How To Get Sovereignty

The first question anyone asks about creating a new state is, “Where will it be?” To answer this, let’s heed the advice given to entrepreneurs: find someone with a problem and get in front of him with a solution.

Which regions have a problem? The First World countries do not have a pressing one. Although they have not achieved the level of freedom that Objectivists advocate, their population is frogs in slowly heated water—unaware of the danger until it is too late, too used to the status quo to support any radical changes.

But things are not so dire in dire places. Here, locals and neighboring states may be more inclined to support the formation of a new state if it helps resolve regional tensions.

To illustrate this approach, consider one such troubled region: the Cyprus Buffer Zone. What if, instead of a no man’s land, it became a vibrant little country—let’s call it Cypria?

The Cyprus Buffer Zone as a State

The buffer zone’s existence is tied to the island’s turbulent history. In 1974, Turkey invaded the northern part of Cyprus following a Greek-backed coup, effectively splitting the island. Today, the Republic of Cyprus controls the south, while the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus controls the north, though it is only recognized by Turkey. Since 1964, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has maintained the buffer zone to prevent conflict.

Stretching 180 kilometers and covering 350 square kilometers, the zone varies greatly in width—in some areas, it spans several kilometers. It also has strategic access to the Mediterranean Sea at two points: a half-kilometer stretch on the western edge and a one-kilometer stretch on the eastern edge.

This strategic position, along with the history of division, provides a unique opportunity to create a new laissez-faire capitalist state, Cypria, grounded in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. A nation that upholds individual rights must operate on the Presumption of Innocence—it cannot interrogate people at the border or dictate whom residents may trade with. This is why Cypria’s access to the Mediterranean Sea is crucial for maintaining open borders and free trade. Immigrants can arrive without passing through another country, and no state can impose tariffs on goods entering or leaving Cypria.

Western countries, including the U.S., currently place an embargo on direct trade with Northern Cyprus. Cypria, however, will support the arms embargo but not the general trade embargo. Cypria will argue to its Western allies that this approach offers a new path to restoring peace in the region. Embracing individual rights, Cypria posits that trade occurs between individuals, not states. Unless Cypria and North are formally at war, Cypria has no right to prevent residents to trade across the border.

But how can Cypria gain sovereignty over the buffer zone? The creation of Cypria comes with its challenges, as the political realities on the island complicate the acceptance of Cypria by Greek Cypriots. For them, “Cyprus” refers to the entire island, and many do not acknowledge Northern Cyprus as a legitimate entity. The division of their homeland is a profound source of pain and resentment, while the Republic of Cyprus asserts legal sovereignty over the buffer zone.

Thus, Greek Cypriots will view the creation of Cypria as a threat to their sovereignty. But the North is unlikely to be reintegrated anytime soon, and the buffer zone is to remain. But these threats can be alleviated by convincing Cypriots to reframe the zone as a Greek or British protectorate for their own benefit. This way, Cypria, geopolitically will protect the interests of the Greek Cypriots, while offering benefits in the region that Cypriots don’t possess.

First, they currently don’t have access to the region. Cypria will have an open border policy, allowing both Northern and Southern residents of Cyprus to enter freely. (The open border situation will be similar to that of the countries in the European Union.) Thus, for most Cypriots, Cypria will be a curiosity, and, in practice, it will feel as though the island is finally connected again.

Second, it will be the “Cyprus” of Cyprus. Although Cyprus is already known in the region as a desirable financial offshore zone, Cypria will offer the kind of freedoms that Cypriots are currently denied in their Republic. It will have laissez-faire capitalism—no regulations, full separation of government and economics, and full protection of individual rights. Thanks to the open border, Greek Cypriots can enjoy these freedoms too, when they are in Cypria.

Other countries will also benefit from this. The ongoing cost of maintaining peace between the North and South by enforcing the buffer zone amounts to $55 million annually, funded by UN member states. Cypria’s creation would take over this responsibility, offering financial relief to these nations.

Unlike the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus, Cypria will have no ethnic nationalism. It will be a country for everyone, regardless of background—much like the United States, a land of opportunity where people identify first and foremost as Americans and only secondarily as Polish, Italian, Irish, etc.

The creation of Cypria aligns with Western values and strengthens relationships with key allies. Britain already maintains military bases in Cyprus. The United States also has interests in the Mediterranean, and an American base in Cypria will help its ally, Israel. In the early stages, Cypria will rely on these allies, possibly through the existing U.N. peacekeeping force, to protect its borders, maintaining its protectorate status. Eventually, when its population grows sufficiently, it will form its own independent military and would campaign for full independence. By then, Cypriots will see Cypria as a trusted ally and will not resist its full sovereignty.

While the Western allies can be convinced that Cypria is in their best interest, the situation with the Turkish-controlled northern region presents another challenge. Why would this region welcome Western influence right on its doorstep? A striking observation for those crossing from the south to the north is the noticeable decrease in wealth. The unregulated nature of laissez-faire capitalism in Cypria would allow northerners to engage in business ventures, raise their standard of living, while continuing to live in the north, maintaining their traditions. If secularization occurs in the north, it will happen naturally, and those in danger from religious oppression can choose to permanently relocate to Cypria.

Securing autonomy and gaining the support of Cypriots and international allies will be key to Cypria’s long-term economic success. The Cyprus Buffer Zone already has existing infrastructure from the time it was populated, making it easier to build on what’s there rather than starting from scratch. However, investor money will not flow without a guarantee of long-term stability. A 100-year non-interference guarantee from the suzerain state (if Cypria is a protectorate) is essential to protect investments from nationalization or sudden policy changes. This guarantee can be contingent on reaching population and development milestones.

Once the investments pour in, the first economic boom will come from real estate development, offshore corporation registrations, and banking. This will be incentivized by open immigration and Cypria’s lack of regulations (note: laissez-faire capitalism operates with laws, not regulations). The second boom will come from emerging tech startups and tourism.

Thus, the buffer zone, currently an underutilized and politically sensitive area, will be transformed by capitalism into a hub of innovation and prosperity. The Mediterranean also has historical and cultural significance that cannot be overstated. As the cradle of Western Civilization, it is fitting that a new renaissance, inspired by Ayn Rand’s ideals of individualism and free markets, would emerge in this region. The Mediterranean has long been a place of cultural and economic exchange, and with Cypria, it could once again lead the way in championing the values of individual freedom and prosperity.

In summary, the strategy of seeking opportunities in conflicted regions shows how the Cyprus buffer zone can be transformed from a symbol of division into a beacon of cooperation and hope. Hope for whom? It is not only for the divided people on the island. A laissez-faire capitalist state would be the first of its kind—a system the United States nearly had in the 19th century but lost because socialism took over in the 20th. Cypria will attract all individualists of the world.

The demonstrated strategy could be applied to other troubled regions around the world, specifically by resolving conflicts through the formation of new states. When ChatGPT was asked to identify regions with this potential, it generated the following list of candidates:

Region Name	Description
Ukraine (Eastern Ukraine and Crimea)	Crimea annexed, Donbas conflict.
Israel	Dispute over Gaza and West Bank territories.
Kashmir (India and Pakistan)	Disputed region, ongoing tensions.
Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan and Armenia)	Territorial conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
South China Sea	Disputed maritime territories, regional tensions.
Western Sahara	Disputed between Morocco and SADR.
Cyprus	Division between Cypriot factions.
Abyei (Sudan and South Sudan)	Disputed Abyei region, ethnic tensions.
Falkland Islands (Argentina and United Kingdom)	Dispute between Argentina and UK.

The Cyprus buffer zone presents a compelling case, while other regions have their own advantages and challenges.

A Missing Ingredient

Yet, a proposal that looks good on paper is still insufficient; success depends on gaining local support through a grassroots movement, rather than something imposed from the outside. The ideas must come from leaders who are well-respected in the region and speak the language of the people.

Past libertarian initiatives have failed to learn that local support is paramount. The most recent case is Prospera, founded on the Honduran island of Roatan. It failed to gain local support for several reasons, one of which was restricting locals from entering unless they incorporated a company there. This, among other factors, led to the repeal of the ZEDE law by the Honduran government, the law that had granted Prospera its Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status.

But Prospera is not a gateway community, where everything, including the roads, is privately owned by a corporation. The governing body of Prospera, the Prospera Authority, does not own the entire territory; it only enforces a legal framework. This framework cannot set arbitrary rules, and must be consistent with the protection of individual rights, one of which is the right of movement through non-private territory.

Besides the cost of $1000 per year, which most locals cannot afford, incorporating in Prospera would place a reporting and accounting burden on the incorporator–burdens that are nonsensical to someone who wants to walk through the region, enjoy the sights, or set up a hot dog stand. Isn’t this place supposed to be about freedom and zero regulations?

Imagine a hypothetical scenario wherein the U.S. government makes some public roads and parks inaccessible to people who don’t pay an extra $10,000 tax per year. Now, place this experiment in a region where most locals cannot afford the tax, making them accessible only to outsiders. Indeed, why wouldn’t it fail?

Learning from Zionism

Instead of emulating libertarian projects, all of which have failed, Anthemists should learn from past movements that actually achieved sovereignty, such as Zionism with its efforts toward the creation of Israel. Key figures in this movement were Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and Chaim Weizmann, who secured the Balfour Declaration. This declaration allowed Jews to immigrate to Palestine with the vision of establishing a Jewish national home there. (Note that Palestine at that time included all of Transjordan.) Herzl lived during the time when Palestine was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Weizmann took over, and a decade later, Britain took control of the region.

Herzl, a man of no political status or royalty, managed to meet with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid II, six times in an effort to secure the right for Jews to settle en masse in Palestine. The Sultan refused, not because the proposal was illogical, but because he believed the nation would never allow him to implement it. Philip Newlinsky, a journalist at the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Constantinople, reported back to Herzl what Abdul Hamid said to him (June 19, 1896 diary entry, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 377):

If Mr. Herzl is as much your friend as you are mine, then advise him not to take another step in this matter. I cannot sell even a foot of land, for it does not belong to me, but to my people. My people have won this empire by fighting for it with their blood and have fertilized it with their blood. We will again cover it with our blood before we allow it to be wrested away from us. The men of two of my regiments from Syria and Palestine let themselves be killed one by one at Plevna. Not one of them yielded; they all gave their lives on that battle-field. The Turkish Empire belongs not to me, but to the Turkish people. I cannot give away any part of it. Let the Jews save their billions. When my Empire is partitioned, they may get Palestine for nothing. But only our corpse will be divided. I will not agree to vivisection.

This message was relayed before even the first meeting between Herzl and the Sultan took place. However, the six subsequent in-person meetings, over several years, did not yield significant progress. At one point, Ali Nuri Bey Dilmec (born Gustaf Noring), then the former Consul General of Turkey, proposed to Herzl a plan to depose the Sultan by force. Herzl writes in his diary (pp. 1615, 1619):

[February 24, 1903, Vienna:]

[Ali Nuri Bey’s] proposal … comes to this: Sail into the Bosporus with two cruisers, bombard Yildiz, let the Sultan flee or capture him, put in another Sultan (Murad or Reshad), but first form a provisional government—which is to give us the Charter for Palestine. …

The two cruisers will cost £400,000, the rest £100,000. The whole stroke would cost half a million pounds. If it fails, we would have lost the money and the participants their lives. … The scheme could be carried out with a thousand men. Preferably during the selamlik.

Herzl’s response was guided by careful consideration of public opinion and the potential consequences of the aftermath.

My scruples, which I didn’t tell him about, were these:

1. That I must not participate in such a plot at all, if it amounts to murder and robbery (although he said that they would shoot in the air and no one need be wounded in it);
2. That in case of failure the Zionist movement would be discredited for decades to come;
3. That it might lead to Jews being massacred in Turkey afterwards;
4. That the “participants” cannot enter into any legally binding obligations. If they don’t keep their word, where shall I sue them? …

[April 10, 1903, Vienna:]

After mature deliberation … I have rejected Ali Nuri’s proposal in my own mind. … What decided me was the consideration that if the undertaking failed a horrible massacre of the Jews would take place in Turkey.

The breakthrough came with the Balfour Declaration, when historical reality aligned with Zionist aspirations. Palestine, now under British control, needed to be settled, and Britain saw Jewish immigration as beneficial. Weizmann recalls his meeting with Balfour at the end of 1914—two years before the war ended. He writes in Trial and Error (ch. 11):

When I walked into Balfour’s office in London — he was then First Lord of the Admiralty — he hailed me with: “Well, you haven’t changed much since we met.” And, almost without pause, “You know, I was thinking of that conversation of ours, and I believe that when the guns stop firing you may get your Jerusalem.”

Therefore, the intention behind the Balfour Declaration was politically motivated already two years before the First World War ended. Yet Weizmann also argues that political motivation alone is insufficient. As a young man, he had already criticized Herzl’s Zionist approach as overly schematic. He writes in Trial and Error (ch. 4):

[Herzl] was naive, as we already suspected from [his pamphlet] Der Judenstaat, and as we definitely learned from our contact with his work, in his schematic approach to Zionism.

His Zionism began as a sort of philanthropy, superior of course to the philanthropy of Baron de Hirsch, but philanthropy nevertheless. As he saw it, or seemed to see it, there were rich Jews and there were poor Jews. The rich Jews, who wanted to help the poor Jews, had considerable influence in the councils of the nations. And then there was the Sultan of Turkey, who always wanted money, and who was in possession of Palestine. What was more logical then, than to get the rich Jews to give the Sultan money to allow the poor Jews to go to Palestine?

… Young as I was, and totally inexperienced in worldly matters, I considered the entire approach simpliste and doomed to failure. …

To me Zionism was something organic, which had to grow like a plant, had to be watched, watered and nursed, if it was to reach maturity. I did not believe that things could be done in a hurry. The Russian Zionists had as their slogan a saying of the Jewish sages: “That which the intelligence cannot do, time [that is, work, application, worry] will do.”

Thus, we see with both Herzl and Weizmann, that Zionists placed great emphasis on ensuring local support. For instance, Weizmann describes (ch. 21) his arduous travels in Palestine to gain an audience with Emir Feisal at a military camp (then the leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, later King Faisal I of Iraq):

I set out with Major Ormsby-Gore for Akaba, and proceed thence up the Wady Araba into Trans-Jordan. … [The] only way to reach Feisal’s headquarters was to go down by rail to Suez, thence by boat to Akaba, circumnavigating the Sinai Peninsula, and from Akaba northward to Amman by such means of locomotion as might offer themselves. Thus the journey which today can be made in a couple of hours by car from Jerusalem took upward of ten days, and in the heat of June it was no pleasure jaunt.

The boat which took us through Suez and the Gulf of Akaba was a small, grimy, neglected vessel … The heat was unbearable; food, clothes, sheets, everything one touched was covered, permeated with fine dust particles, clouds of which blew across our decks from the shores. …

Whether from the bad food, the intense heat or the vermin, Major Ormsby-Gore fell ill with dysentery before we reached Akaba,… We set off by car up the Wady Musa — on that day not easily distinguishable from the “burning fiery furnace” of the Bible. … The car stood it for perhaps three hours and then gave up. We continued on camels, … [found friends with] shelter for the night. They sent us off the next morning with a fresh car [… which] made about half the slope when it too gave up, and we again continued on foot …

The trip paid off, however. Weizmann recounts his conversation with Feisal:

With the help of an interpreter we carried on [with Feisal] a fairly lengthy and detailed conversation. … He asked me a great many questions about the Zionist program … I stressed the fact that there was a great deal of room in the country if intensive development were applied, and that the lot of the Arabs would be greatly improved through our work there. With all this I found the Emir in full agreement … .

Nearly a year later, Emir Feisal wrote this letter to Felix Frankfurter, a member of the Zionist delegation (Trial and Error, ch. 22):

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race, … We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. …

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had, and continue to have, the closest relations. … The Jewish movement is national and not imperialistic. Our movement is national and not imperialistic; and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other.

Unfortunately, the relationship with the Arabs later worsened due to the British administration’s mismanagement of Palestine. Although the Zionists, especially Weizmann, tried to improve the situation, their efforts had limited success because they had little influence over British policy. Weizmann’s memoirs provide more detailed accounts of these events.

Summary

Creating a new country requires tapping into historical processes and identifying opportunities to resolve political conflicts, both locally and at the state level. The concept of a country in the Cyprus Buffer Zone serves as an example of this approach.

The success of the Zionist movement in creating Israel offers valuable insights. Like Zionism, Anthemism would require not only the right historical conditions but also careful diplomacy. Herzl and Weizmann demonstrated the importance of fostering relationships with all relevant parties in the region. These lessons can be applied in alignment with the Anthemist vision.

• Zionism
• Immigration