this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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There's a set of "official" countries that legally recognise each other, but in practice any group that has a local monopoly on the use of violence (so, trapping people in jails without going to jail for it, basically) can be equivalent. In fact, some of these have partial recognition, like Taiwan, Kosovo, or the non-official half of Libya.
That's such a mixed bag.
Dubai is part of some kind of confederation (the UAE), and doesn't even claim to be a full country. Israel exists, but there's a lot of controversy about how it's managed that. Belgium exists, but doesn't have a unified cultural identity the same way as most European countries. Finally, Latvia exists but Russia doesn't want it to, although I might be missing something about how distinct it is from Lithuania.