December 30, 2025
Many years ago, a budding decentralist and anarcho-capitalist suggested to a pair of highly paid Pentagon area specialist contractors that instead of what we were doing in the horn of Africa, we might gain credibility by recognizing Somaliland, which at the time was peaceful, free trading, and a rare example of an organic government, not at war, nor seeking war.
The sincere suggestion was greeted by at least one dropped jaw, and two blank stares. Later, I had not changed my mind, and in the three intervening decades, Somaliland has endured. I wrote in 2003, at LRC:
The Miracle-Gro for tender young countries is culture-driven self-government, absent outside military interference and manipulation from great powers and entangling alliances. It's kind of like what the founding fathers envisioned for this country.
Born on a Cold War battlefield, what is today Somaliland suffered a genocide conducted by the US-backed government in Mogadishu of Said Barre, from which independence sprang. 35 years later, US genocidal capability seems to have scaled up, as the massive reduction of Ukraine's prewar population in four years and the literal decimation of Gaza in two years illustrates.
Libertarians around the world were and should still be interested in the Somaliland experience thus far. Now, suddenly Somaliland has become important.
The Netanyahu government of Israel - tone deaf and calculating - has officially recognized an independent Muslim Republic that has a Constitution, a dual banking system satisfying the needs and preferences of both Western and Islamic models, and has publicly embraced self-determination and economic freedom since its independence. Israel and the US have been looking for a weak, nonaligned and un-militarized country into which to forcibly and permanently transfer any surviving Gazans. Candidate Trump said he would recognize Somaliland, presumably to strategically improve the US fleet and air foothold on the Horn, and as always, to better support our bestest ally with a new place from which to spy on and bomb Israel's neighbors.
A US recognition of Somaliland - in 1991 or today - would be easily justifiable on the basis of dignity, a shared history of independence, and long-standing US propaganda of its role in spreading peace, democracy and self-determination around the world. But Washington has no dignity, no memory, and has never believed its own propaganda. There exists only a hierarchy of allies and interests to be threatened, comforted, manipulated, punished or rewarded. The state, wherever it is found to be even slightly powerful, proves itself nothing more than an instrument wholly monopolized and grotesquely shaped by low imagination sociopaths.
Thus, Netanyahu and the occupation entity have taken a risk, and as we have seen, all states led by low imagination sociopaths are indeed getting more and more desperate. It will be fun to watch how the drama unfolds in this case. Deep desperation throughout our ruling castes, in the US, in Europe, and in Israel, is evident - in their policies, in their fiscal management, in their wars and conduct of wars, in their hysteria.
My 2003 observations included:
Marc Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, recently said that he hopes, of the actions taken by the new leadership in Iraq, that recognizing Israel "will be among the first things they do." Grossman's neo-conservative salivation over the new state of Iraq and its true purpose in the region is embarrassingly obvious. Down, boy!
But I'd buy the neocons a big bag of premium doggie treats if, after recognizing Israel, the new Iraqi government would then recognize Somaliland, the one true regional role model of a self-made, free-market, peace-loving democracy.
The world recognized a Palestinian state just as lame ducks Trump and Netanyahu were on the verge of completely erasing it. Israel's recognition of Somaliland, likely to be followed by an American one, is the right move, made for very wrong and potentially dangerous reasons. Retaliatory or promotional diplomatic "recognition" of defacto states is great power politics 101, and the US has been at this for some time. Its entire Cold War and post-Cold War policy has been concocted elections, coups, color revolutions, and war - all aimed as creating "democracies" and growing the empire.
Oil is also a factor, and the US and Taiwan (which recognized Somaliland in 2020) stand to benefit from Somaliland's oil potential, as would Israel, and thus every day seems to reveal 20th century US deep state intentions persisting unabated. As Brian Berletic reminds us , the security strategy hasn't changed a bit.
States and borders of states are not handed down by God, and never were. While politicians may be interested in cartography, the people just hope for peace, freedom and basic prosperity. It is not good news for Somaliland that out-of-touch imperial monsters are bestowing "recognition" now, only because the genocidaires in both capitols see a new tool, a new instrument to sustain and extend dangerous US and Israeli policies.
Strangely enough, the other regional states who loudly oppose Israel's play here, also do so solely for the sake of statism, not respect nor shared values of liberty and self-determination. The Republic of Somaliland is viewed, and will be viewed by its new "friends" as well as its enemies, as a lamb to be slaughtered. Just as with US-allied Somalia under Barre decades ago, and US-allied Ethiopia today, instead of a Midas touch, US and Israeli government "friendship" will pervert tiny Somaliland's hard earned peace and prosperity into welfare socialism, militarism, economic political lackeyism, and if history repeats, even genocide.
It's not an ideal situation, but it's nice to see Somaliland in the news. I have long harbored hopes that her republican model and success in decentralizing post-colonial Somalia, and her emphasis on peace as a national value can inform and even guide what's coming next for the US, as we reject our own hostile federal government, and become decentralized, liberated, and peaceful. May Somaliland long endure, and live in eternal peace. Samo ku waar!