of the absence of agreement on the definition of a state and, with respect to the use of countries and applications for IMF membership, the absence of any adjective in the Articles emphasizes the breadth of the discretion that the Fund may exercise in admitting countries to membership . According to Mr. Gold, the desire to give the Fund flexibility in dealing with applications may explain not only the absence of any adjective that qualifies countries but also the choice of that word itself . (12) In his IMF study, Mr. Gold further observes, in the practice of the Fund the concepts of independence and sovereignty have been avoided on the whole as a mode of expressing a criterion for membership in the Fund . He continues, Although the Fund usually takes into account the recognition or nonrecognition of an entity as a state, there are no rules or even informal understandings on the extent to which an applicant must have been recognized by members or other international organizations before the Fund will regard it as eligible for membership. . In fact, when considering an application for membership where the status of an applicant may not be resolved, Mr. Gold writes there have been occasions on which the Fund has made a finding before decisions had been taken by the United Nations or by most members or by members with a majority of the total voting power. Mr. Gold concludes, the Fund makes its own findings on whether an applicant is a country , and makes them solely for its own purposes. . (13) Although not a member state of the United Nations, the Republic of Kosovo is a member of both the IMF and the World Bank, having joined both organizations on June 29, 2009. (14) On October 26, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in support of Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation in the United Nations system, which includes the IMF, the World Bank, and other specialized United Nations agencies. Secretary of State Blinken noted, As the international community faces an unprecedented number of complex