Starting your own country

His highness, the President Kevin
Baugh of the Republic of Molossia

Do you find yourself dominating Risk all the time?  Ever feel like you can relate to our expansionist friends, like Alexander the Great, the Huns, Bonaparte and Microsoft?  Do you find yourself dressing up in military outfits, marching in your bedroom to loud army marches, pretending to give rousing speeches to the inferior peons of your nation-state?  Then this article is for you.

I for myself have considered starting my own country, and believe me, after some careful Wikipedia and Google research, it's not as hard as you think!  Let's go through the steps.

1) Make sure your new nation meet minimum requirements:  You must have a defined territory.  Draw your borders out on a map. You must have a permanent population. Choose something where people live, like a neighborhood.  Disney world unfortunately won't work here. You must have a government, one that is capable of interacting with other states.  This might be the tricky prat, but you could probably just higher a lawyer or something to write up a constitution.

Behold the grandeur of Sealand!

2) Declare independence: while you may join the ranks of micro-nations with the lack of seriousness that comes with it, the UN Charter offers immediate rights to a self-proclaimed independent state.  To name a few: inefficient government isn't grounds to claim a full independence, you can't just wage war and claim that country, and so on.  For further reading, here's the "Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples" http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml

3) Get recognized: this is the tricky part.  Each country has its own way of determining whether you're a big deal or not.  So you've just gotta work your national magic!  Start trading.  Contribute to the arts.  Find yourself a Justin Bieber within your borders.

4) Get in on the UN:  Once you've done all of the above and you've proven your peaceloving country is a big deal after all, write a petition to this guy:

Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General
The United Nations
First Ave. at 46th St.
New York, NY 10017

Here's a list of a few new and upcoming smaller countries ready to make their name in world history:

Sealand - a small seaport left over from WWII where a pirate radio broadcaster started to claim that as his territorial land.  Other country heads of state eventually contacted this guy when Britain tried to get this thing back or something.  Has his own currency and everything.  http://www.sealandgov.org/

Republic of Molossia - located at a man's house in Dayton, Nevada and some territory in Southern California.  Self-proclaimed "banana-republic." http://www.molossia.org/

Dominion of British West Florida - a micro-nation devoted to restoring Florida back to England, the beloved motherland of Florida for 16 years before the Declaration of Independence.  http://dbwf.net/