Thought experiment: imagine that during the communist revolution in old Russia, the non-communist elites fled to Kosovo. Subsequently, USSR claims that Kosovo is part of it, while Kosovo’s claim is, fundamentally, to the entire territory of Russia.
That, from my understanding, has been the historic position of Taiwan vs. China, and why this conflict, while not causing a lot of violence now, could be less straightforward to resolve than a claim of an ethnicity to a geographic area.
In the above alternative reality, could Kosovo be recognized as a separate entity counter to USSR’s desires? Maybe but the question doesn’t make much sense in the first place, since that (being a separate territory) would be almost the opposite of what Kosovo wanted.
So you're saying if a region declares independence and gets foreign allies to provide effective military protection for X weeks/years, then the original country has lost any right to that land?
You might like the idea, but it's not commonly held. For one thing it encourages armed invasions against weaker nations.
> So you're saying if a region declares independence and gets foreign allies to provide effective military protection for X weeks/years, then the original country has lost any right to that land?
This is how the United States claims to exist, by the way.
I think the major difference is that on September 3, 1783 Great Britain itself recognized the independence of the United States. I'm not sure that any of Crimea, Kosovo, or Taiwan share that recognition of their independence from who they are claiming to be independent from (the ROC, in fact, doesn't even claim to be independent, they claim that the PRC itself holds no claim over mainland China and that it is rightfully the territory of the ROC).
If Kosovo could be classified as a nation after a few weeks of independence it's only hypocrisy to deny the same to Taiwan.