RECOGNITION OF INDEPENDENT STATUS - LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY



The ability of a territory to hold onto its independent  existence in the face of obvious threats to that existence, and   to eventually get the rest of the international community to recognize it as such, remains the last means through which   territory can acquire sovereignty. This scenario obtains only in a period of unprecedented and garrulous imperialist predilections by all or most of the  prevalent major powers late  19th  century Europe. Or  a situation where a small and weak state is sandwiched between  large and strong  neighbours – the Gambia in Africa, and  Switzerland (SWISS Cantons) in Europe.

In Africa , Ethiopia and Liberia were able not only to hold onto their territories’ independence in  the 19th century despite the spreading miasma of the colonial enterprise, but   were also able to get the international  community to recognize their sovereign status. Thus,  by  the time Italy  invaded,  and purported to annex Abyssinia (Ethiopia)  as a  colonial possession in  1935, it was already recognized as an  independent sovereign nation- hence the opprobrium that  attended the Italian  misadventure.    
Loss of Sovereignty
Once acquired, is it possible for a state to loose its sovereignty? This is a difficult questions to  answer, as there  are various reactions to it. It   has been stated, however, that as states can acquire sovereignty, they can also lose (SIC ) it”21.   Two ways are identified:  voluntary and forceful annexation as means of loosing sovereignty by states. Mergers are identified as major genre of voluntary  loss of sovereignty. When two states, A and B, decide to merge, it is argued that both will loose their separate sovereign status, and then assume a single sovereignty. That is to say they will cease to conduct separate independent foreign policies, loose separate seats in the multinational organizations that they belong to, and generally shed all attributes of double external sovereignty  for  a single one. Besides, such mergers also do result in the adoption of a  new name to reflect the new identity brought on to  the international system.
For instance in 1958, Egypt and Syria merged to   form the United Arab Republic (UAR).  Again  in 1964,  Tangeanyika and Zanibar fused their  structures and institutions to  form the united republic and Tanzania.  Senegal and the  Gambia  have been experimenting with varied degrees of merger   since the  1980s  to form Senegambia. This   has, however, not yielded much fruit, as both states still retain all attributes of   separate external sovereignty.
In the area of forceful annexation, not much success appears to have been recorded by way of loss of sovereignty of states.  Apart  from the experiences of the Baltic states .  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as has been alluded to earlier, which lost their sovereignty in the 1940s due to soviet revisionism, most other examples of forceful annexations   tend to have suffered various degrees  of frustrations.  Reference has already been made to the Italo-Abyssinia  Imbroglio.  Though the Italisans militarily overwhelmed the   Ethiopians, but the attempt to subsume Ethiopian sovereignty,  already recognized by the international  community, under the  Italian state, was successfully resisted.
More recently, the Iraqi invasion and subsequent  annexation of Kuwiat as its 19th province, in August  1990,  was equally successfully resisted by a coalition of UN force  under the leadership of the United States, in the famous  gulf   war  of  January 1991.  though the league of nations did  not  take such  strong measures against Italy in its invasion of   Abyssinia, save  the half-hearted sanctions which were  brazenly  violated by the  major powers without any discernible league  reprimand, that such sanctions were imposed by the league goes to show that the international community  had long shown a commitment against forceful  annexation as a  means of depriving states  of their sovereignty.
But  the  question must continue to be  posed; can  sovereignty once acquired be lost? We  are persuaded to answer in the negative. According to the architect  of the   concept, Jean  Bodin, as we pointed  out earlier, sovereignty, as an attribute of the state is perpetual, that is to say once  conferred,  the  state retains and continues to exercise it until the state itself ceases to exist, in  the  so-called voluntary loss of sovereignty by mergers, can we say  that the merging states have ceased to exist   or that they died, and resurrected, and in the process adopted a single sovereignty?
From our preceding analysis, it is  obvious that it is only the attributes  of external sovereignty –foreign policy, seats in  international  organizations, embassies, flags, national anthems, currencies etc, that are fused at mergers. In  other words, the merging states still retain some elements of  domestic sovereignty- a  recognized government , judicial  system, local authorities,  local security agencies , etc.  This   makes it possible for states contemplating mergers, or even those already merged to pull out of such mergers when and if it no longer suits them, the Senegambia’s Example  is a case  in  point. But  more dramatically, we can cite the case of the  Untied  Arba  Republic  (UAR) . after  their merger of  1958 , as already indicated, two year later (1960), they went  their separate ways,  resuming their separate external and  internal sovereign status.
Even the Tanganyika-Zanizibar Scenario which  has been termed a “successful case of merger of  two sovereignties”, it is still to be expected that both can at  any point  in time  decide to delink from each other and go  their  separate ways. And if  precedence is anything to go by,  the  international   community would have no option than  to  recognize them once again as two sovereign entities. The  case  of  forceful annexations does not appear to detract in   any significant way form above scenario. The  Baltic states   have  since regained their sovereign  status. So did Abyssinia  and Kuwait.
It is thus reasonable to surmise that sovereignty  once acquired can never be lost, but may be suspended. So  what happens at  political mergers and  or forceful annexations  of  nation-states by stronger nations –states  is a suspension  of sovereignty, pending the removal of the encumbrance that  is sustaining the annexation or an appropriate time  or circumstance in the  case of a merger.
Categorization of the State System          
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