Terms Vanuatu News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Appeasing the gods and showing thanks for the year's yam harvest. vanuatu is one of the smallest nations on earth. for all it has to offer in terms of culture and fishing and non-bungee cord bungee jumping and a very lush coconut crop, in political terms vanuatu is remarkably unstable. the country went through, for example, four prime ministers just in the first six months of 2011. but one of the ways that tiny fascinating vanuatu came up to punch above their weight on the world stage, make the most of the fact they are their own country even if they're small, one thing they've come up with is...

They're open to almost anything for a price. for example, the ongoing and very tense standoff between china and taiwan. taiwan in some ways wanting to be an independent nation. china insisting taiwan will never be independent, it will always be part of china. in 2004, vanuatu decided they were going to recognize the independent nation of taiwan. opened up diplomatic relations with the capital, it taipei. china, of course, was furious. taiwan reportedly paid vanuatu $30 million for that recognition. and it's no small thing to make china, all of places, mad at you. you know what, $30 million is ...

Government in kiev. and how is this going to go? >> when they become part of russia and they've thought they are ukrainians. >> what i worry about is provocations. you could have some muslim tatars do some kind of attack or have an attack that's blamed on this community then you have a pretext for russia to advance further to take further steps. you could see russian orthodox churches, for example, being attacked in the east because they're so split in that same blue/green map, there is the ukrainian orthodox and russian orthodox church. they don't always see eye to eye. you can see if a coupl...

Even more inflammatory to the international community. just unilaterally annexing new territory. but it's an action that saves them from the vanuatu-style international humiliation they just went through a few years ago. i wonder if that means they're learning. joining us now, nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel who has been reporting from ukraine recently. richard, great to see you. >> i love that you blurred the videos. they dive off the towers naked except for wearing gourds. >> yes. there's gourds, leaf action. >> this is the only time i think there's been any broadcast on a...

Russia wanted to create these two countries so russia recognized them. then they said, okay, south ossetia, you recognize abkhazia. abkhazia, you recognize ossetia. somebody call vanuatu. it was 2011 by the time russia was shopping around the world for micro countries it might be able to persuade to recognize the two fake new countries it had invented inside georgia. vanuatu for a while was happy to go along with the russians' plan. we don't know what russia offered to pay to them, but in may 2011, vanuatu's foreign minister announced his nation was prepared to recognize the independent nation...