Weapons of Massive Deception: Defusing the Destructive Potential of Citizenship in a New Geopolitical Era These cases highlight a major gap in international law that lacks a clear norm for resolving such territorial disputes. The two principles that are in tension here are those of effective sovereignty over a territory and those of recognition of a territory’s international status by other states. De facto states are those where the parent state does not exercise effective sovereignty but where international recognition is not sufficiently broad to settle the issue in favour of legitimising a territorial break-away. International law currently lacks the normative sources for clearly distinguishing cases of legitimate self-determination claims of such territories from illegitimate violations of the parent state’s claim to territorial integrity. Yet it is not impossible to develop such criteria, as a vigorous debate about secession among political theorists has shown. In this dispute, I generally side with Allen Buchanan who has argued that secession needs to be justified on remedial grounds,222 as a last resort in response to persistent denial of a group’s fundamental rights – and, as I would add, specifically of its persistent desire for self-government within the parent state’s territory. Instead of just asking whether a territorial claim to independence is recognised by a large enough number of other states, international law should ask whether it is worthy of recognition by both the parent state and the international community on such remedial grounds.223 Such a normative distinction would also allow for different international law responses to citizenship in de facto states. Suppose that the independence of Kosovo or Taiwan can be justified in this way although it is not sufficiently widely recognised. The implication would still be that recognising states could and should accept passports issued by these countries as fully equivalent to nationality documents. Doing so sends a strong message to (former) parent states and helps to protect individuals abroad. For example, most states seem to recognise the Taiwanese national identity card224 for the purposes of visa free travel, but this has not been enough to protect Taiwanese citizens from being deported to Beijing instead of Taipei.225 Yet how should states deal with individuals from de facto states whose independence should not be internationally recognised? Ganohariti points out that denying recognition of citizenship documents issued by local authorities in territories supported by Russia pushes up demand for Russian citizenship.226 This alone is not a sufficient reason for accepting the citizenship of a territory that the international community does not wish to recognise as independent for good reasons. Both Ganohariti and Spiro point out that wide-spread acceptance of multiple nationality may help to alleviate the problem if people have access to either the citizenship of the parent state or a third country.227 The problem is, however, that recognising a citizenship attributed by a state that sponsors illegitimate irredentism should still be avoided, as it would mean giving in to the weaponisation of citizenship. Resistance risks, however, leaving many individuals of de facto states without those rights that are connected to an internationally recognised citizenship. Manby’s question about the rights of Sahrawis in Western Sahara (whose international status has not been settled because the required referendum has never been held) is important.228 She suggests that other states could recognise passports issued by authorities governing non-recognised territories as valid travel documents, just as they do with personal identity documents such as birth, marriage or death certificates. The problem is, however, that there is a much stronger link between nationality and passports. Should the EU really recognise Russian passports issued in Donbas and Crimea or Abkhazian and South Ossetian identity documents as valid for international travel without the consent of Ukraine and Georgia? 222 223 224 225 Buchanan A. (2007), Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law, Oxford University Press. Bauböck R. (2019), ‘A Multilevel Theory of Democratic Secession’, Ethnopolitics, 18:3, 227-246. See Taiwan passport - Wikipedia. ‘Hundreds of Taiwanese extradited to China, says report’, BBC News, 1 December 2021, Hundreds of Taiwanese extradited to China, says report - BBC News. 226 Ganohariti 2022. 227 Spiro 2023. 228 Manby 2023. European University Institute 40