Counter Terrorism?'. Liechtenstein has also gone on to expand its network of diplomatic 
representation to Vienna, Berne, Brussels, Washington DC and Strassbourg”*, it has joined the 
European Economic Area and the Schengen agreement. 
Liechtenstein has become a fully functioning member of the community of nations and this is an 
important part of its overall strategy. Its sovereign status is now historically established through 
inclusion in instruments like the Congress of Vienna. It has a long record of sovereign 
recognition from other powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States including in 
matters of war and neutrality. Foreign Governments have officially received its sovereign and 
its officials. This historical practice has been added to by Liechtenstein’s active diplomacy and 
engagement in the international system with diplomatic fingerprints across the agencies of the 
international system. Liechtenstein has created an international sovereign identity that makes 
any attack on its sovereignty the highest breach of international law. Sitting next to two neutral 
nations it faces neither threat nor prospect of military aid in a crisis. Just as the Landtag 
recognized in 1868 that military defence was not a practical option for a state as small as 
Liechtenstein, so it remains true today that non-military means of diplomatic engagement and 
advancement of sovereignty remain the state's best method of defending its territory and 
interests. 
Tuvalu 
The protections offered by the UN system were also coupled with a vigorous agenda of 
decolonization that created a large number of new nations, many of which had never existed as 
nations in any modern sense at any time in their history. Colonial constructions of borders and 
peoples were transformed from peripheral possession to sovereign state in short order. 
Colonial borders drawn up in European capitals that showed little regard for the culture, 
language and kinship of local peoples were enshrined into international law. Many of these 
borders had never evolved through the historical Darwinism of war, conquest and demographic 
change but instead had been imposed clumsily by the commercial and political interests of 
colonial powers. Tribal communities that had once been loosely connected by linguistic, familial 
and trade ties were now bound together as Westphalian nation states with all of the associated 
trappings and responsibilities, including that of defending their new national interests®*. 
  
*! Liechtenstein Mission to the United Nations, Priorities at the United Nations, 
(http //www.regierung.li/priorities-at-the-united-nations-documents) . 
°? Liechtenstein Government, Diplomatic Representations, 
(http://www. regierung.li/ministries/ministry-for-foreign-affairs/diplomatic-representations/) . 
55 Duursma, 84. 
** Stanley A. de Smith, Microstates and Micronesia: Problems of America's Pacific Islands 
and Other Minute Territories, (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 35-52.