is carved out of another state’s territory. Nor should aspirant states be
dismissed due to their size. One need only think of the handful of inter-
nationally recognized microstates that exist around the world such as
Singapore, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Nauru, Tuvalu, Monaco, San Marino,
and Vatican City. It might be our natural reaction to dismiss outright the
claims of these wannabe state-makers as crazy, but do not all new states
start with someone who might be seen by others as a crazy dreamer?
In this chapter, we will explore Sealand and other cases of aspirant
states. We will also look into the concept of sovereign statehood, its
definition, and its limits by looking at cases of aspirant states similar to
Sealand, as well as common practices and international law. We will also
explore the reasons why aspirant state founders have decided to declare
their own statehood. We will see that while some aspirant states can be
attributed to dissatisfaction with the authority of the existing state and
attempts to circumvent it, others are shown to be publicity stunts or
jokes that have carried on too long.
On a pickier note (the authors of this volume are social scientists, after
all), we should note that there is some debate over the name for this
phenomenon of wannabe states, and we want to take a side. To describe
entities like Sealand, Wikipedia (2018) has an entry entitled “microna-
tions,” while also noting alternative terms such as “model country” or
“new country project.” John Ryan et al. (2006) also uses the term
micronations. We prefer the term “aspirant states” because these are
leaders declaring sovereign statehood after all, not nationhood. Nation
and state are two distinct concepts (though they are commonly con-
flated in everyday conversation to refer to a country). A nation refers
to a large group of people with a common history, language, religion,
and culture. Such a nation may or may not be connected with a state or
one specific country. For example, the Japanese people are a nation. The
Japanese people also happen to have a homeland controlled by the state
of Japan. The Kurdish people are also a nation, but they are a nation
without their own state, as the Kurdish people are strewn across several
different countries controlled by non-Kurdish peoples in the Middle East.
18 P. STREICH
“Micronation” rulers are not declaring themselves to be leaders of

newly established nations of people. Microstates might be a better term,
but this is already used to refer to very small states like Monaco and
Lichtenstein that are established members of the international state system.
Aspirant states correctly describe what we are discussing here—people who
aspire to create new states around themselves and some small plot of
property they control.
The Principality of Sealand

The Principality of Sealand consists solely of a World War II-era, anti-
aircraft gun platform named Fort Roughs (aka Roughs Tower or Rough
Sands), located 6 nautical miles (12 km) off the eastern coast of Suffolk,
England. Fort Roughs was one of a series of Maunsell Sea Forts that were
built by the engineer Guy Maunsell for the British Navy and Army during
World War II to protect the Thames and Mersey estuaries. There were four
naval forts in the Thames Estuary, including Fort Roughs, and three army
forts lying closer to the mouth of the Thames (a further three army forts
were located at the Mersey Estuary). All of the forts were outfitted with
anti-aircraft guns and saw action during the war. The military decommis-
sioned the Maunsell forts in the 1950s, but left them standing (Fig. 2.1).
As unattractive as life on a Maunsell fort must be, various pirate radio
broadcasters found a use for them and began occupying them in the
1960s. Back on the British Isles, the government strictly regulated the
radio waves, so the demand for rock music in the 1960s could only be
satiated through illegally broadcasted “pirate radio” broadcasters. One
of these broadcasters was a retired British army major, Paddy Roy Bates
(1921–2012), who ran Radio Essex from a Maunsell army fort, Knock
John Tower, in 1965–1966.
Bates decided to pull the plug on that station in December 1966 after
being hit with several fines by the British government. As Knock John
Tower was an army sea fort, it was located closer inside the Thames estu-
ary and within British territorial waters, which was limited to 3 nautical
miles (n.m.) at the time. Bates thought that grabbing a naval sea fort
located outside of the 3 n.m. limit might put an end to the government’s
harassment. So, Bates seized Fort Roughs from other pirate radio broad-
casters on Christmas Eve 1966 and shut down Radio Essex on Christmas
Day. Never a dull holiday in the Bates household!
Fig. 2.1 The Principality of Sealand in all its majesty (Source Wikicommons—
Ryan Lackey)
Bates never restarted his radio broadcasting, however. On August 14,

1967, the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967 came into effect
to further combat the scourge of pirate radio. This act targeted illegal
broadcasts emanating from marine structures such as the Maunsell sea
forts, even outside of Britain’s 3 n.m. territorial waters. Bates presumably
thought that continuing to broadcast would be an invitation for a gov-
ernment seizure, so he declined to go back on the airwaves. Instead, he
declared the independence of Fort Roughs as the sovereign Principality
of Sealand on September 2, 1967. Over the next eight years, Bates wrote
a constitution, designed a national flag, and wrote a national anthem. He
also had a currency minted, the Sealand dollar, which is pegged at US
$1, which he and his successors have sold along with citizenship, titles of
nobility, stamps, and passports in order to raise awareness, support, and
revenue.
20 P. STREICH
An small degree of implied legal validation for Bates’s declaration of

sovereignty came in 1968 in the form of a court judgment. In taking
control of the sea fort, Bates had enlisted his family’s help, including
that of his sixteen-year-old son Michael (the current ruler of Sealand),
to help maintain a constant presence and prevent the tower’s seizure by
the government. Government documents on Sealand’s homepage show
that, in the late 1960s, the Wilson government worried about public per-
ceptions if the military were to forcibly remove women and young peo-
ple from the structure. So, it chose to not seize the sea fort while it was
occupied. But that didn’t stop the government from harassing the Bates
family.
In 1968, a UK government vessel observing activities on Sealand
veered close enough that young Michael Bates fired warning shots from
a pistol over the bow of the vessel. Both Roy and Michael were issued
summons to appear in a local court, and they were arrested when they
were next on dry land and arraigned on firearms charges. While shooting
at officials might be a slam-dunk case for the prosecution in many coun-
tries, this was not the case in late-1960s Britain. The magistrate sitting
on the case decided that Britain had no jurisdiction over the case, as the
incident occurred outside the 3 n.m. territorial waters limit of the time,
and so father and son Bates were released. The Bates family has used this
ruling ever since as de facto British recognition of Sealand’s sovereignty.
The UK extended its territorial waters claim out to 12 n.m. in 1987,
encompassing Sealand but the Bates claimed to have extended Sealand’s
territorial waters to 12 n.m. a day earlier.
Bates could add a claim of international recognition by one country,
West Germany, several years later. In 1978, a German lawyer who had
earlier purchased a Sealand passport and was possibly interested in open-
ing a casino on the platform decided to hire several Dutch and German
mercenaries and stage a coup against his new country. (How’s that for
loyalty?) But the old Army major in Roy would not countenance any
such setbacks to his sovereignty project. Flying with Michael to Sealand
in a helicopter flown by a friend, Roy counterattacked. After firing their
shotgun once (a misfire when Michael stumbled onto the platform off
of the chopper), the lightweight mercenaries quickly surrendered. Roy
released them, but made a prisoner of one of the lawyer’s associate, a
German who also happened to be a registered Sealand citizen, and fined
him 75,000 deutschmarks for treason.
When the West German government asked Britain to intervene on

behalf of its citizen, London declined, citing the 1968 judgment that
Sealand lay outside of its territory (London’s reply again added to Bates’s
argument that Sealand is independent of the UK). West Germany, seek-
ing a bloodless and quick resolution to the fiasco, sent a diplomat from
its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate the lawyer’s release. Bates
agreed and released him into the diplomat’s custody without the fine
being paid. But Bates probably felt that he gained something far more
valuable than the money—international recognition via the diplomatic
outreach. Bates and his successors have maintained since the incident
that the German diplomat’s visit constituted de facto German recogni-
tion of Sealand’s sovereignty, a key requirement for sovereign statehood.
In addition to selling currency, stamps, passports, titles, and other
merchandise, the Bates family has made several fruitless attempts to turn
Sealand into a money-making enterprise. In 2000, they started a firm
called HavenCo with the intention of using Sealand as an offshore data
shelter for gambling and file sharing websites. The company never got
off the ground, though, and the project disappeared. Soon after came a
fire in June 2006, which necessitated repairs estimated to run between
£250,000 and £500,000.
In January 2007, the Bates family put up their treasured principal-
ity for sale through a Spanish agency that specializes in selling islands.
The notorious Swedish piracy website Pirate Bay was rumored to be
one of its potential buyers so that it could store its servers out of the
hands of Swedish authorities. The deal never went anywhere, however. A
September 2007 scheme to start an online gambling site, Sealandcasino.com,
also came to nothing. Still, Sealand stood there in the water, resolute and
accomplishing little, but still enjoying a bizarre loophole in international
law.
The exciting life of Roy Bates unfortunately came to a close when he
passed away in 2012. Michael Bates, who had been serving as regent
since 1999, succeeded him as the sovereign monarch. Unlike the British
royals, who always have their hands full with something glamorous or
heroic, Sealand’s monarch runs a few fishing boats with his sons to pass
the time.1
1 Michael was contacted by email for this chapter and had several things to say about
Sealand and its future and past. See Appendix A.

22 P. STREICH
Other Aspirant States

While Sealand is perhaps the most famous example of an aspirant state,
there are many ongoing aspirant state claims around the world. A list of
the ongoing aspirant states that the authors have identified is displayed
in Table 2.1. The qualifications for inclusion on this list are: (1) that the
territory of the aspirant state actually exists on Earth (no claims for space
or objects in space are counted, nor are any virtual, solely web-based
states counted), and (2) either the territory is unclaimed by any interna-
tionally recognized state or the aspirant state leader is in physical posses-
sion of the territory.
Two of the oldest ongoing sovereignty claims date back to the 1940s.
Interestingly, both started as jokes. Yet, Elleore in Denmark and Saugeais
in France took on lives of their own and continue to this day. Christiania,
another Danish case, is the well-known anarchist commune located in a
corner of Copenhagen. After Sealand, the second most famous aspirant
state on our list is Hutt River, which started when a farmer in the state
of Western Australia got into a dispute with the state government over
wheat production quotas. He declared the sovereign statehood of his
property and went on to sell stamps and coins, like Sealand. The farm is
now a well-known tourist trap. Until he abdicated his throne to his son
in 2017, Hutt River’s Prince Leonard Casley would greet visitors in full
regalia that rivaled Liberace’s flamboyance and love of velvet.
While many of these aspirant states are classic local jokes, the phenom-
enon more generally seems to be on the rise. There have been at least 18
new and current cases of declarations of sovereignty since 2002.
Some aspirant states pop up because established states cannot agree
on their borders. This is what happened on the banks of the Danube
River between Croatia and Serbia. Bewilderingly, there are some pock-
ets of land which neither side claims, mostly on the Croatian side of the
Danube.2 This resulted in an outbreak of recent aspirant states, includ-
ing Liberland, Enclava, Celestinia, and Ongal (you can read more about
Liberland in Chapter 7). The leaders, all of whom were motivated by lib-
ertarian ideology, jumped at the chance of rare terra nullius to declare
themselves rulers of their own states. They have even attracted a few
hundred thousand Europeans that are interested in citizenship.
2 Why would a state pass on the opportunity to get more territory?

Table 2.1 Forty
Elleore 1944
ongoing aspirant states, Saugeais 1947
arranged by year of Jamtland 1963
sovereignty claim Seborga 1963
Sealand 1967
Akhzivland 1970
Hutt River 1970
Christiania 1971
Bumbunga 1976
Frestonia 1977
Aeterna Lucina 1978
Rainbow Creek 1979
Aramoana 1980
Avram 1980
Ladonia 1980
Atlantium 1981
Kugelmugel 1984
Whangamomona 1989
Marlborough 1993
L’Anse-Saint-Jean 1997
Užupis 1997
Molossia 1999
Hajdučka Republika 2002
Copeman Empire 2003
Coral Sea Islands 2004
Wy 2004
Lagoan Isles 2005
Vikesland 2005
British West Florida 2005
Namimara 2006
Austenasia 2008
Flandrensis 2008
Forvik 2008
Filettino 2011
Glacier Republic 2014
North Sudan (Bir Tawil) 2014
Ongal 2014
Liberland 2015
Enclava 2015
Celestinia 2015
The Danube cases are hardly the only examples of aspirant states that
have broken out due to gaps in agreements between states. The tiny
mountain village of Seborga, located near the Italian Mediterranean
coastline close to the French border, was once an independent
24 P. STREICH
principality in the Holy Roman Empire; its inhabitants argue that its sta-
tus as an independent state continues to this day because the 1861 Act
of Unification did not explicitly refer to Seborga (much like the Family
Guy’s Petoria). Of course, I doubt that every single Italian village was
mentioned in the Act of Unification in 1861, but Seborgans would pre-
sumably counter that each of the independent Italian states was explicitly
mentioned, with the exception of Seborga.
Sealand might be the standard bearer, but it is not the most color-
ful aspirant state. That honor belongs to Other World Kingdom, a female
dominance/BDSM club that once operated on an estate in the Czech
Republic. The club declared itself to be a sovereign state in 1997 and main-
tained its own currency, passports, rent-a-cop police force, legal system,
state flag, and state hymn. It presumably had a greater GDP than Sealand
based on video sales alone. Sadly, it closed down when it sold its property
in 2008, although the operators continue to maintain a fetish website.
An example on the complete opposite end of the lifestyle spec-
trum is the Global Country of World Peace, established in 2000 as a
Transcendental Meditation organization. Its mission is to create a border-
less country for peace-lovers everywhere. Somewhat paradoxically, its lead-
ers’ first impulse was to create its own sovereign state by purchasing land
from smaller, impoverished states such Suriname, Tuvalu, and the Mariana
Islands. After a couple of years of failed negotiations, however, the organ-
ization contented itself with building “peace palaces” around the world.
One of the most famous attempts to create a new state out of noth-
ing was the Republic of Minerva, a project that spanned the 1970s and
1980s. Michael Oliver, a real estate mogul and the founder of the liber-
tarian organization, The Phoenix Foundation (not to be confused with
the organization of the same name from the television show, MacGyver),
was the mastermind of the first attempt at statehood for Minerva. In
1971, Oliver paid for barges to take sand from Australia to the Minerva
Reefs, located south of Tonga and Fiji. Once enough land existed above
the water level to build a small structure in January 1972, the Republic
of Minerva declared its existence, a libertarian paradise with no taxation
or economic intervention by the government (and nothing to do, too).
Oliver’s move towards statehood was enough to spur a regional con-
ference between Australia, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Nauru, Samoa, and
the Cook Islands. At that meeting, the legitimate states decided that the
reefs claimed by Minerva belonged to Tonga. Tongan troops promptly
landed on the reefs and deported the libertarians. Another group of
libertarians made a second attempt to build Minerva in 1982, only tem-

porarily succeeding in occupying the reefs before Tongan forces once
again gave them the boot. If anything, the Republic of Minerva experi-
ment has given tiny Tonga a chance to flex its military muscles.
Speaking of libertarians, the seasteading movement has been recently
gathering momentum among independent-minded millionaires from
Silicon Valley. The Seasteading Institute, founded in 2008, is dedicated
to promoting and facilitating the building of housing on the high seas
outside of the reach of the world’s sovereign states. Ideas have included
putting buildings on top of large floating platforms and using cruise
ships. The project has attracted the high-profile support of individu-
als like PayPal founder and Donald Trump supporter, Peter Thiel, and
has been featured in prominent media such as the BBC, CNN, Business
Insider, and The Economist. Members of the institute have helped to
establish Blueseed, the first commercial seasteading venture. Blueseed’s
CEO, Dario Mutabdjiza, has proposed putting up such structures off the
coast of San Francisco, just beyond the USA’s 12 n.m. territorial waters,
in order to provide a talent pool for Silicon Valley’s while skirting US
work visa laws.
Aspirant States and International Relations

So what does it take for an aspirant state to be taken seriously? The most
practical argument is the constitutive theory of statehood, which defines an
entity as an independent state if it is recognized as sovereign by other
states (Worster 2009, 120). This is the means by which most states have
historically been born and recognized as such.
But what happens if only a few weak states, or none at all, recognize a
newly born state? The declarative theory of statehood defines a state as an
entity meeting the following criteria: (1) a defined territory; (2) a per-
manent population; (3) a government; and (4) a capacity to enter into
relations with other states (Crawford 1977, 111). The declarative theory
was codified into international law in the 1933 Montevideo Convention
on the Rights and Duties of States, but it is not universally adhered to
(Worster 2009, 125). Most scholars and representatives of developing
states have favored this definition of a state, since the international rec-
ognition requirement of constitutive theory can be seen as prejudiced
against new states that are not in favor with the major powers of the
world (Worster 2009, 128).
26 P. STREICH
An aspirant state that is based on part of another country’s territory,

quite possibly even someone’s private property located within an exist-
ing country, could technically prevail under this definition. But Sealand’s
obstacles are still plenty. They are:
1. Sealand is a man-made, nonpermanent structure. In the United

Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which
is useful in this context, it is written that “artificial islands, installa-
tions and structures do not possess the status of islands”;
2. Sealand lacks a permanent population and cannot sustain habita-
tion; and
3. Sealand is located within British territorial waters (although it was
not originally).
The last reason can explain why Michael Bates of Sealand is looking into
the possibility of moving Sealand farther out past the 12 n.m. territorial
waters limit (see his interview in Appendix A). The first two reasons are
still large obstacles to statehood for Sealand.
Why do some people want to create their own states? Why go through
all the trouble? In the search for any discernible patterns, we can see a
few repeated behaviors. In a review of the list of forty ongoing aspirant
states, we can see that some of these aspirant states arise out of legal dis-
putes and libertarian ideology, while others are created for satirical rea-
sons or self-aggrandizement. Others arise as a means to pursue profits
(i.e. to make money from tourism).
According to MicroWiki, the wiki encyclopedia for all things to do
with aspirant states, “A micronation is an entity intended to replace,
resemble, mock, or exist on equal footing with recognised independent
state. Some micronations are created with serious intent, while others
exist as a hobby or stunt” (Micronations.wiki 2013, “Micronation/ps”).
These categories need not be mutually exclusive. Sometimes a historical
error exists which helps to aid the claim of sovereignty. Sometimes whole
villages are involved, though in most cases, only a handful of people are
involved in pushing the claims.
The number of people involved is related to the question of interna-
tional recognition. Think about it: what separates these aspirant states from
independence movements in places like Catalonia? The size of the group
and the ideological struggle that it represents certainly help to determine
whether an aspirant state is considered a serious separatist movement.
A large group with a history of being oppressed will draw attention from
the government they wish to separate from and from potential supporters
around the world. A single person, a wealthy family, or even a whole village
will just not draw as much attention. What about several villages, however?
What about a whole region? As the scale increases, we can assume that the
likelihood of being taken seriously rises as well. We are only talking about
probabilities here—many significant groups such as the Palestinians have
not gained formal statehood yet despite decades of efforts.
Of course, we started this chapter by arguing that size should not mat-
ter, since there are a handful of microstates around the world, such as
Andorra, Nauru, and San Marino. These could be seen as anomalies, but
it is their existence, in fact, that provides the inspiration for aspirant states.
Size does matter to some degree, but it is not a perfect predictor, either.
Finally, we want to close this chapter by suggesting that internation-
ally accepted statehood might not be the ultimate goal for aspirant states
and their leaders. On this issue, the seasteading movement looms large.
Perhaps, the answer is to simply live outside of the jurisdiction of states
on the open seas, free of the laws of others! Of course, international laws
of the sea still apply, but as long as a colony does not break them, they
will have no reason to fear states bearing down on them.
Regardless of their size, origin, or goals, aspirant states are unlike any-
thing else in international relations. Their continued existence challenges
our preconceived notions of sovereignty and statehood.
For Further Reflection

1. What are the requirements for statehood? Are there any require-
ments not considered here?
2. Could new mini-states similar to Monaco, Singapore, and San
Andorra arise today? Why or why not?
3. Are any of the aspirant states likely to achieve full-fledged state-
hood? Why? What assumptions about the politics of statehood
underlie your answers?
4. What are the domestic and international factors working against
the establishment of new states? How does extant theory attempt
to explain these factors?
5. Should the international community recognize statehood on man-
made structures in international waters? Should there be a change
to international law?
28 P. STREICH
References and Suggested Readings

Crawford, James. “The Criteria for Statehood in International Law,” British
Yearbook of International Law 48, no. 1 (1977): 93–182.
Eggers, Allison. “When Is a State a State? The Case for Recognition of
Somaliland,” Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 30,
no. 1 (2012). Accessed on February 23, 2018 at http://lawdigitalcommons.
bc.edu/iclr/vol30/iss1/12.
Michael of Sealand, Principality of Sealand: Holding the Fort. Sealand:
Principality of Sealand, 2015.
“Microwiki, the Free Micronational Encyclopedia,” Microwiki. n.d. Accessed on
February 23, 2018 at https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Main_Page.
“Principality of Sealand,” Principality of Sealand. n.d. Accessed on February 23,
2018 at http://www.sealandgov.org.
“Reimagining Civilization with Floating Cities,” The Seasteading Institute. n.d.
Accessed on February 1, 2018 at http://www.seasteading.org.
Ryan, John, George Dunford, and Simon Sellars. Micronations: The Lonely Planet
Guide to Home-Made Nations. London: Lonely Planet Publications, 2006.
Williams, Paul. “What Makes a State? Territory,” American Society of
International Law Proceedings 106 (2012): 449–450.
Worster, William Thomas. “Law, Politics, and the Conception of the State in
State Recognition Theory,” Boston University International Law Journal 27,
no. 1 (2009): 115–171.
CHAPTER 3
Beers at the Border Bar: No Shirt?

No Passport? No Service!
David Bell Mislan
My earliest exposure to international relations involved a border cross-

ing. I was not the one crossing a border, though. Instead, I watched The
Living Daylights for my neighbor’s eleventh birthday party. I sat in the
movie theater, mesmerized, as James Bond smuggled a Soviet defector
across the Iron Curtain via a natural gas pipeline. How cool was that?
More importantly, I thought, these borders between countries must be a
really big deal if someone would go through all of that trouble.
Indeed, borders are a big deal. They are the place where the authority
of one state ends and another one begins. They change only when grand
bargains between governments are struck or, more likely, when wars are
fought. They tell us what money we are supposed to use, which language
we are supposed to speak, and which laws we are supposed to follow.
Depending on which side of one you’re born, they also suggest who we
are. Born in Bratislava? You are a Slovak. Born five minutes to the west?
You are an Austrian. It is as simple as that. Borders are firm, dependable,
and immutable. They are like the Cal Ripken of international relations—
they show up every day; they do their job, and they do not ask for much
more than your respect.
Despite being such an elemental part of our political lives, borders
sometimes defy logic. They can be arbitrarily or vaguely drawn. They
might even be based on a lie or a stupid careless mistake. This chapter
highlights some of our favorite weird border stories.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4_3
30 D. B. MISLAN
Beers at the Border

It is no surprise then that a tiny bar that straddles the Croatian-Serbian
border gets a lot of attention from tourists and passers-by. Enter the
Kalin Tavern from the south and you could get the feeling you are still
in Croatia. Enter from the north and you might think you are still in
Slovenia. You are right both times, because the border runs down the
center of the bar with a big yellow stripe. If you are ever in the tiny bor-
der town of Obrežje and you’d like to wet your whistle at this 187-year-
old bar, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, bring your passport. Second, you’re free to cross the border as
often as you want when you’re inside. Third, Slovenian laws apply inside
the bar. So, no smoking! Fourth, if you do want to smoke, make sure
that you exit the door you came in, lest you might be accused of trying
to cross the border illegally.
Why would such an odd arrangement exist? The answer lies in the
history of Yugoslavia, a twentieth-century phenomenon in southeastern
Europe. Yugoslavia was a patchwork of states comprised of six nations
and even more ethnicities that emerged from the ashes of the dissolved
Austro-Hungarian Empire. After its birth, the Yugoslav state did a poor
job of defining the internal boundaries between its constituent nations.
In 1974, it tried again and purposely left some of the borders loosely
defined. Croats lived outside of Croatia, Slovenes lived within and
beyond Slovenia, and so on. This was not much of a problem because
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia subsumed all of the nations.
When democratic revolutions swept through Eastern Europe in 1989,
however, those poorly defined borders became a bigger problem. Soon,
the individual Yugoslav nations sought independence. When Slovenia
and Croatia broke from Yugoslavia in 1991, they had no choice but to
quickly come up with a border between their newly sovereign states.
The border they drew was a lousy one. Quite frankly, the two new
states had bigger things to worry about than where to set up a customs
office between them. After all, both states were worried about being
invaded and reabsorbed by Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia.
The Croatian–Slovenian border was a disaster. It cut right down the
middle of villages, cemeteries, and even bars like Kalin. They just wanted
to have a border they could count on, so they could tend to other mat-
ters. When Croatia and Slovenia failed to agree on even this rough draft of
a border, they left it sufficiently vague, like they did with the Bay of Piran.
3 BEERS AT THE BORDER BAR: NO SHIRT? NO PASSPORT? NO SERVICE! 31
The Bay of Piran is small potatoes for Croatia, but a big deal for
Slovenia. While Croatia has a long coast on the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia
would be landlocked if it were denied access to the Bay of Piran. So,
when the two newly independent states needed to figure out who held
sovereignty over the bay, Slovenia was ready to fight tooth and nail for
it. Strangely enough, Croatia matched its neighbor’s intensity during the
negotiations.
Finding common ground on the issue remains difficult. Slovenia
entered NATO and the European Union (EU) before Croatia, and tried
to use it as leverage on the border issue. Ultimately, Croatia agreed to
international arbitration as a condition to join the EU. In 2012, represent-
atives from the two countries’ foreign affairs ministries even had a meeting
at Kalin to see if they could work out their differences. (They could not,
and they wouldn’t say on which side of the yellow line they sat or even if
they had a Croatian Ožujsko or a Slovenian Lasko while they talked.)
After Croatia entered the EU, it withdrew from the arbitration hear-
ing, claiming that a Slovenian judge corrupted the legal process.1 Then,
it returned. When the ruling came in 2017, it awarded most of Piran to
Slovenia. Yet, the Croatian government refused to abide by the decision
in early 2018. Thus, the situation remains unresolved; so, you still have
to bring your passport if you want to have a pivo at Kalin.
Indeed, borders are serious, even when they absurdly split a bar in
half. It seems as if states are willing to go to great lengths to respect
them, even when they know that there is seemingly little at stake. Kalin
was an innocent bystander that got caught up in a diplomatic row
between two states over a sloppily drawn line on a map. While it was
linked to larger issues, such as Slovenia’s need for access to the sea, the
bar split in two was a consequence of the importance of borders as sacro-
sanct instruments of state authority. In this sense, Kalin is the exception
that proves the rule: borders are serious stuff.
There are so many nonsensical borders in the world that go unno-
ticed. If you ever encounter one of these weird borders, you might not
think they are very fair. Or you might get the impression that your gov-
ernment does not really care about where the border is.
1 Renata Jambresic Kirin and Domagoj Racic. “Claiming and Crossing Borders: A
View on the Slovene-Croatian Border Dispute/Teritorijalna Razgranicenja: Pogled Na

Slovensko-Hrvatski Granicni Spor,” Drustvena Istrazivanja 25, no. 4 (2016): 436.
32 D. B. MISLAN
Enclaves, Counter-Enclaves, and, Yep,

Counter-Counter Enclaves
Perhaps the strangest border situations involve enclaves, which are coun-
tries, or a part of a country that is surrounded by foreign territory. A
classic Cold War example is West Berlin, the part of West Germany that
was completely surrounded by East Germany. Enclaves create a logistical
nightmare. Imagine that the only way to get from your living room to
your bedroom was to walk through your neighbor’s yard. You should
hope that you are on good terms with your neighbor, right? Enclaves
complicate bilateral relations and they are rare for good reason. It would
make sense for governments to avoid them at all costs, but they persist
today.
A whole enclave is slightly different. It is a state that is completely
engulfed by another state, which puts it in a diplomatically vulnerable
position. The surrounding foreign power has tremendous leverage over
the whole enclave because it can block its access to the rest of the world.
Today, there are three such countries and, for some weird reason, two
of them are surrounded by Italy: the Vatican City, which is in the heart
of Rome, and San Marino, a tiny mountain hamlet to the north.2 The
third whole enclave, Lesotho, is much larger and, yet, is completely sur-
rounded by South Africa.
A strange partial enclave exists in France, where the American flag
flies over a handful of cemeteries for US soldiers who died there during
World War II. The US has a special agreement with France to treat the
burial grounds as American soil in perpetuity.
There are a handful of other special arrangements that cede sovereign
territory in the middle of a country to foreigners. According to interna-
tional law, a country’s embassy abroad is technically its own sovereign
territory, despite being in the host country’s capital city. This is widely
followed custom, however, so it is not that strange.
One of the oddest of these special provisions was a temporary British
enclave in the heart of the Netherlands. It got its start on December
21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.
2 Perhaps a coincidence, but these two microstates have some of the coolest formal names
in the world today: The Holy See and the Most Serene Republic of San Marino. In my
opinion, the only country with a more badass name is Montenegro, which means “Black
Mountain.”
Tragically, everyone on the plane and an additional eleven people on

the ground died in what was a clear act of terrorism. After three years of
investigation, British authorities charged Libyan intelligence officers with
the ghastly crime. The problem, however, was that the Libyans were in
Libya, and the Libyan government had no intention of handing them
over to the UK for a trial.
The international community called for Libya to hand over the oper-
atives but the Libyans ignored this. The United Nations, which doesn’t
care for being ignored any more than the rest of us, slapped a set of coer-
cive sanctions on the North African country. Libya’s head of state, Col.
Muammar Gaddafi, started to feel the pressure but claimed that he could
not comply. He doubted that the Libyans could get a fair trial in the UK.
So, the UN brokered an unusual agreement between the UK and
Libya. Instead of sending the accused Libyans to the UK, they would be
tried in a neutral country by a British court. Gaddafi wanted the sanc-
tions lifted and saw this as a reasonable compromise, so he agreed to a
criminal trial under Scottish law, but in a neutral country.
The only problem was that Scottish (UK) law did not apply in the
Netherlands. In fact, the very notion of sovereignty is that the authority
of a state, embodied in its laws, is exclusive within a specified territory. If
the Netherlands were to allow the UK to exercise its laws on Dutch soil,
it would set a dangerous precedent for any government to set up courts
in foreign countries. The British and the Dutch, however, figured out
a solution. The Netherlands passed a law that declared a former US air
base in the town of Utrecht to be, temporarily, the sovereign territory of
the UK. In 1999, the British transformed a school on the base into the
“Scottish Court of the Netherlands,” complete with its own courtroom,
offices, judge’s quarters, and even a small jail in case anyone got out of
hand during the proceedings.3 According to the new Dutch law, the for-
mer school would remain British sovereign territory for the duration of
the trial and for any subsequent appeals. The British flag flew over the
makeshift court for over three years, thus expanding the territory of the
UK for the first time since the end of the British Empire.
True enclaves are seldom seen in international relations, but exclaves
are much more common. Like an enclave, an exclave is detached from
the rest of the country and borders a foreign state. Unlike an enclave,
3 By the way, they did not.

34 D. B. MISLAN
however, residents of an exclave have other ways to travel between it and

the rest of the country, usually by sea. The largest exclave in the world is
Alaska, which borders Canada and a lot of ice cold water. While Alaska is
detached from the lower 48 states, it is not an enclave because Americans
can come and go without setting foot on Canadian soil.4
Other exclaves and enclaves persist today. Spain is a European nation,
but the sovereign Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla are nestled on
the coast of North Africa. Campione d’Italia is technically attached
to the rest of Italy by land, but because the mountains surrounding it
are so treacherous, the only way to get from it to the rest of Italy is via
Switzerland. Nakhchivan is an exclave of Azerbaijan that is surrounded
by Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. In fact, Nakhchivan had its own exclave,
Karki, which was surrounded by Armenia until the Armenians occupied
it in 1992 and renamed it Tigranashen. There are so many strange and
unusual borders between sovereign states, and many of them seem to
make little sense to us, but are taken quite seriously by the governments
that make them.
The Russian Outpost: Kaliningrad

The Kaliningrad Oblast is one of the more notable exclaves in the world
today. Nestled between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea, it is nearly
500 km away from the rest of Russia, separated by Lithuania.
Before the twentieth century, Kaliningrad was known as Königsburg.
Königsburg had never been very Russian. Sure, the words Russian and
Prussian rhyme, but that is about all that this seaside city had in com-
mon with the Russian Empire. Before World War II, Königsburg was the
easternmost part of Germany, known as East Prussia, and populated by a
mix of Poles, Lithuanians, and German-speaking Prussians. The Second
World War brought massive destruction to the area, reducing most of it
to rubble by the time that the Soviet Red Army claimed it in 1945.
Without any historical or cultural ties to Königsburg, it was a surprise
that Soviet leader Josef Stalin wanted to add the city and its environs
to the USSR. He had a reason, however, and it had everything to do
with power politics. In order to project power across Europe, the Soviet
4 In case you are wondering, Hawaii is not an exclave. It is just an island that is really far
away. What makes Alaska an exclave and Hawaii not is the fact that the former abuts one
foreign country while the latter borders nothing but international waters.
Union needed a post-war navy to match that of the USA and its NATO
allies. While the USSR had the industrial might and political will to build
one, it lacked a capable port. To the north, Leningrad had access to the
Atlantic Ocean (via the Baltic Sea) but it was frozen over for part of the
year. The Soviets didn’t want to be a superpower only in the summer, so
it grabbed Königsburg, which was a warm water port year-round.
When the Potsdam Declaration gave Königsburg to the Soviet gov-
ernment in 1945, it embarked on an ambitious campaign to make the
place seem Russian. First, it kicked out all of the Germans living there.
Then, it renamed the city after Mikhail Kalinin, one of the original mem-
bers of the Bolshevik Revolution. Those that moved into the exclave
were either Soviet military or were there to support the Soviet military.
The Kaliningrad Oblast was, for all intents and purposes, a Soviet military
base within striking distance of the heart of Europe. There lies the Soviet
rationale. After forty years of “Sovietizing” Kaliningrad, the exclave felt
pretty Russian at the end of the Cold War. Most of the residents were
ethnic Russians and the territory itself was part of the Russian Federation
within the USSR. Thus, when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991,
Kaliningrad was part of the newly independent Russian Federation.
Thus, Kaliningrad continues today as a weird exclave. Every once in
a while, Kaliningrad will come up in the news. In 2007, when Russia’s
government was incensed over American plans to build a missile defense
system in Eastern Europe, it threatened to position nuclear missiles in
the exclave. It never did, but it threatens to do so on occasion.
Life in Kaliningrad is a lot like life in Russia, with a few notable excep-
tions. Until 2016, an agreement between Poland and Russia allowed
Russians living in the exclave and Poles in neighboring towns to apply
for a special pass that allowed them to travel freely across the Russian-
Polish border without a visa. The Polish government suspended the
program when the Russian military began some aggressive drills and
maneuvers in Kaliningrad that were intended to intimidate Poland and
its neighbors.
The suspension disappointed a lot of people on either side of the bor-
der. Apparently, Russians liked the Polish supermarkets across the bor-
der so much that a Polish pop group, Parovoz, wrote a song about it.5
5 For more details and a link to the sweet music, see “Small Border Traffic,” Economist,
October 8, 2013, https://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/10/

poland-and-kaliningrad.
36 D. B. MISLAN
For Russians in Kaliningrad, after all, buying kielbasa in Poland is a bit

easier than driving to the rest of their country. They still need a special
visa from Lithuania if they want to take a road trip to Moscow or St.
Petersburg. This is like making residents of Maine apply for a special per-
mit from New Hampshire every time they want to drive to Boston. As a
result, there is not much traffic between the Kaliningrad Oblast and the
rest of Russia. It might be good for the airlines, but it is inconvenient for
ordinary Russians.
The Counter-Enclave: When One Enclave

Is Not Enough
While strange, enclaves and exclaves are not exactly mind-blowingly
bizarre. The counter-enclave is more advanced weird IR by comparison.
It is an enclave, surrounded entirely by a foreign country, with that for-
eign country having its own enclave inside your own enclave. Yes, these
things actually exist. One of the most notable ones is in the United Arab
Emirates.
In 1972, the hasty creation of the UAE required its new leaders to
firm up some borders that were, to say the least, laid back. In this pro-
cess, local villages and their leaders were asked to identify to which local
ruler they were loyal. Since some local rulers preferred to align with
neighboring Oman, this was an important undertaking. With a few nota-
ble exceptions, there were no surprises and everything went swimmingly.
One of those notable exceptions was in Madha, a small town that
claimed allegiance to the UAE’s neighbor, the Sultan of Oman. The
people of Madha were surrounded by communities that aligned with
the emirs of the UAE, but they stuck to their story. This could have
ended badly but, for all intents and purposes, the balance of power did
not depend upon which country Madha would choose. The entire ter-
ritory is about 75 hectares large and is home to about 2000 people,
after all. So, the UAE recognized Madha as part of Oman and moved
forward.
Except for one small detail, that is. Within Madha is a minority con-
tingent that pledged loyalty to the emirate of Sharjah, part of the UAE.
This counter-enclave, known as Nahwa, consists of about forty houses
and less than 200 Emirati. It remains part of the UAE today, even
though it is surrounded by Omani territory (which is surrounded by
UAE territory).
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Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International

Relations David Bell Mislan

David Bell Mislan and Philip Streich

ISBN 978-3-319-75555-7 ISBN 978-3-319-75556-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940738

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover image: dikobraziy/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

The Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park

Fast forward to 2012, when we realized that we were getting older

Washington, USA David Bell Mislan

2 To the Sea! Sealand and Other Wannabe States 15

3 Beers at the Border Bar: No Shirt? No Passport?

4 Stupid Things Our Leaders Say and Do 43

6 SCREAM (Soccer Rules Everything Around Me) 81

7 Terra Nullius and the Neutral Zone: Not an Indie Band 99

8 Island Living Ain’t Easy 117

9 Gone to the Birds? Turkey Tails, Chicken Taxes,

10 Diplomatic Immunity…Revoked! 147

11 What’s in a Name? 161

Fig. 2.1 The Principality of Sealand in all its majesty

David Bell Mislan and Philip Streich

Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International Relations is a collection of

1 We regard foisting to be synonymous with teaching.

© The Author(s) 2019 1

About Deviant Cases

consequence of the politics among states. From theories, scholars derive

An Epistemological Rationale for the Study of Deviant Cases

What Is a Deviant Case and How Can It be Used?

group represents the deviation. Their investigation uncovers one reason

When scholars operationalize theoretical variables, they seek the best

Plan of the Book

5 In contemporary IR scholarship, examples of deviant case studies that deliberately

some of the DPRK’s most outrageous actions in the international arena,

and unexpected disputants. While students of IR would not be surprised

placing our collection of weird stories into a broader context. How do

References and Suggested Readings

To the Sea! Sealand and Other

Fans of Family Guy will surely remember the episode entitled,

© The Author(s) 2019 15

Sealand is only one of dozens of wannabe states around the world.

“Micronation” rulers are not declaring themselves to be leaders of

The Principality of Sealand

Bates never restarted his radio broadcasting, however. On August 14,

An small degree of implied legal validation for Bates’s declaration of

When the West German government asked Britain to intervene on

Sealand and its future and past. See Appendix A.

Other Aspirant States

2 Why would a state pass on the opportunity to get more territory?

libertarians made a second attempt to build Minerva in 1982, only tem-

Aspirant States and International Relations

An aspirant state that is based on part of another country’s territory,

1. Sealand is a man-made, nonpermanent structure. In the United

For Further Reflection

References and Suggested Readings

Beers at the Border Bar: No Shirt?

David Bell Mislan

My earliest exposure to international relations involved a border cross-

© The Author(s) 2019 29

Beers at the Border

View on the Slovene-Croatian Border Dispute/Teritorijalna Razgranicenja: Pogled Na

Enclaves, Counter-Enclaves, and, Yep,

The Principality of Sealand

Aspirant States and International Relations

1. Sealand is a man-made, nonpermanent structure. In the United