Comment on J. D. B. Miller

Extract

In the opening paragraphs of his article Professor Miller argues that to become sovereign a political entity must satisfy two requirements. In the first place? it must ‘appear to be independent in the sense of not being subject to another state's control. … [It must] look independent in terms of the power to make its own decisions’. And, secondly, the entity in question must be ‘accepted as such by others’. This, ‘in political terms [is] the basic question’ inasmuch as the lack of acceptance restricts ‘its opportunities for intercourse with other communities’.