Lost and Found: The WikiLeaks ofDe FactoState-Great Power Relations

Abstract

De facto states are typically seen as marginal actors in the international system. Although they control territory and provide governance, their claims to sovereignty remain largely unrecognized. It is widely believed that such entities are either ignored or viewed with hostility by the vast majority of sovereign states. Rather than theoretically presume such relations, we empirically investigate de facto state–great power interactions through the use of a novel data set comprising 448 “WikiLeaks” US diplomatic cables from 2003 to 2010. Specifically, we examine US relations with the four de facto states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somaliland, and Northern Cyprus to test four different hypotheses designed to explain what determines the degree of US support or hostility toward individual de facto states. We find that hostility/support and isolation/engagement often go hand in hand, yet vary significantly across our selected cases. De facto states are not treated as homogenous entities and US foreign policy is quite capable of discriminating between them and calibrating its interactions with them.