ABSTRACT
The enormous proliferation of states in the 20th century revealed a variety of origins. War was of course a major factor in the creation of new states. The break-up of the defeated Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires in the wake of World War One produced the century’s first wave of state formation. Six new European states emerged from the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Germany in turn ceded territory to a reconstituted independent Poland, while the liquidation of the Ottoman empire paved the way for the later emergence of a host of independent states like Albania, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The second wave followed World War Two, when European empires in Africa, Asia and the Pacific were dismantled. Thanks mainly to decolonization, the United Nations’ founding membership of 51 had doubled by 1961 and reached 127 in 1970. Ten years later, when decolonization had largely run its course, UN membership stood at 154 (Biersteker 2000: 159). The dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), Yugoslavia (1991–92) and Czechoslovakia (1993) constituted the third wave. Primarily because of the new states emerging from these three multinational federations, UN membership increased to 184 in 1993. Some small island states, Switzerland, Timor-Leste and Montenegro subsequently joined, bringing the UN’s membership at the time of writing to 192. In the vast majority of cases, the new entities’ admission to the League of Nations and later the UN was virtually automatic. Being granted membership of the international organizations was tantamount to collective de jure recognition of the new countries’ statehood.
