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You kind of sent me on a scavenger hunt … I learned that Scotland and France were both founded in the same year: 843. I understand the importance of standards,

You kind of sent me on a scavenger hunt … I learned that Scotland and France were both founded in the same year: 843. I understand the importance of standards, but I think the importance of the word “country” is a bit overblown. The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not. And ultimately why would the name country be that important?

skissane 4y ago
> The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not. During the negotiations over the UN Charter, the Soviets claimed that the Union Republics which made up the USSR were sovereign states, with the right to secede, and hence should all be allowed to join the UN - along with the Soviet Union. The West refused - the claim of sovereignty was rather unbelievable (as if Stalin would really let anyone secede!), and it would have given the Soviet Union 16 (or more) votes in the General Assembly, which everyone else saw as unfair. Negotiations had reached an impasse, when a diplomatic compromise emerged - two of the Union Republics (Ukraine and Byelorussia) would become UN members, along with the Soviet Union as a whole; the others wouldn’t. Hence, the UN considered them to be “countries”, and since ISO 3166-1 gets its country list from the UN Statistical Division, it did too. It never made much sense from the perspective of reality, it was simply a historical diplomatic fudge. > And ultimately why would the name country be that important? I think it is important because (1) it is an exception to their general rule “countries/dependencies only, but not subdivisions thereof” which is defensible using the text of ISO 3166; (2) it is numerically a very limited exception-it doesn’t threaten to open the floodgates; (3) if someone claims “this is unfair bias in favour of the UK”, they can say “no, it is only because of the text of the standards, we are not engaging in any favouritism”; (4) in spite of all the above, there is a lot of political/popular pressure to give in to the demand, due to Scottish and Welsh nationalism; (5) no comparable political pressure exists for US state flags, because no US state has a mainstream nationalist movement

skissane 4y ago

> The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not. During the negotiations over the UN Charter, the Soviets claimed that the Union Republics which made up the USSR were sovereign states, with the right to secede, and hence should all be allowed to join the UN - along with the Soviet Union. The West refused - the claim of sovereignty was rather unbelievable (as if Stalin would really let anyone secede!), and it would have given the Soviet Union 16 (or more) votes in the General Assembly, which everyone else saw as unfair. Negotiations had reached an impasse, when a diplomatic compromise emerged - two of the Union Republics (Ukraine and Byelorussia) would become UN members, along with the Soviet Union as a whole; the others wouldn’t. Hence, the UN considered them to be “countries”, and since ISO 3166-1 gets its country list from the UN Statistical Division, it did too. It never made much sense from the perspective of reality, it was simply a historical diplomatic fudge. > And ultimately why would the name country be that important? I think it is important because (1) it is an exception to their general rule “countries/dependencies only, but not subdivisions thereof” which is defensible using the text of ISO 3166; (2) it is numerically a very limited exception-it doesn’t threaten to open the floodgates; (3) if someone claims “this is unfair bias in favour of the UK”, they can say “no, it is only because of the text of the standards, we are not engaging in any favouritism”; (4) in spite of all the above, there is a lot of political/popular pressure to give in to the demand, due to Scottish and Welsh nationalism; (5) no comparable political pressure exists for US state flags, because no US state has a mainstream nationalist movement