The Isle of Man is still at war with Germany...

[7ronin]

Yes, both nations are still at war, there is only a cease fire! Juristically seen. There are nevertheless negotiations but since the Japanese demanding back the three islands of the Kurilen, which belonged to them, still no treaty made.

A cease fire implies that hostilities can be restarted. By accepting and signing the unconditional instrument of surrender dictated by the Allied Powers, the state of war between Japan and the Allied Powers (including the former Soviet Union) ceased at that moment.

The former Soviet Union refused to sign the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 leaving Soviet-Japanese relations in limbo. Although a peace treaty has yet to be signed, diplomatic relations were re-established in October 1956 with the signing of a joint declaration which had many of the characteristics of a peace treaty if not in name.

Negotiations are still continuing. The primary sticking point is the territorial dispute over the four Kurile Islands and South Sakhalin. However, there are other a host of other issues such as Russia's failure to provide Japan with a full accounting of the fate of all Japanese prisoners of war held by the Soviets at the end of World War II.

 

[dublevod]

Although I have not heard of this particular scenario involving that aggressive war-mongering Island, there is a similar tale quoted by a guy who wrote in the Manx newspapers during the 1930's called Dusty Miller regarding the Island declaring war on the Americas (War of Independence) and it only coming to light that they were still technically foes when the US entered the First World War.

 

[Sharwood]

Now that, my friend, is a useful necro. Too bad most of the other necroes by noobs aren't. Welcome to CFC.

Interesting thread, but I can't see how Germany and the IoM can still be at war considering the treaties signed at the end of WWII. Any talk about Rome and Carthage being at war after Carthage was razed to the ground and its people sold into slavery is horsecrap.

There's been some talk about the Kaliningrad Salient - Russian East Prussia - becoming a fourth Baltic Republic, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. It's still more likely than it going to any of the other nations who have claims on it; Poland, Lithuania, Germany, even Belarus. It won't be partitioned, international opinion wouldn't allow it, and the result would be massive internal unrest.

I find the idea of the IoM and America being at war more believable, but for that to be true they'd have to have declared war on the US, not a bunch of rebels. So it's still fairly unlikely.

I was watching some newsreels just the other day about the Soviet refusal to sing the San Francisco Treaty. I found the idea that anyone could be so gullible and uninformed as to believe such tripe startling, until I remembered that Sarah Palin very nearly became the Vice-President of the United States. Technically Russia - probably all former Soviet states - is at war with Japan, and North and South Korea are at war with one another. Montenegro signed a treaty with Japan a few years ago, having technically been at war with it since the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. There's a Wiki page completely devoted to such wars.

 

[Antilogic]

That sounds a bit unlikely to me, given that the Roman empire subsequently refounded Carthage and it became an important Roman city. Surely the war must have ended by then?

Well, if you still care from roughly 2 years ago...

I think this is because the Romans assumed the war was over once Carthage was conquered. By our modern standards, a treaty must be signed for a war to be over. Back then, the Romans didn't care--they felt they eradicated their enemy, and thus the war was over.

If anything, this story about Rome and Carthage is about our modern prejudice about how wars should end, not whether or not it actually ended.

 

[BC1871]

Well if you really want to take this to a whole new level of insanity, shouldn't the Isle of Man which became a dependency prior to the American Revolution, still be at war with the United States, since they never signed a peace treaty with them.

Though in reality, as much as it would probably be the most interesting international incident in the past while, the Isle of Man in not at war with Germany.

 

[Flying Pig]

I cannot give you an exact answer to your question, but I studied international law at university and I can say you that it isn't a simple, straightforward matter.

I think that it's possible that the USA, with the use of certain technicalities in international law, was able to avoid declaring war on other countries and still intervene in a military way.

I think for Iraq, they used the breach of UN resolutions and the doctrine of preemptive strike (which many believe does not exist in international law) to attack the regime of Saddam without declaring war as such. But to be more precise I would have to do some research.

We never declared war on Argentina in 1982; you can fight without declaring war officially.

 

[Antilogic]

We never declared war on Argentina in 1982; you can fight without declaring war officially.

In the USA, the President is the head of the army and can maneuver troops and even order attacks without direct Congressional approval (in the form of a declaration of war or some other kind of resolution that allows for longer deployment without calling it a war) for a limited time period of 60 days. I would guess Parliaments and other representative bodies in other countries establish similar limits, although I don't know what those figures are off-hand.

So long as the chief executive calls it a policing action or uses some fancy semantics to get around the wording of international agreements (What, we can't blockade? How about a quarantine?), they can still order strikes. On many levels, I find this distasteful, but that's probably a discussion for another thread.