Independence!
Today has brought nothing new save for the expected. Yes, Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev has proudly announced the recognition of two new states on the map: Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both republic and urged other countries to follow suit. I guess everyone was expecting that.
However, the internation response was appaling. The US, declared bastion of democracy and protector of the people’s voice urged Medvedev to reconsider. What is that? US ignores the referenda and the votes of the inhabitants? That’s actually not a surprise either, except for empty words about “democracy”, the US has actually worked hard in supporting totalitarianism and opression across the globe and it’s credibility is almost nil.
But I won’t be discrediting USA’s lack of diplomacy today, they’re discrediting themselves just nicely. Instead, I’m going to ask you to wonder a bit about what independence means in today’s international context. To earn independence usually means that an already established state loses a part of its territory in order to allow the birth of the new recognized state. This means to sacrifice territorial integrity in order to satisfy the plea of those who wish to govern themselves under a new rule and a new law. The question that arises, naturally, is where do we draw the line? How much atomization can the world take and why the trend today is to divide rather than unite?
I’m sure the answer, if there is any, is far from easy. In fact, I have even more questions: what gives legitimity to an independence movement?
This we can analyze for a while. The definition of a state is that of a political association that has effective sovereignity over a geographical area. There is no ethnical component to the definition simply because there is no need for one. People mix and remix all the time in social contexts that change rapidly over time and therefore states form out of the desire for strength through unity, rather than language, skin color or religion. For a state to form, all it takes is a group of people united by political interests and with sufficial autority to gain the necessary support to adjudicate sovereignity over an area. However, today, when about all of Earth’s land is already divided between states, this means a conflict with an existing state. Also, today we have the notion of “international law” as well as established international treaties which tend to preserve the integrity of an existing state (for a desire to retain a status quo by preventing new players from entering the game and taking a side or another). Basically, if we were to abide by all the laws and treaties, it is rather impossible for a new state to emerge, unless the governing authority is extremely weak.
Independence movements today exist in a form or another in may (if not most countries in the world). The vast majority are purely political, trying to exert peaceful political pressure in order to gain independence or some degree of autonomy in governing a small territory. In fact, today’s France has no less that 20 groups pressing for autonomy or independence for various territorial divisions. Even Romania has one demanding increased rights and autonomy for the Szekely Land, a division that would entail about 2 of the current counties. But these are not as famous as the IRA (the republican irish army of Northern IReland) which uses both armed and political force to break Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom or the ETA (the basque army) which forcefull tries to break the Basque Country from the kingdom of Spain. Other famous independence movements are the former KLA, which eventually obtained the independence for Kosovo (from Serbia), the PLO (Palestinian Liberation ORganization) which eventually formed the current Palestinian Government in the West Bank (who seeks the formation of Palestine in the territories forcibly occupied by Israel in the 60’s as well as obtaining the right to return for some 3 million arab refugees from Israeli persecution) and Hamas, who is in charge of governing the Gaza Strip, having the same goals as the PLO.
Most claims for independence have as basis either ethnic or cultural unity or some historic claim. These things, again, raise a few issues.
First of all, as shown in a state’s definition, ethnic or cultural unity per se is not enough to promote a new state. Only when it leads to a consistent association with a political basis can it claim the authority over a territory. But still, in today’s world most territories aren’t ethnically pure therefore the formation of such a political association on ethnic grounds is just a sparkle for an ethnic conflict (or cultural or religious). Centuries upon centuries of changes have mixed the world to such an extent that the seed of nationalism has become irrelevant if one seeks peace and unity. But the problem is that such things perish in the face of political interests.
As I’ve mentioned above, Kosovo managed to gain independence. In spite of the fact that the kosovar ethnic was barely organized, that their partially autonomous provice was part of the internationally recognized UN-member Serbia whose treaties should’ve protected it from division, Kosovo emerged aftear years of atrocities from all sides (americans, kosovar, serbs, etc) and continuous bombing by US warplanes. Why? Well, Serbia was a Russian ally which also tried to keep away from the EU, thus upsetting a lot of people to the extent of which they decided to break Serbia apart. Surely enough, the serbs killed a lot of kosovars, massacred, assassinated. These atrocities have been the claim which “legitimized” a UN intervention (sure, intervention is good, but from here to openly supporting breaking a country apart it’s a long way).
But wait … if these things are applicable in Serbia, why weren’t they applied in UK? The British did the same to the irish: assassinations, mass executions (shhhhh, the civilized english people will shudder if we say “massacres”), expeditious trials and so on. Where was the UN then? Or the Amritsar massacred, where the pudic britons massacred around two thousand indians who rallied for independence? Or what the Spanish did to the basque people? Or what the Israeli did to the palestinians? But in these cases I didn’t see US bombing London, or Madrid or Tel Aviv. No peacekeepers rushes to protect those people … no … instead those who sought freedom and independence were labelled as terrorists and subjected to the most demeaning treatments, as if the world suddenly forgot the term Human Rights.
But somehow the kosovar movement wasn’t like that. Well, the Serbs were seen as the enemy of the EU, the kosovar were the enemy of the serbs … can you put one and one together? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, an old saying says and that’s how the europeans took it.
Of course, the same won’t apply to the arabs (who needs muslims anyway, the christians sects are already uncountable in numbers, that’s enough religious diversity for a planet) since Israel is more than a friend of the White House, or the irish (UK, the most active ally of Israel and US) or the basque for that matter (though here there’s a decline, Zapatero turned his back on the White House, suddenly we hear Condolezza Rice wondering about the Basque Country). If you are a US friend, be sure that you can get nuclear weapons (or “nucular” as our drunk friend in the Oval Office says) and you can invade and kill whoever you want. If you disagree with the White House, you are sure to find your name on the Terrorist list.
Ethnicity isn’t really important as long as you have the right friends. but how about historic claims? Well, this is a rather sensitive point. What’s the historical span we can take into the account? And what denominations? What about ethnicity? For example, Romanian’s ancestors were the Dacians, which at some point were dominant over nearly half of Europe. Is that reason enough to have Romania claim sovereignity over that territory? Israel claims it’s land based on ancient data, the Exodus that took place almost three thousand years ago. The fact that for two thousand years the jews were a minority in Israel’s current land doesn’t seem to matter. And then we must ask from what viewpoint do we consider the events of the past? Today we view an invasion as a violation of sovereignity but territorial integrity is a new term and international law was rather obscure until the UN was created.
The laws of the past have been brutal and arguably injust. Today we can say that the pact of Trianon was a gross injustice and a violation of Hungarian borders, but at the time Hungary was a loser of the WWI and was punished in the same manner as Germany was at the end of WWII (not to mention that if the pact wouldn’t have happened, Kosovo would be f ighting for independence from Hungary).
The pact of Ialta was arguably a violation of Romania’s territory, but again, Romania was a loser of the WWII, getting it’s punishment for being an agressor alongside Nazi Germany.
The examples can continue, Germany lost Alsace and Lorraine at least twice during time, last time just after the second World War.
In 1991 Georgia lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia, regions which in the past have too been independent states (Abkhazia joining Gerogia rather recently, with the formation of the USSR). What happened today was only the recognition of something that happened 17 years ago.
But there’s a limit. We can’t roll back history, at least not in a manner that makes everyone happy. That’s not to say that we can perform injustice and then procrastinate long enough in the hope that people will get used to said injustice and forget about it.
My conclusion? There is none and there can be no conclusion. Even if we arbitrarely decide to draw a line … let’s say in the year 1900 and recognize all territorial changes as injustice, ethnically clease the territories and giving them back to whoever they belonged at the time, will they make everyone happy? No. New conflicts will appear, ethnical hate on historic grounds will rekindle. If Trianon didn’t happen, today the kosovars would have waged their war against hungarians (perhaps in fact serbs and kosovars would have joined together in their struggle).
What puzzles me is the need for division. Soon after the World War II the tendency was to unite, recognizing that small, separate states were vulnerable and that strength comes through union. The League of Nations, the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union they are all organizations meant to bring people together, to prevent aggressive unrest and provide political stability in a changing world.
Today, the words of the day are division, hate and distrust. Surely, it’s mostly at a political level but it’s still a dangerous game, it’s something like a long night enshrouding our world. Maybe the critical level isn’t too close, but we’re getting there.