Abkhazian independence recognized by Nauru

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Pretty funny story here, about Nauru and its role as a player in the world of international recognition. Nauru is still an independent state so having its official recognition adds one to the number of nations that recognize another (i.e. being able to say that Nation X is recognized by 15 countries!), but it's also small enough that when it sometimes changes its mind about recognizing one country over another it's usually beneath the dignity of the larger country that wanted the recognition in the first place to make too much of a fuss over it, as was the case when it decided to recognize Taiwan again instead of the People's Republic of China. Having the Chinese government make too much of a big deal over what Nauru thinks just wouldn't look proper. And at the same time it is able to get a fair amount of financial support for recognizing other countries, which then becomes fodder for the media and regular citizens in larger countries to mock their own government.

To show just how isolated and tiny Nauru is, let's embed a map but extend the length to 4000 pixels. See, now Vanuatu and New Caledonia look huge in comparison.


View Larger Map

1 comments:

cafaristeir said...

Sellamat Dave !

Well, Nauru (16 km2 I figure) is so bankrupt that its government sells its votes in international organizations to richer countries (ex: Taiwan). 20 years ago, it was very rich thanks to phosphates lands, but now it's exhausted and most of the money has been wasted or hidden in off-shore deposits (in Australia, there are still buildings bought with money from Nauru)

Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/

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