This one is interesting. Just when we thought that nothing else in the wider Balkan region could astonish us, up pops a brand new country. No, not Kosovo. Not Vojvodina. Not even Eastern Republika Srpska. Liberland!

The basic ingenious idea is that, as luck has it, there is a tiny patch of land adjacent to the Danube between Croatia and Serbia whose international ownership is uncertain, or at least disputed. So one Vít Jedlička (Czech free marketeer, Eurosceptic, libertarian-inclined) has proclaimed it to be a new country.

It’s not clear to me what is happening on the woody ground at the moment, other than the Croatian police doing their best to stop people gaining access to it. But in cyberspace the initiative has gained a lively following in no time, with tens of thousands of people signing up to be Liberland citizens.

Here is the Liberland website: Live and Let Live. As publicity stunts aimed at promoting free market ideas (and promoting Vit Jedlička) go, this is one of the best ever. But what about the substance? Should, say, I myself answer the siren call from Twitter and offer to be an Ambassador or even Foreign Minister for Liberland? Disclosure: I have had some limited e-contact with Vit Jedlička about this but no substantive discussion yet.

This raises fascinating questions of First Principles in diplomacy. And as readers of this website know, First Principles are always the best principles and the most interesting.

Some opening thoughts.

Note that the Liberland situation is not analogous to Kosovo or Scotland or Quebec or the Czech/Slovak break-up or the dissolution of the USSR or other upheavals that have produced new states in recent years.

In those cases the soon-to-be-or-not-to-be new states were/are each part of an existing internationally recognised state. They each have a well-established territorial area and a more or less defined population base (this population point of course is highly controversial in Kosovo, for all sorts of well-known reasons stretching back decades). Plus they each involve existing states agreeing (or not) to reform themselves around the fact of the current status quo ending and something new/smaller appearing.

Liberland is not like that. It involves a small piece of land that is said to be terra nullius – ‘land of no-one’. Plus it has no population and no tradition of government. In fact other than existing and having trees and weeds, it has nothing at all.

This situation is roughly reminiscent of the way things were 1000 years ago when everything was a lot less clear and uncodified, and so we need to go back to basics to think about how governance emerged then.

What exactly is a ‘state’? That idea did not exist in the sense we now recognise it for most of human history. Rather there were territories (more or less defined) where a local strong person had clear authority and allegiance from the locals. Often allegiance would be transferred between the relatives of said strong person – see the basis for Prince Charles replacing Queen Elizabeth II when The Queen dies. Or see Macbeth, where rival chiefs battle for local supremacy.

Liberland has a defined small area. It also now has a self-proclaimed leader in President Jedlička. But if it is really terra nullius, what is stopping some other leader from abruptly emerging and claiming to represent Liberland, eg President Putin or President Mary Smith from Alaska?

Nothing much! Vit Jedlička has a first-mover advantage and can claim to have a special legitimacy and frisky Internet support from that, but his claim is only a claim. Other claims may appear.

This is why it’s not easy for (say) me to accept the role of Liberland Ambassador. What exactly would I be representing?

When I was appointed as UK Ambassador to Poland this question was answered in meticulous detail. I met the President of Poland and gave him a copy of a letter signed in person by The Queen vouching for the general excellence of myself.

That letter was presented in a ceremony having resonance going back over a millennium to the days when ambassadors were senior people sent by one leader personally to another. It gave the Polish President assurance that I represented something (and someone) real and substantial. Business could be transacted on that sure basis of mutual trust.

In the Liberland case, all that is absent. So Vit Jedlička has to build up momentum and Authority literally from nothing. Credit where it’s due. He is busy working on that very idea.

This exercise also raises far-reaching issues about libertarianism and how far anything can go by being organised spontaneously/freely without agreed rules. As we all know, when it comes to setting up rules there are only Two Rules:

Who decides?

Who decides who decides?

This in turn recalls the Hierarchy of Norms that I learnt about in my Jurisprudence course at Oxford many decades ago.

In any system of authority there is somewhere the ultimate wellspring or expression of that authority. Sometimes this takes physical shape, eg a Great Seal or other actual object denoting where ultimate authority lies. Whoever wields or controls that object is the leader of the territory concerns, and no one else.

Normally we don’t have to think about all this as life trundles on. But watch what happens specifically after The Queen dies and a new monarch takes over. During the coronation (and before it) various symbolic but legally essential manoeuvres will take place involving the transfer of control of key objects (and transfer of personal allegiance of the people guarding them) whose authority has been established over centuries.

See also the famous example when the archives and seals of the Poland White Eagle were brought back to Poland after the collapse of communism. The Polish Government in Exile had kept them safe until they could be presented formally to a free Polish leader once again. Thus the river of Polish state legitimacy returned to its natural track back on Polish territory.

Liberland of course has none of this. But something like it will be necessary in due course if Liberland is ever to work as a formally recognised state.

Note that even the very act of setting up Liberland as a putative microstate in itself represents a strategic choice that rules out other options. Above all it immediately puts Liberland in a world of rules developed over centuries for recognising and accepting states as legally respectable entities. If other states are to recognise Liberland, they can reasonably expect certain operational assurances, all of which come with a lot of practical underpinning.

For example, they may want to know that Liberland (and not, say, Russia or Hungary) does indeed ”own” and control its own territory, and is likely to continue to do so. They may want to know that Liberland citizens are indeed citizens of Liberland, and travel with Liberland documents that have not been forged. They may have views on how far their own citizens can become Liberland citizens too. They may want to know that Liberland is not a cunning device intended to set up a new money-laundering racket or some other form of globalised organised-crime.

In other words, all sorts of technically sophisticated (and expensive!) processes need to be set up to make Liberland legally or politically credible. What about within Liberland? Which rules apply?

Are Liberland citizens free to own guns? If so, what assurances might Liberland give need to give neighbouring Croatia and Serbia that Liberland citizens armed with guns are not going to cross the border and start causing trouble in their countries?

What happens if one Liberland citizen attacks another? Sooner or later there arguably needs to be an independent force armed with coercive power (and supported by the necessary equipment!) to deal with abusive behaviour? Who controls them?

Other existential but controversial choices immediately come into play. For example, what rights if any do the unborn children of Liberland citizens have? Are they deemed by Liberland law to be people, or not? In practical terms, what happens if one Liberland citizen X shoots a pregnant Liberland woman, killing her unborn child? Is that murder/manslaughter or not? Can she sue X for damages for herself and her unborn child?

Who has the rights to vote in Liberland? Anyone who registers as a Liberland citizen on the Internet? If so, how to stop racketeers of different shapes and sizes manipulating online registration processes? Crowd-sourcing through the Internet is cool and democratic. But it is wide open to abuse by some of the most brilliant but devious IT minds on the planet, not least those who work for Big Power intelligence services.

All these questions might or might not be answerable in completely new ways involving new technology and little formal/visible hierarchy. But you don’t need to go far in posing such questions to grasp that issues of identity and control come up in highly practical ways immediately. And that answering these questions in a way that makes practical sense (and is credible to the wider world) quickly takes us into structures that, perhaps, do not look very libertarian.

Liberland is busy trying to tackle these issues. A draft constitution has been prepared. Deciding how best to agree it will be difficult. Who votes? And should it voted on as a whole, or clause by clause, or section by section?

No good answer in principle. Probably a good practical way forward will be to come up with a rough and ready transitional document that is agreed to be revised in (say) two years’ time when things are a lot clearer.

Anyway, this is all most intriguing if only because it shows the power and turbulence (and limitations?) of today’s globalised crowd-sourced ideas, including those written here above.

To be continued, no doubt.