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there seems to be a kind of anxiety at the international level about what constitutes a state, yes? in the sense of who gets to declare themselves one and who does not. if you think about it, the process is pretty arbitrary---mostly a matter of recognition on the part of other states. the ex-yugoslavia experience plays into things at this level---apparently not all bases for state-making are equivalent, and some Declarations are better than others. it seems that in this case the problem at bottom is there was no particular chain of recognitions of south ossetia and nothing else. so the status of the space is (obviously) ambiguous. this is the condition of possibility for everything that's happened around it.
and apparently, there is some ambivalence about the ethnicity=nation=nation-state slide. and there is even more ambivalence in this case because it is not obvious "who" the ossetians "are" in that goofy sense. personally, i think most of this has to do with a gradual erosion of the functional centrality of nation-states over the past 30 years or so--so the basis for the idea of a nation-state is wobbly--but there seems to be no particular agreement even that there is such a problem, much less what might plausibly be done to respond to it, or even if a response is necessary--so you have situations like this.
but if nothing but recognition constitutes the basis for a "legitimate" nation state, then (a) the united states is not still part of england but (b) south ossetia is not anything at all. a province of somewhere.
i sometimes go to a public house that is nowhere--at one end of the parking lot, a town begins--at the opposite end of the parking lot, another begins. it is in a hole. if you go there, it seems that time does not happen. this is just a story i felt like writing down, and now i have written it down and that is good.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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