Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Netherlands Antilles – United States relations

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep both. One (talk) 06:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Netherlands Antilles – United States relations

Bilateral relations are relations between states. The Netherlands Antilles and Aruba are not states; under international law and Dutch law, they are part of the Netherlands. The United States also recognises this (eg, [1]). Thus, since the two are not states, and since the Netherlands is responsible for their foreign relations, the articles should be deleted. Biruitorul ^Talk 22:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating the following related page:

Keep both There are other types of relations than diplomatic. This is a distinct political and economic entity, so we should WP:first see what we can find before nominating. Going by the sources, if the USDept of State considers them appropriate for a full entry, perhaps we should. Or are we a more reliable authority?DGG (talk) 23:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep both - this is very similar to Bermuda-United States relations in which Bermuda, an overseas territory of the UK shares very close ties to the US. In this instance even the bermudan currency is pegged directly to the USD showing that the territory does not have to be independent to prove its relationship. In the cases of the two Caribbean islands up for deletion, it should be noted they are greatly affected by US tourism, and us businesses. So basically just deleting for the purpose of deleting is not productive in this situation. --Marcusmax(speak) 23:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I didn't say we should delete for its own sake, but because the two aren't independent. Also, couldn't we cover these relations with a section at Netherlands – United States relations? - Biruitorul ^Talk 00:08, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I see where you are coming from, but it should be noted that not all relationships are completely political, and these are probably a good example of that. Compared to our typical "x-y articles" United States relations are much more complex the country literally maintains relations with every type of government including territorial. -Marcusmax(speak) 00:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - OK, but I just have to wonder where this slippery slope ends. The US has lots of trade ties to Quebec: Quebec – United States relations? The Balearic Islands depend heavily on British tourism: Balearic Islands - United Kingdom relations? So does Acapulco on American tourists: Guerrero - United States relations? The US has a military base on Diego Garcia: British Indian Ocean Territory - United States relations? Heck, British Columbia and Washington have a long border and intricate commercial & cultural ties: British Columbia - Washington relations? Personally (and I recognise other participants don't (at least not yet) share my viewpoint), it seems to me that since only states can conduct foreign relations (indeed, foreign relations are inherently a state function), such articles should be restricted to them. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:04, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Actually, that restriction would be in error, as any nation may conduct relations with any geopolitical unit with which it desires; including Quebec, Acapulco, and Diego Garcia; as Wikieditors we must conform to the political reality around us, working to improve the nomenclature and phraseology that we use, without allowing it to limit our coverage of the world that exists. --Mr Accountable (talk) 02:45, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Not at the embassy level, though. Each state that has embassies has just one in every country. The rare exception is where one state recognises part of another state as independent and sets up an embassy there (eg, Kosovo), but that's the exception to the rule. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:04, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - No, no, not at the embassy level. It is the consulate level instead. Which, actually, is technically at the embassy level in that the embassy manages the consulates. Try http://www.usembassy.gov/ and view the total of over 30 consulates the US alone operates in Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Searching 'brasil consulates' the first page yields Houston, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. --Mr Accountable (talk) 03:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - However, that doesn't mean that Brazil has relations with Texas or Florida, but merely a diplomatic presence subjected to the ambassador in Washington. I know the Antilles and Aruba are somewhat of a special case (far away from the mainland, and autonomous), but their foreign policy is still run from Amsterdam, and there is but one Dutch relationship with the US, not three. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Actually, Brazil does have relations with Texas and Florida. And maybe Gujarat and Osaka. The government of Texas has direct official contact with the government of Brazil. The consul general in Houston would be able to work independently of the busy ambassador in Washington if her or she was working on some complicated oil delivery contracts' tax issues or something like that. Much like the produce department guy in a supermarket does his job without waiting for directions from the supermarket manager. Thinking on how ambitious and powerful a young career diplomat should be, I wouldn't think they would be sitting around their office waiting for the ambassador to send them an email. In the case of Dutch Antilles and Aruba, the consul general or post director would be looking out to effectively represent the interests of the Antilles or Aruba to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the government in Amsterdam, and the more he or she can do to create some local motion, the more he or she has accomplished. If the established Dutch foreign policy is not serving the people of Aruba, there would be a potential schism in that foreign policy. Leading to multiple Dutch-USA foreign policies. And in the case of US foreign policy being represented as a single set of policy platforms, I am sure that competition within a sitting administration and especially competition between Republicans and Democrats can really make a foreign policy environment seem more like quicksand than like solid ground. --Mr Accountable (talk) 12:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- What you are proposing is an unmaintainable web of content forks. Yes, consuls do have limited autonomy, but a) what they do is not terribly notable, and can easily be noted in higher-up articles; b) if they do exercise too much autonomy and diverge from their state's foreign policy, they are bound to be dismissed. - Biruitorul ^Talk 12:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sorry its taken me so long to reply, but if you look at Aruba for example it is a Constituent country of the Netherlands, basically meaning it is part of the Netherlands but at the same time has its own political body, and rules and regulations. this type of thing is very similar to places like Scotland, England, Wales etc. -Marcusmax(speak) 13:08, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Or Puerto Rico. --Mr Accountable (talk) 13:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - I understand that. And I understand that Aruba is not as innately part of the Netherlands as The Hague or Rotterdam, and that it has special consular interests that do not apply on the Dutch mainland. Nevertheless, as the US government itself notes, "Aruba conducts foreign affairs through the Kingdom of the Netherlands, whose embassies and consulates issue visas for travel to the island". Similarly, while the government of Scotland has significant powers, all foreign policy is conducted from the centre in London. Likewise with Puerto Rico: not a US state, and distinct in many ways from the mainland, but with foreign policy exclusively made by Washington. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I am in agreement with DGG and Marcusmax. This is not one of those whimsical X-Y relations articles where it seems the countries were pulled out of a hat. Pastor Theo (talk) 01:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep both as non-controversial. --Mr Accountable (talk) 02:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete both Hooray, someone finally nominated a couple of these articles that have the United States as one of the X-Y nations. Biruitorul is entirely right-- Aruba is not a nation, and the Netherlands Antilles is not a nation. No matter how autonomous either place may be, no matter how many American tourists go to Aruba, no matter whether the State Department has a branch office on a Caribbean island... the U.S. does not make an end-run around the Netherlands in order to enter into agreements with these two parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. We might as well have an article about Puerto Rico-Russia relations. Frankly, these articles suffer from the same deficiency that the Groubanis do... a directory of offices and personalities, with no actual evidence of a notable relationship... except that Groubani knows the difference between an independent nation and a dependency. Mandsford (talk) 22:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- An idealistic view of foreign relations; the Machiavellianism that can be so important in foreign relations work is a very good reason for all these articles to exist. --Mr Accountable (talk) 22:36, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At least Machiavelli knew what he was writing about. Mandsford (talk) 00:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete How can a country have relations with something that is not a country? It would be one thing if the Antilles claimed independence, but since they don't make any attempt at independence, there's no way that they can have foreign relations. We need (perhaps we already have it, I don't know) an article on United States-Netherlands relations to cover this topic. Nyttend (talk) 20:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nyttend, this (also noted below) says the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles are different countries--the source is the Dutch government. Drmies (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Thanks to nominator for alerting me. Sure, the Antilles are part of the kingdom of the Netherlands, but they are also separate in some ways. I don't to make this another list of one news item after another, but I think there are plenty of those ways besides the merely diplomatic. First of all, the Antilles do really count as a country--as in that the Antilles, Aruba, and the Netherlands agreed in 2001 to join in combating terrorism, which would be strange if the Antilles were a province or even a state (in the US-way) (see [2], esp. "De drie landen binnen het Koninkrijk...," "the three countries within the kingdom"). Second, the Antilles have their own flag under which ships can be registered--such as the freighter attacked by Somali pirates in January (who will be prosecuted, incidentally, in the motherland), reported on here, par. 10. And even financially there is a difference between the motherland and the Antilles, since the latter are a tax haven ([3]); why the Netherlands are not, I don't know.
Again, an expert on Dutch law will know this better than I do, but the above three sources suggest that there's enough 'difference' to warrant the US dealing with the Antilles separately, at least in some matters, and the struggle against drug trafficking is only one of those ways, even if that is ratified by the Dutch Eerste Kamer--see here, and this site mentioning Aruba and Curacao as "Forward Operating Locations" (in the same breath, even though officially they are different entities). So I say keep. Drmies (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Make that keep both--I hadn't even seen that Aruba was also on the chopping block. What goes for the Antilles goes for Aruba as well, even more so since Aruba is "more" of an independent country. Drmies (talk) 03:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.