Despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine did not sever diplomatic relations with Russia. It did so only in February 2022, when Russia officially recognized the separatist Donbas republics and launched its aggression. Ukraine immediately cut off its relations with Syria when it recognized the independence of the separatists in June 2022.
Among the sovereign imponderables, the right to represent the entire constituent nation or the entire territory of the state in a situation where an act of secession or separation takes place on a part of the territory was placed high by the strength of tradition. And states threaten with retaliatory sanctions against other states that legitimize secessionists. Sanctions usually concern, inter alia, breaking diplomatic relations with countries that they recognize as separatists. Like Ukraine today, Georgia previously denounced diplomatic relations with Russia and Nicaragua in 2008, when they recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Serbia continued diplomatic relations with the countries that recognized Kosovo after 2008. So there are exceptions.
In post-war European politics, the Hallstein doctrine became the best known manifestation of the policy of diplomatic boycott. Its general meaning was explained in a speech at the Bundestag in September 1955 by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The Federal Republic of Germany announced that the recognition of the GDR or the establishment of diplomatic relations with the GDR would be considered as unfriendly act (acte peu amical). What consequences would Germany draw from such an act was never specified, although it was assumed that the final sanction would be the severance of diplomatic relations.
The doctrine made an exception for relations with the USSR, which was justified by the status of the USSR as an occupying power. Thus, at its core, it was an inconsistent doctrine.
The doctrine was allegedly devised on the way from Moscow at the return of the German delegation headed by Adenauer in 1955, when diplomatic relations with the USSR were agreed. The political epiphany resulted from the need to explain to the German public the submission to the demands of the Soviets concerning the bilateral relations. And it was then that the central idea of the doctrine was outlined by MFA Political Director Wilhelm Greve in his conversation with Walter Hallstein, then State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The doctrine is another example of the conceptual power of a middle-ranking bureaucrat. Heinrich von Brentano, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, felt the urge to contribute as well but the authorship stuck to Hallstein, although Greve was rumoured to deserve the copyright.
From the very beginning, the Federal Republic of Germany claimed the right to represent the whole of Germany. So when the USSR established full diplomatic relations with the GDR in 1954, the Adenauer government forcefully rejected this act. It neither recognized the GDR, nor entered into diplomatic relations with the socialist states which recognized the GDR as a rightful subject of international relations. Therefore, FRG had to consistently block the GDR’s attempts to enter the international arena and to legitimize subjectivity. It enjoyed the support of Western powers. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany tolerated the opening of trade offices in other countries by the GDR and the conclusion of commercial agreements, but warned against the effects of attempts to grant consent to the establishment of consulates general (although Egypt managed to get out of the problem, making a reservation that the establishment of the consulate did not imply the recognition of East Germany).
The doctrine was used sporadically in practice. Bonn severed diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia in 1957 and with Cuba in 1963 after they established diplomatic ties with the GDR. When in 1960 Guinea appointed its ambassador to the authorities of the GDR, the Federal Republic of Germany government immediately recalled its one, forcing the Guineans to declare that they had not sent any ambassador to Berlin, and that the GDR ambassador had not been and would not be stationed in their country.
There was, however, no consequence in the application of the doctrine. In 1967, the Federal Republic of Germany established diplomatic relations with Romania, and in 1968 renewed them with Yugoslavia. When explaining it argued that these states were forced to recognize the GDR and their decisions were not sovereign. But a similar presumption in relation to other states of the socialist camp was not applied. Cambodia also experienced no consequences when it recognized the GDR in 1969. After the Six-Day War of 1967, the Arab states established relations with the GDR as an act of gratitude for supporting their position.
The USSR did not have to force Poland to recognize the GDR. Even if in the minds of many communist diplomats, there was full consent to such forcing. Back in 1988, I had a personal contact with the curious doctrine reclaimed to me by one of the then senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of Poland. I was asked to give an opinion on a draft of a joint Polish-Soviet document. I came back with the observation, among others, that, in accordance with the applicable rules, in the Polish text, Poland should always be mentioned before the USSR. This is what is called in diplomatic jargon the principle of alternat. Then I heard the answer: “In Polish-Soviet relations, the principle of alternat does not apply.” It sounded like a gloomy joke, because such interpretation was, of course, never in force in the Polish People’s Republic, even in Stalinist times. After all, this replica, even if made in jest, reflected unfortunately the state of mentality of some of our diplomats of that time. Its author managed, however, to become an ambassador to one of the post-Soviet countries under the Third Polish Republic.
Western countries, even those remaining on best terms with Germany, such as France, did not show any displeasure to the countries that recognized the GDR for this only reason.
The doctrine remained only a symbolic expression of the legal position of Germany. The demands of the then current policy’s needs proved to be stronger than its practical credibility. This is not the first time that politics has triumphed over a straightjacket of rules.
The end of the doctrine was put by Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. Germany normalized relations with Poland and other socialist states. The Grundlagenvertrag between Germany and the GDR of 1972 finally ruled out that one of the German states would usurp the right to represent the other German state. Thus, fix und fertig, the new format of relations between the German states became a fact.
The Hallstein doctrine was an expression of the “One Germany” policy contested by the GDR. The “One China” policy practiced by both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan has similar results in diplomatic and political practice, although they stem from different interpretations of the “One China” doctrine by both sides.
Since 1949, both the PRC and the Republic of China (Taiwan) have claimed the right of sole/rightful representation of “One China”. Initially, it was the Taiwanese authorities, which occupied the Chinese place in the United Nations and other international organizations, that introduced the practice of breaking diplomatic relations with countries that recognized the PRC and established diplomatic relations with it. However, the number of countries that recognized the PRC continued to grow. The PRC was recognized not only by the socialist states, but most of the developing countries. And Taiwan, consistently implementing the doctrine of severing relations with them, fell into increasing isolation.
In 1971, a landmark decision of the UN General Assembly was made. Despite opposition from the US (supported by Japan, Brazil, the Philippines, Australia and other countries, mainly from Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa), Albania’s draft to restore PRC rights in the organization obtained the necessary 2/3 majority. Chinese communists took China’s place in the United Nations and its system organizations. In 1972, Japan established relations with the PRC, and in the so-called Sino-American Shanghai communiqué during President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 the inevitability of establishing US diplomatic relations with China was clearly signalled, which eventually took place at the beginning of 1979. The Taiwanese authorities had to come to terms with pushing them out of the international circuit. It was now that the PRC demanded from its partners to cease relations with the “Republic of China”. Taiwan could only count on the possibility of representing its interests by the so-called commercial and cultural representations. And in some cases simply it had to buy poorer members of the international community so that diplomatic relations did not break.
At the beginning of the third decade of the new millennium, only a dozen countries (including the Holy See) maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but as many as over half a hundred (including Poland and the European Union) had economic and trade representations in Taipei. However, when in the fall of 2021 Lithuania allowed the opening of the Bureau, which had the word “Taiwan” in the name instead of the usual “Taipei”, China responded by lowering the rank of diplomatic relations with Lithuania and administrative and trade sanctions.
The unification of China remains an absolute priority of the PRC authorities. As part of this policy, Hong Kong’s democracy was suppressed, despite declarations of allegiance to the “one country, two systems” formula. Will an attempt to absorb Taiwan become the source of a new world war? Has the decisive reaction of the West to the Russian aggression against Ukraine cooled the enthusiasm for a forcible solution to the Taiwanese question? Taiwan has undoubtedly become (along with Korea and Israel) the most sensitive indicator of the American pledge of security umbrella.
In 2020, when Azerbaijan undertook military actions to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, there were commentators, also in Poland, who openly found Azerbaijan to be morally and politically right, because it wanted to regain its own territory, even though it had previously committed itself to a peaceful settlement of the dispute. Would they consistently support Beijing if it decided to resolve the Taiwanese problem militarily? Especially if the USA, in the name of allied solidarity, asked Poland for political support in the defense of Taiwan?
An interesting form of diplomatic boycott was the so-called Betancourt doctrine, formulated in the late 1950s, according to which Venezuela severed diplomatic ties with undemocratic countries, especially ruled by military juntas which seized power through coups d’etat. However, it was used very briefly and, in principle, only in relation to Latin American countries (although it also affected relations with Spain).
Perhaps, when the camp of democracy in the world becomes so universal that oppressive states will become real exceptions, someone will revive it.
