97 of 330
Result
[Go
To
Full
Text]
[Tips]
Title: Secession , autonomy and modernity.
Subject(s): SECESSION ; SOVEREIGNTY ; SOVIET Union -- History -- 1985-1991
Source: Society , Jul/Aug98, Vol. 35 Issue 5, p49, 10p
Author(s): Tiryakian, Edward A.
Abstract: Provides information on several secessionary and autonomous movements. Implosion of the Soviet Empire in 1989-1991; Secession movements in the Third World countries; Autonomous movement in the
Western World.
AN: 799958
ISSN: 0147-2011
Database: Academic Search Elite
Print:
Click here to mark for print.
Text Available: Check OPAC
[Go To Citation]
Best Part
Undoubtedly, the most dramatic set of successful secessionary movements in recent years are the ones of 1989-91 involving the break-up or "implosion" of the Soviet
Union. The Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia) spearheaded the secession , arguing that their integration in the USSR at the onset of World War II had been a forcible one. The Soviet state responded initially with force, but Gorbachev backed down in the face of international pressures at a time when the Soviet Union badly needed Western economic support. As a domino effect, various other components
(Belarus, Ukraine, etc.) of the Soviet Union seceded without opposition from a hapless Communist state that had five years before seemed monolithic. Interestingly enough, unlike practically all Western democratic states, the Soviet Constitution had provided for the right to secede ("Each Union Republic shall retain the right to freely secede from the USSR," Article 72 of the Constitution) but when secession time

came, the five-year negotiation period that had been provided in the Law of 1990 was quickly forgotten in the stampede to get a divorce from communism.
After the implosion of the Soviet Empire, many if not most of the republics that had constituted the USSR faced not only severe economic problems because of the fragmentation of the economy that had been centralized around Moscow, but also severe internal ethnic problems.
The western periphery of the ex-Soviet Union has had ethnic tensions, some generated by majority and minority nationalist leaders, but unlike what had been feared by observers, even where the tensions have culminated in secession , this has not been attended by violence and bloodshed. The Baltic states and several Central
Asian republics have large numbers of ethnic Russians (or Russian-speakers like
Ukrainians) who came as privileged elites in the communist period but now find themselves mistrusted "outsiders." In spite of initial apprehension, there has not been any irredentist movement on the part of Russia (say like Hitler's grab for the
Sudetenland) or of the external Russians to regroup in the "mother country," partly because of unsettled economic conditions within Russia making it preferable to stay put where the living standard of the new "exiles" is still higher than in the homeland and everyday life more secure. Similarly, Hungary has not sought to reclaim territory in adjacent countries (Slovakia and Romania) in which a sizable Hungarian minority resides in uneasy tension with the majority; nor has that minority sought a separate state, but rather to have better political representation and educational autonomy or parity within the existent state.
The break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993 has been termed a "velvet divorce," one in which an essentially culturally homogeneous population--albeit marked by regional disparity between the more developed, urban, industrial and "secular" western Czech region and the lesser developed, more agrarian, "traditional" Slovakia--failed to agree on the post-socialist path to a market economy. Slovakia seceded, peacefully, but it was not clear whether this was a decision really wanted by the populations on both sides (leaving out the middle smaller region of Moravia) or whether it was the clash of two strong personalities (V. Klaus, now prime minister of the Czech Republic and
V. Meciar, now prime minister of Slovakia) who could not be reconciled by the popular president Vaclav Havel.
Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union a secondary wave of secessionist movements has taken place. Several settings have witnessed severe violence where an ethnic enclave has rejected the legitimacy of the new post-Soviet state (and its ethnic majority) and opted to fight its way to gain (or regain) autonomy or to rejoin a kindred ethnic group outside the borders of the state. The Caucasus/Transcaucasus region has been particularly marked by various secession movements, several of which have been successful in achieving autonomy but at high cost of lives and destruction of property. Among the latter are the secession of Muslim Chechnya from Russian tutelage after a bitter guerrilla war to wrestle control of the capital Grozny, the secession of minuscule Abkhazia (aided by Russia) from Georgia (aided by Ukraine) and the equally bitterly fought secession of the Christian Armenian enclave Nagorno-
Kharabakh from Muslim Azerbaijan. For the time being, the internally politically beset Azerbaijan, wooed by the outside for its rich oil deposits, has refused to acknowledge as successful the autonomy of the Mountainous Republic of Karabagh,

and there is no consensus in the international community, since each has a powerful contiguous friend: Russia in the case of the Armenian side, and Turkey in the
Azerbaiji side. In the Republic of Moldova, chiefly populated by ethnic Romanians, a
Russian ethnic minority declared an independent Trans-Dniester Republic, but the secession did not take place due to the presence of a Russian army, which was instrumental in enhancing the autonomy of the ethnic minority but without the breakup of the state.
On the heels of the Soviet breakup, the breakup of Yugoslavia offers other multiple efforts of secession where ethnicity and territoriality have been potent, lethal forces.
In its original setting up at the end of World War I, Yugoslavia was a set of regions carved out of parts of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and "wedded" to Serbia by the
Allies acting as a "marriage broker" hoping to set up a nation-state that would stabilize the volatile Balkans. Understanding that the rest of the country was apprehensive of Serbian hegemony, the post-World War II communist head of state
Marshall Tito (himself from Croatia) brought about an effective decentralization of
Yugoslavia, giving much financial and a degree of political autonomy to the provinces. After his death, however, there was strong temptation in some Serbian nationalist quarters to bring about greater centralization (a "Greater Serbia"), building on an infrastructure of the national center around Belgrade, which was perceived by various ethnic groups as more Serbian than Yugoslavian. The endeavor at centralization (tantamount to Serbianization of the bureaucracy and the military), implying cutbacks in provincial economic and political autonomy, prompted dissatisfaction in several provinces, with Slovenia being the first to opt for secession , followed shortly by Croatia in the summer of 1991. Important was that both were recognized by countries in the European Union, particularly Germany. Had there not been a Bosnia-Herzegovina, and had there not been a sizable Serbian ethnic minority outside of Serbia (in both Croatia and Bosnia), the break-up of Yugoslavia might probably have been a much less violent affair. Unfortunately for its diverse population, Bosnia was a tempting territory for both Serbian and Croatian irredentism.
The secession of ethnically relatively homogeneous Slovenia, after a brief and halfhearted show of force by Yugoslavia to halt the divorce, became a fait accompli with little violence. It did take an important, if vacillating effort, by the international community to bring about the cessation of hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and today the remaining nation-state of Yugoslavia is beset with inter- as well as intraethnic conflicts.
The Yugoslavian situation has a further dimension of interest, namely that primary secession can lead to secondary secession : thus, long-term Serbian populations in
Croatia and Bosnia have responded to what they see as "ethnic cleansing" directed against them by setting up the respective republics of Krajina and Srpska. Like the
Mountainous Republic of Karabagh, these republics have so far been recognized only by the contiguous "motherland" of the ethnic group, which, however, has (so far) not sought to claim the breakaway republic as an integral part of its legitimate territory. In a closing section, we shall seek to draw some lessons from this general region's tragic experience, but for now, let's consider a sample of secession movements in other world regions.
The Third World

The post-colonial period of the Third World, and particularly in Asia and Africa, offers numerous secession movements in the wake of decolonization, some successful, some unsuccessful, and in any event for the most part attended by violence. The partition of India in 1947 into the two nation-states of India (with a
Hindu majority) and Pakistan (with a Muslim majority) did not avoid bitter ethnoreligious conflict. That Pakistan itself had two incompatible components, really two different communities separated by a thousand miles and by important cultural differences other than religion, became over time apparent as the Bengali East
Pakistan felt itself dominated unfairly by West Pakistan. Demands for autonomy were very harshly repressed by force, but the intervention of India for its easterly neighbor enabled the secession movement to be successful, with independence achieved in
1971 as Bangladesh came into being.
Elsewhere in South Asia, the peaceful decolonization of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, has had a lingering blight in the form of the militant Tamil minority seeking to carve its own independent state, Tamil Eelam, from territory in the Northern and Eastern provinces. India, which has a significant Tamil population, unsuccessfully sought to mediate between the center and the periphery but a compromise form of decentralized autonomy broke down and the withdrawal of Indian troops in 1991 has left the country in a state of guerrilla war. Other secession movements in Southeast Asia include Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines and (formerly Portuguese) East Timor in
Indonesia, areas culturally distinct from the center of the nation-state. In both instances there is not only cultural differences and economic disparity between the region but also a great physical distance from the capital center, yet the state has been able to contain by force the secessionary attempt, and the international community or parts thereof, has not provided support for the dissidents.
Africa has had more than its share of secession movements, for the most part reflecting the interregnum period in the wake of the break-up of colonial empires and early years of independence in multiethnic countries. In the former French colonies in
Africa, the new president Charles de Gaulle, wisely wishing to avoid futile colonial wars like those in Indo-China and Algeria, offered in 1958 the retention of close economic and assistance ties to France in a loose alliance. Guinea's charismatic leader
Sekou Toure was the only one who took the secession option; though no blood was shed, the economic costs of independence were steep, as the French government took away from Guinea all that it considered its property. Subsequently, the French
Community (the political arrangement of francophonie) was not actualized, not so much because the former colonies wanted greater autonomy and loath to enter into a political union with their former metropole but more because French politicians got cold feet when faced with the demographic fact that "one person, one vote" in a new federation or confederation would, in fact, make the center a minority.
In Central Africa, the British Colonial Office put together in the 1950s a complex economic scheme to integrate three colonies: Southern Rhodesia which had a dominant second-generation white Rhodesian population with a diversified economy,
Northern Rhodesia with a rich copper mining export industry, and Nyasaland with meager natural resources but a large surplus labor pool. Putting it together as the
Central African Federation made good economic sense to the Colonial Office.
However, in a short while Nyasaland (today Malawi) under its own charismatic leader, Hastings Banda, felt it was dominated by two white-run states, and sought

secession . It succeeded in doing so, without violence, with the strong moral support of the international community, particularly voiced by the United Nations. Northern
Rhodesia behind a strong African nationalist leader (Joshua Nkomo) also opted out and with the approval of the Colonial Office and the United Nations became independent Zambia. Rhodesia, left with the empty shell of federation, sought the same autonomy from London as had been granted to the other two but was rebuffed.
It then declared unilaterally its independence in 1965 but failed to get international recognition for its secession , save from the then white-dominated South Africa. After several years the white government was forced by economic sanctions and guerrilla warfare to renounce independence and return authority to the Colonial Office in
London, which shortly after arranged for the decolonization of Rhodesia and the election of a black majority, that promptly changed the name of the country to
Zimbabwe.
Other failed attempts at secession in Africa would include the cases of Katanga and
Biafra. Katanga, the mineral-rich eastern province of the ex-Belgian Congo, was culturally and ethnically distinct from the capital seat and as far away from it as Sofia,
Bulgaria is from Paris. It contributed half of the Congo's total revenues but received only one-fifth of government expenditures. When it attempted to secede, its leader
(Moise Tshombe) received no legitimization from other African states who viewed him as an apologist for neocolonialism, and Katanga was eventually subdued by the military superiority of the Congolese government. A second and even more violent attempt at secession is the case of the eastern region of Nigeria, with a dominant welleducated Ibo ethnic population which in the colonial period had been economically active in other regions as well. With independence, the Ibo found themselves harassed as a minority population in the Muslim north; the initial federation became more centralized as a republic, and when petroleum fields in the eastern region became an emergent source of great wealth, the dispute over the allocation of oil revenues prompted the Ibo to secede and set up an independent Biafran state. Some, though not the majority, of African states recognized Biafra, but after a bloody three-year war, the secession was put down by the central government. In the northeast region of
Africa, one secession movement, that of Eritrea from Ethiopia, succeeded after prolonged warfare, while another, that of the southern Sudan, has been met by harsh repression from the increasingly fundamentalist Muslim central government in the north, with no condemnation from the international community. The predominantly undeveloped southern Sudan, with a quasi-nomadic Christian and animistic African population, had found itself incorporated in the new entity of the Sudanese republic that was set up by the Cairo Agreement involving Britain, Egypt and the Arab parties of the Sudan.
The Western World
Western democracies themselves offer a panoply of movements for greater autonomy, where the threat of secession has been met by both resistance and accommodation from the nation-state. Two early successful secessionist movements are those of
Norway separating from Sweden without violence in 1905 and Ireland that broke from the United Kingdom in 1922 after a violent uprising. Since 1968, of course,
Northern Ireland has had continuing violence with guerrilla warfare between established "settlers" from Great Britain (whose ancestors came with Cromwell's invasion) and an "indigenous" Irish-Catholic population feeling economically and

politically discriminated. Secession has not succeeded, partly because Dublin has not wished to become involved in a movement whose more radical leaders would want a different and much more leftist regime than the present government, and partly because British moral and physical support has so far not been withdrawn from the present institutional arrangement. The British military presence permits the de facto retention of power by the "settlers," who though suspicious of a British Labour government, show no signs of staging a Rhodesian-style secession .
The 1960s were a decade where the Welfare State and its tendency for increased centralization peaked in the West. The late 1960s saw the emergence of various other movements of autonomy and even secession in other European regions, movements which if they have not been successful in establishing new states, have at least made enough noise to force varying measures of decentralization. Just as the rich oil fields of the Niger delta stimulated (but did not cause) the Biafra secession movement, so the rich exploitation of the North Sea oil fields stimulated (but did not cause) the demand for autonomy from the Scottish Nationalist Party, which, unlike the movement-in Northern Ireland, has never gone in for bullets as a complement of ballots. To stave off a possible SNP electoral victory, Westminster has made accommodations for decentralization or "devolution," and referenda were held in
1979 and 1997 in both Scotland and in Wales. The September 1997 referendum in
Scotland paved the way for a Scottish Parliament in 1999 with considerable legislative and fiscal powers of taxation. In Wales the vote endorsed a Welsh
Assembly, deprived of taxation powers. The September vote produced a razor-thin majority (50.3% for, 49.7% against) but at least it was an important reversal from the negative vote of 1979 on the same arrangement. Since the national Labour Party will continue to be the largest single party in a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly
(though the respective nationalist parties are the second largest and ahead of the
Conservatives), it is most unlikely that the endeavor for decentralization will take the route of secession .
Similarly, the strong autonomy movements of Spain, those in the Basque region and in Catalonia, have found a modus vivendi in the new constitutional arrangements of the post-Franco era. These have greatly increased the autonomy, not only of the welldeveloped and culturally distinct regions but also given greater provincial autonomy elsewhere, for example in peripheral and economically lagging Galicia. Of course, the more radical elements of the Basque area have sought complete independence (and possible unification with kindred French Basques, who have shown little inclination to opt out of France) but their campaign of violence, similar to the IRA, has met with little popular support, inside or outside the Basque homeland (which is not to deny the strong sentiment of Basque nationhood).
France--the nation-state "one and indivisible"--was beset with various peripheral regional autonomy movements in the 1960s and 1970s ranging from Alsace in the east to Brittany in the west and "Occitanie" in the south. Greater recognition of the cultural specificities of the region has been incorporated in the educational system (for example certificates of studies in the traditional language and local history of the region rather than just the previous highly centralized teaching of French history and
French language). Encouraged by de Gaulle, regional economic development has also been encouraged outside the highly developed Paris region in more peripheral zones, but, unlike Great Britain, political devolution has so far not followed suit. The one

area where secessionist violence has taken place and occasionally flares up is Corsica, but the movement has been unable to get popular support either on the island or on the mainland (where support for Algerian independence played a crucial role in undermining the legitimacy of French rule).
Other Western settings have seen various autonomous movements, without (so far) any break-up of national states. Northern Italy has seen much agitation, in the past from German-speaking enclaves awarded to Italy after World War I that wanted to return to the Austrian Tyrol, but in the present from a well-organized and wellpublicized movement of the Liga Norde, which views the prosperous and industrially developed North as culturally different from and dragged down by the South. In effect, the North, centered in Milan, sees itself much like Catalonia, both with a distinct identity from that imparted to the country by the political state. In Belgium, the monarchy has been a mediating institution in an emergent arrangement between the Flemish and Walloon (French-speaking) populations which may be likened to the
"judicial separation" of marital partners of the pre-Revolutionary period. The oddity or paradox is that Brussels, the autonomous center (something akin to the District of
Columbia) of the highly devolved (dual) nation-state, is also the administrative center of the European Union. The latter is still evolving as an economic and political integrative entity, providing greater Europe with new structures of identity. In
Brussels, then, centrifugal forces of decentralization are complemented by centripetal ones. To complete Brussels/Belgium being a microcosm of the nationalist movements which are shaking up the political arrangements in many countries, note may be taken of the presence of two vocal minority nationalist parties, the Flemish-speaking
Vlaams Blok and the Front Democratique des Francophones engaged in a tug-of-war over the capital. The former sees Brussels as the capital of a new Flemish Belgium, while the latter is opposed to Flemish parity in education and other matters in the region of Brussels, where the French-speaking Bruxellois are a demographic but not political majority.
One last secession movement characterized by both success and non-violence is that of the Jura within the Swiss Confederation. The country's constitution, which already embodies a great deal of decentralization, provides for secession from within a canton, though not a cantonal secession from the confederation. In 1947, the Frenchspeaking minority, predominantly living in one region of the German-dominated canton of Bern, organized a new movement for autonomy, which over time drew sufficient support and attention that after extensive discussions led to an amicable resolution and territorial demarcation along linguistic lines. The rest of Swiss cantons duly ratified the agreement and in 1979 the new canton of the Jura came into being with its 69,000 inhabitants.
What is to be gleaned from this overview? Like divorce, secession is a process and an outcome in which conditions of union become increasingly less attractive to one of the parties, and the discontent voiced, if it does not bring about a rectification of the conditions of discontent, becomes finally translated in an "exit" option. In the case of secession , the discontent--feelings of being unfairly treated, of not getting a fair share, of being victimized (either in real physical terms or in being economically and symbolically exploited)--has most frequently an ethnic as well as a regional dimension. This is especially true where the region or territory involved has multiple ethnic groups, or one "indigenous" ethnicity and one or more ethnic immigrant

groups. In some instances of secession , all the groups may feel committed to seeking maximum autonomy including secession (as was the case in the Baltic states in 1989-
1991 when ethnic Russians joined the nationalist movements against communist
Moscow). In other instances, however, such as Croatian secession from Yugoslavia, the ethnic minority in the territory (Serbs) may be apprehensive and either play a passive role (but not that of "free riders") or else more actively seek its own secession from the seceding territory with the aim of either setting up its own state or returning to the shelter of the "mother country" (among others, the cases of Armenian Nagorno-
Karabagh, and the black African nationalists in then Northern Rhodesia and
Nyasaland).
Socioeconomic factors play an important role in secession , since frequently a dimension of the discontent is that the existent state is exploiting the territory in question (getting more revenues from the territory than it is plowing back, allowing immigration into the territory which takes away from the cultural identity of the territory, etc.), or letting it run ragged. But the territory seeking separation, or greater fiscal self-determination, may not be a relatively poor region but rather a relatively rich region (e.g., Northern Italy, Catalonia) which views dimly a diminution in its standard of living because of state policies favoring other and less-developed regions.
While socioeconomic factors are instrumental in fomenting discontent and dissatisfaction, they operate in tandem and not in isolation with cultural factors in a group's identity and relation to the center. Ethnicity, language, and religion are such factors. A territory that is set off from the state by a cluster of ethnic, linguistic, and religious characteristics, and which is experiencing changing economic conditions
(either expansion or contraction) will be more likely to experience secession tendencies or attempts than one in which the economic factor weighs alone.
In many instances that we have briefly examined above, a move or demand for autonomy, which might culminate in endeavors of secession , arises with a change in the political status or political regime of the state. Third World secessions often occur in the aftermath of decolonization (itself often a form of secession from the "mother country," "metropole" or "imperial power," depending upon one's choice of words).
As a de facto or de jure colony, the country may have had state containment of ethnic tensions, partly because of the state monopoly of means of repression, partly because of the peace imposed from "above." With the downfall or eclipse or withdrawal of the
"arbitrating state," the successor state may no longer be viewed as "arbitrating" or quasi-impartial (in the colonial period, the impartiality of the state was limited by its favoring colonial "settlers" from the metropole); rather, the successor state may engage in actions which privilege its ethnic constituency and disenfranchises the peripheral ethnic groups. This condition is frequently one attended by secession movements or at least movements seeking greatly improved autonomy from the new state.
Secession , like so many other things in the world, does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place, or seeks to take place, among other things, in a context where the
"disengaging party," to call the side seeking the "exit" option, has lost trust in the intentions and activities of the constituted state. Concomitantly, the disengaging party has also lost confidence that it may be allowed the "voice" option in the public sphere.
Even prior to the actual declaration of secession , the actions of the state are critical.

The state has a large range of actions possible, from accommodation to the demands for autonomy to provide maximum self-determination while retaining a semblance of state authority, at zero cost and maximum benefit to the potential disengaging party, to maximum punishment for disengagement, i.e., the utilization of force to make the disengagement as costly as possible. Undoubtedly, game theory could provide us with strategies for an optimal resolution of the conflict: increasing the autonomy of the unit or improving its status while retaining the territory intact for the state. Unfortunately, real actors do not easily conform to theory, game or otherwise, when it comes to control over territory and threatened identity. The amicable resolution of conflict in the case of German-speaking Bern to allow French-speaking Jura its own canton, or
Finland allowing Swedish-speaking Aland to have maximal autonomy (printing its own stamp, having its own flag, controlling its education and most of its tax programs--see the Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1997), or the government of the
Czechoslovak Republic agreeing in advance in 1992 to abide by the outcome of the referendum in Slovakia, or the accommodations of post-Franco Madrid of the demands for increased political and fiscal autonomy of peripheral regions--these indicate that in some instances, demands for regional autonomy are rewarded with increased benefits within the existent state system, or with no "penalty clause" for withdrawal.
But of course, not all state regimes will seek to accommodate demands for regional autonomy from ethnic groups threatening secession as an alternative. Kurds in Turkey and in Iraq have been shown the iron fist by the governments of the countries in which they constitute an enclave, as have non-Arabs in southern Sudan. And as a feature of advanced modernity, emergent linkages of regional and global economic integration are forcing states to comply with severe economic disciplines of the global market and its disciplinarians, like the International Monetary Fund. States, particularly those of the former Soviet bloc and of the Third World, are cutting back on social expenditures and welfare programs. Where these cutbacks or state privatization practices (in conformity with external economic dictates) lead to further marginalization and increased poverty of peripheral territories within a state the result may well be new regional ethnic demands for autonomy and violence.
How the state responds to demands for autonomy, then, is one critical variable. States that have a long-standing democratic tradition and the institutions of a civil society are likely to seek non-violent accommodations to forestall secession , as in today's
British Labour government endorsing Scottish and Welsh devolution. This generalization has exceptions, witness the American case leading to the Civil War or the failure of Irish Home Rule debates to stave off the secession of Ireland from the
United Kingdom. States lacking these traditions are even more likely to resort to force and violence to repress demands for regional and cultural autonomy.
Of lesser but still significant importance in the success or failure of a movement to achieve territorial autonomy is the reaction of and relation to the international community. In general, it is difficult for a secessionary movement to gain international recognition from other states, particularly if the state whose territory is threatened with loss has responded to the movement with force. There is a general unwillingness to interfere in internal political affairs of other states, especially if this would require military intervention, unless it is the besieged state that seeks external assistance. Again, this generalization has exceptions: in the period of Western

decolonization, the international community in the United Nations took a strong stance in bringing about the end of minority white rule and legitimating the independence of several ex-colonies. But subsequently the United Nations has not been willing to support morally and by sanctions other areas that have been forcibly taken over and ruled with an iron fist from the outside by Third World states, such as
East Timor in Indonesia or southern Sudan. And to be sure, the international community does not often act as a single actor--some members may recognize and provide assistance to the secession while others retain a neutral stance or continue to recognize the territorial integrity of the country, witness the Nigeria/Biafra case.
In brief, it would appear as if secession is a phenomenon which is part of the modern world order. It represents the seeking of autonomy even if the price for this autonomy is steep. Just how steep for both the disengaging party and the remaining state will depend on how the secession takes place, whether amicably or violently. Like divorce, some secessions may be a "no-fault" kind, where there are short-term economic costs but more long-term benefits to each side; others where the short-term costs are high but with long-term benefits to both, and other combinations are possible.
It might be better and less costly if states could respond meaningfully to demands for autonomy as an important "voice" option before the demands became expressed solely in the "exit" option. One possibility could be some sort of "ombudsman," or an international. commission, specializing in ethno-regional grievances, to hear the issues and the grieves, to provide suggestions for a framework for decentralization.
And there would have to be some pressures and legitimation from the international community to have the existent state and the contending party agree to seek such an alternative to secession . I am not, however, under the illusion that such a proposal is likely to happen, except where the existent state is very weak and unlikely to command effectively military forces of repressing the demands for autonomy.
Another possible course of action to induce a state to increase the autonomy of its units would be the use of economic sanctions in cases where the international community could establish that in the present situation there is indeed a harsh, cruel and unjust treatment of a territorial ethnic enclave. This has been attempted in the past with limited success (for example, the oil embargo of Serbia/Yugoslavia) because embargoes are not adhered to by all members of the international community. Still,
Turkey and Iraq, respectively might respond to international economic pressures to provide genuine autonomy for Kurds--for example, as part of the price for admission into the European Union in the case of Turkey, and for being able to rejoin OPEC in the case of Iraq.
The state for a long period basked in the legitimacy of being a "nation-state" and the modern state was instrumental in "inventing" the nation. In that long spring and summer of the "nation-state," centralization was an ongoing process for the most part accepted as a feature of modernity. Today, in the 1990s, the nation-state as such, like the Holy Roman Empire of old, has lost its sanctity due to various reasons, including vast demographic changes of immigration, for example, and new forms of regional and global economic integration which are carving out new socioeconomic realities. It is a wise state which is aware of these epochal changes and reassesses new institutional arrangements giving optimal voice to its constituent parts, essentially

arrangements that would still allow the state to play an important coordinating role, perceived as such by the parts. Needless to say, there is no single model that can satisfy the various contentious situations of today marked by ethnic-territorial cleavages. What is needed are, with apologies to Robert Merton, new "theories of the middle range" of autonomy and decentralization, ones which include secession as an
"exit" option.
Since " secession " as a topic may seem rather distant if not exotic for an American public, it might be well to conclude this discussion with its relevance for the United
States.
The increasing integration of the United States with the rest of North America
(stemming largely from the implementation of NAFTA) should make us aware of the demands for autonomy and for lessening of state control on our immediate borders.
Canadians chide Americans for lack of knowledge about Canada or taking Canada for granted as a mere extension of the United States. True enough, but Anglo-Canadians
(who do not form a "nation" in the same sense as Americans form one) have taken for granted Francophone Quebec as just another province of the federation, a noisy one to be sure, but not worth taking seriously as a "nation" which sees itself submerged in a state. There has been in the Quebec population a modernization of demands for autonomy from Anglo-Canada and the federal government in Ottawa, but the refusal of the rest of Canada to ratify the Meech Lake Accords earlier in this decade provoked a new round of nationalist agitation which culminated in the provincial referendum on autonomy in 1995. The "No" vote defeated the proposal for the renegotiation of the status of Quebec--but unlike the 1980 referendum vote, the second was just barely defeated by a very slim margin. There are two ethnic minorities in Quebec which can be counted to vote negative on secession : the
English-speaking population (including new immigrants who are not native Frenchspeakers) and the Native American Indian population. There is also a segment of the
French-speaking population which casts a "loyalty" vote in favor of the present institutional arrangement, that segment is to be found largely in the 60+ age group and therefore will shrink faster over time. It is therefore quite possible that in a third or in a fourth referendum, a majority will be cast in favor of, if not secession , then in a process leading to secession . Anglo-Canada could forestall secession in some culturally innovative ways, like making the bilingualism of Canada a reality, closer to, say, Switzerland, by having all schoolchildren fluent in both French and English, and having courses in history outside Quebec teach the history of Quebec as an integral part of Canadian history, while having Quebec school children and college students learn Anglo-Canadian history as well as that of Quebec.
Anglophone and Francophone Canada, even in Montreal, have been described aptly as "two solitudes," for the most part living apart from each other. Although in the past
30 years or so the French-speaking population has had a significant improvement in its standard of living, it is in the memory of the older generation that Anglo-
Canadians held a tight grip on the economy and considered the Francophone population inferior--much the same as the situation in Northern Ireland relating
Protestants to Catholics. After much snubbing and job discrimination, the appeal of being "masters in our house" ("maitre chez nous") became a powerful impulse for autonomy. Some Francophones feel "at home" in the bicultural/bilingual world of
Canada, and some Anglophones feel "at ease" in a Francophone milieu, but these are

a minority in elite circles, just like, say, Flemish who feel "at ease" with Walloons or
French-speakers and vice-versa are minorities in the "two solitudes" of Belgium.
I do not know whether Canada can come together anew, that is, whether it can modernize or renovate the basis of the joining of French and English Canada that took the form, essentially, of the marriage contract known as the British North America
Act of 1867 The sort of national "dialogue on race" which was initiated in the United
States this past year is as needed in Canada, though it has had commissions on biculturalism in the past. But those took place 20-30 years ago and there is a greater urgency now to explore throughout Canada whether there is a stronger desire to remain together than to go separate ways, and if to remain together, through what new cultural mechanisms and institutional arrangements.
If this does not take place and if in a future referendum Quebec opts for the "exit" option, the United States cannot fail to be involved in the divorce proceedings.
Quebec nationalists might accept a settlement that would make Canada more like
Belgium--two separate entities rather than a multi-provincial state, but that might not be acceptable to other provinces. Some forward-looking Canadians, Anglophone as well as Francophone (Young, 1996) have begun to think of contingencies in case of secession . It might be well for similar contingency analysis in the United States, since as the powerful neighbor to the south, the United States would be impacted in different ways: for example, the Canadian federal government if it opposed secession might ask the American government for economic sanctions (e.g., prohibiting Quebec from selling debentures in American markets), the Maritime Provinces (New
Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland) might petition to enter as states, etc.
Whether or not structural changes take place in Canada in the near future, Americans south of the border might bear in mind a point of comparison: the "Latin American" component of Canada, that is, the Frenchspeaking population (which is concentrated in Quebec) is about the same percentage of the total population as the Hispanic population in the United States is projected to be by the middle of the next century.
Although the American southwest as a region is not identical to Quebec, and though the Hispanic and especially Mexican-American population is not as concentrated in the United States nor as ethnically homogeneous as is the Frenchspeaking population concentrated in Quebec, still there are interesting similarities. This includes a feeling of being treated as inferior and looked down upon. One result is the high drop-out rate of Hispanics from secondary American schools and even colleges. Although it is unlikely that in another 50 years a movement for autonomy or even secession would take place in the Mexican-American population, still the question of bilingualism and biculturalism should be seen as being as much a significant national challenge for the
United States as it is for Canada.
The Latin American connection of the United States has two other focal points. South of the border, greater political instability has been induced by indirect and perhaps unforeseen aspects of NAFTA. To comply with provisions of the treaty opening up previously sheltered economic sectors, especially agriculture, to free market conditions, and to accept the foreign (chiefly, the United States) bailout at the time of the peso crisis, the Mexican economy has undergone vast structural changes. This includes repeal in 1993 of Article 27 of the National Constitution which provided for

communal ownership of land, thereby permitting privatization of land; increasingly agriculture has become rationalized as a big export-oriented agribusiness. In the process, huge numbers of agricultural workers, campesinos, have been marginalized from production and either expelled or face expulsion, much the way but in a more brutish manner than the enclosures of 18th-century England drove the rural population off the land. In Mexico the area that has been particularly hard hit by
Mexico's economic integration and globalization is the area of Chiapas in the south, which is ethnically different (predominantly Maya) from the central and northern regions of the country. It is a region where nearly half of the population suffers from malnutrition (vs. 6% for the country as a whole) and where illiteracy rates are twice the national average. It is also the region which in the past five years has had a violent uprising led by the Zapastista National Liberation Army (EZLN) which actually declared war on the Mexican government on January 1, 1994. The Mexican state used strong military force to put down the uprising and at last reports seems to be in command, though harsh repression continues in the face of protest; many have been killed or are forced to flee to the mountains linking Mexico and Guatemala.
Is Chiapas a candidate for a secession movement? In some respect the situation is like
Chechnya, where a bitter guerrilla war did end in the secession of the ethnic enclave from Russia. Chechnyans, however, were better armed than the peasants of Chiapas, and the former had support from several Islamic countries. It is more likely that
Chiapas could have an accommodation within the Mexican federation, but for that would need significant socioeconomic assistance, and presently the Mexican government because of NAFTA and terms of its external debt financing seems unable or unwilling to undertake such a task of reconstruction. Deprived of conditions for economic improvement, deprived of "voice" in the present political regime, the population of Chiapas will, have little choice but for some "exit" option: either continuing uprisings and guerrilla warfare (which in the nature of things is most unlikely to succeed) or exit via immigration, mostly illegal, to the United States.
There is yet another Latin American connection relevant for our consideration. 1998 marks the centennial of the Spanish-American War, and an important precipitate that the United States has retained is the Hispanic island of Puerto Rico, with the particular status of "commonwealth," half-way between a colony and a state. While the linkages between the United States and Puerto Rico are many, and while Puerto
Ricans have provided disproportionate numbers to military service, there is a Puerto
Rican feeling of "nationhood" as strong as say, that of Quebec, Scotland, Wales or
Catalonia. And while in the post-World War II period until the 1990s the commonwealth status, that had been validated by a charismatic leader (Luis Munoz
Marin), was the majority choice, today there seems to be growing dissatisfaction with present conditions which have deteriorated, partly as a result of changes in American investments and federal tax legislation which have increased an already high level of unemployment. The result of the growing dissatisfaction and unease is that a referendum or plebiscite will be put to Puerto Rican voters before the end of the century. The wording of the referendum, the kinds of options have not, as of this writing, been finalized. One possible outcome is that unlike Quebec, which has been seeking greater autonomy from Ottawa, Puerto Ricans might give an edge to the
"statehood" option and thereby seek greater centralization with Washington. Puerto
Rico does have a long-standing party of independence but it gets little favorable media exposure and has meager resources for organization.

How the United States government and the population will react to the outcome of a referendum will be highly significant and effect the eventual outcome. Some interests in the United States will welcome a Puerto Rican initiative and request for statehood
(assuming a majority vote for this option); others may feel dismayed at the project and reject it. If the latter course prevails, that is likely to increase the following of the separatists, but perhaps not sufficiently to give them a clear mandate. In any case, the situation is likely to remain ambiguous for quite a while, as ambiguous as the
Canadian/Quebec situation.
Aside from the Latin American dimension, the United States offers other movements of autonomy, some contemporary, some historical. A few years ago, residents of
Staten Island threatened for a while to secede from New York City, and similarly, counties in northern California expressed a desire to secede from California. Amusing as this might seem, since the secessionist movements were short-lived, both instances are related to movements where one economically affluent region feels it has to pay unfairly for a lesser region, particularly where the economic inequality is also associated with ethnic/cultural differences in the populations. A different kind of autonomist movements that is emerging in the present decade is that in Hawaii where a new generation of native Hawaiians is viewing the islands as an "internal colony," colonized and exploited by outside interests, leaving the indigenous population marginalized. There is an emergent sense of Hawaiian "nationhood" very different from that of "statehood" and the happy multiculturalism which is depicted in the mass media.
I save for last the historical dimension of secessionist movements in the United States.
Obviously, the secession of southern states and its consequences readily come to mind as the turning point in American history. Although viewed as a single act, it was a collective action, with each state holding a convention as to whether to secede or not, and not all that had slavery did (e.g., Maryland). And even among states that did, some regions did not support secession , with the notable instance of the western part of Virginia which was economically, culturally and ethnically different from the plantation-dominated eastern part. As an interesting case of a secession from a secession , West Virginia declared its independence from Virginia in 1863, pledged loyalty to the Union, and was recognized as a new state by Congress. In some respect, that was an antecedent to the case of the Jura becoming a new canton, but also bears relation to the Serbs in Bosnia declaring their autonomous republic of Srpska in the wake of Croatia and Bosnia declaring their independence from the federal republic of
Yugoslavia.
Finally, it might be realized that the United States, the "first new nation" of modernity, came into being itself as a secession movement for maximizing autonomy, an instance of a successful but violent War of Independence.
SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS
Milica Zarkovic Bookman. The Economics of Secession . New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1993.
Lee C. Buchheit. Secession : The Legitimacy of Self-Determination. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1978.

Hurst Hannum. "The Specter of Secession ." Foreign Affairs, 77 (March/April
1998):13-18.
Donald Horowitz. "Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected
Connections," pp. 9-22 in Naomi Chazan, ed., Irredentism and International Politics.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
Maury Klein. Days of Defiance. Sumter, Secession , and the Coming of the Civil War.
New York: Knopf, 1997.
Percy B. Lehning. Theories of Secession . New York: Routledge, 1998.
Stephen M. Saideman. "Explaining the International Relations of Secessionist
Conflicts: Vulnerability Versus Ethnic Ties." International Organization, 51 (Autumn
1997):721-53
~~~~~~~~
By Edward A. Tiryakian
Edward A. Tiryakian is professor of sociology at Duke University and, in 1997-98, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford,
California. Co-editor (with R. Rogowski) of New Nationalisms of the Developed
West and other writings in the field of comparative aspects of nationalism and national identity, he is preparing an interpretive study of American religious exceptionalism.
Copyright of Society is the property of Transaction Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Source: Society, Jul/Aug98, Vol. 35 Issue 5, p49, 10p.
Item Number: 799958
97 of 330
Result
[Go
To
Full
Text]
[Tips]

52 of 70
Result
[Go
To
Full
Text]
[Tips]
Title: Secession and self-determination.
Subject(s): STATE succession -- History ; SELF-determination, National -- History
Source: Current , Nov93 Issue 357, p35, 5p
Author(s): Kampelman, Max M.
Abstract: Discusses the legal history of secession and self-determination.
Definition of the terms; Both terms too ambiguous to be of much practical help; More work urgently needed to be done in this area; From
` Secession and the Right of Self-Determination: An Urgent Need to
Harmonize Principle with Pragmatism,' in the Summer 1993 issue of
`The Washington Quarterly.'
AN: 9311087685
ISSN: 0011-3131
Database: Academic Search Elite
Print:
Click here to mark for print.
Text Available: Check OPAC
[Go To Citation]
Best Part
NEW STATES AND OLD PROBLEMS
The right of self-determination of peoples is associated with Woodrow Wilson, one of
America's most illustrious presidents, who, in turn, is associated with peace, civility, and responsibility in international relations. Prudence, therefore, calls for hesitation before undertaking to challenge that principle. It is, however, not necessary to challenge the right in order to avoid its obviously mischievous and most dangerous misapplication in many parts of the world today as growing ethnic conflicts become associated with assertions of the right of self-determination.
Unless a distinction between self-determination and secession is made and understood, the right of self-determination will either drag the world body politic into

violence and chaos, or the principle itself will have to be dumped onto the trash heap of history as one that has outlived its usefulness and could undermine the potential for democratic development. in a powerful and thoughtful recent article, Amitai Etzioni argues that the current drives for political independence by ethnic groups in the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and even Canada are likely to produce more violence and less democracy for the peoples in those countries. "If the world is to avoid such chaos," he writes, "the call for self-determination should no longer elicit almost reflexive moral support." He also demonstrates that fragmentation into smaller political entities brings with it heavy economic penalties. He advocates more local autonomy, democratic federalism, pluralism, and democratic community building rather than fragmentation. As a professor at Harvard University, Joseph S.
Nye, Jr., issued a similar warning against "the new tribalism" as he urged the Clinton administration to recognize that a "foreign policy of unqualified support for national self-determination could result in enormous world disorder."
It is the thesis of this essay that the right of self-determination of peoples does not include the right of secession . These are two separate rights, which must be separately viewed. The right of self-determination is recognized in international law, witness its expression in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) and the Helsinki Final Act. But the right of secession is not a right under international law, although it has been and may be a part of the constitutional framework of a state.
DEFINING TERMS
The term itself, "self-determination," is ambiguous. Wilson used it at the Paris Peace
Conference in the context of nation building after World War I. Lenin, on the other hand, used it to advance his goal of stimulating proletarian revolutions. The UN
Security Council attempted to come to grips with a definition in its 1949 report on
Indonesia, but it did not contribute to clarity when it attempted to distinguish between an "internal right of self-determination" and an "external" form of the right. It defined the former as "the right of populations to determine, by democratic procedure, the status which their respective territories shall occupy within the federal structure." It defined the "external" as "the right of the population to disassociate their respective territories from the Republic of Indonesia." The report did not deal with the difficulty of defining the geographic limits of a "territory" and that, of course, leaves vague the identity of the "self" that has the right to determine. A variation in a boundary line may well produce a different "self."
The concept of self-determination has been variously traced to Aristotle, to the thinkers active during the French Revolution, and to seventeenth-century Italian political theorists. Its first more recent political expression seems to be its use in the early twentieth century by the German Socialist party, with its term
Selbstbestimmungsrecht. Lenin extended its meaning to include secession as early as
1914 when he defended Norway's right to secede from Sweden. In 1917 he declared,
"If Finland, if Poland, if the Ukraine break away from Russia, there is nothing bad about that. Anyone who says there is, is a chauvinist." Significantly, he later began to modify this view, first by distinguishing the right from the advisability of secession , and later, in effect, stating that secession to the Communist cause was to be encouraged while secession away from the Communist cause was obviously undesirable. Soviet diplomacy adopted this latter approach.

When Woodrow Wilson took up the cause of self-determination of peoples as a right, he clearly thought of it as a right for colonial peoples, although some of the phrases and thoughts he expressed were imprecise. He may very well have been troubled by the fact that the United States had seceded from England, although he could have distinguished an escape from colonial rule, on the one hand, from a secession from a state by a culturally, politically, or socially distinct group. Wilson later repeatedly refused to look favorably on the petitions from subject nationalities that inundated him after the war ended. The historian Sarah Wambaugh has suggested that when
Wilson said "every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live," he did not intend to endorse the right of secession .
Wilson was unable to incorporate the concept of self-determination into the Covenant of the League of Nations in any form. It was looked upon as too amorphous. Even
Robert Lansing, Wilson's close associate and adviser, after initially pointing out that
Wilson had not explained what unit of government he had in mind and certainly had not clarified the meaning of "people," asserted.
[the] principle is dangerous to peace and stability...bound to create trouble in many lands. ...The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives...what a calamity the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!
The League of Nations made it clear on a number of occasions that there was no positive international right to succession. Instead, the principle of "minority rights" was adopted based on the assumption that a segment within a state has the support of the international community if its right to self-determination, short of secession , is being infringed. These minority rights were generally assumed to be cultural freedoms relating to language, religion, education, and commerce, among others, but they were not enumerated in detail.
The "principle" of self-determination is mentioned twice in the United Nations
Charter. It appears as one of the UN's purposes in article 1 (2) and again in article 55, which deals with economic and social cooperation. A 1945 UN report explained that the principle conformed to the purposes of the charter "only insofar as it implied the right of self-government of peoples, and not the right of secession ."
Within the UN, the doctrine of self-determination has been applied with reference to decolonization, human rights, and the implementation of mechanisms for the non-selfgoverning territories. It has not been successfully used to advance the cause of secession . To apply it in that way would have undermined one of the UN's essential purposes: its members are to maintain peace and to refrain from the use of force against another state.
Here, too, however, ambiguous language reflects a lack of clarity that has contributed to the human tragedies now erroneously identified with the right to self-determination.
Decolonization, as reflected in chapter XI of the UN Charter, was clearly related to the dismemberment of multinational empires and not to the promotion of fractious divisions of existing states. Yet, in its 1960 Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the UN General Assembly proclaimed that "[a]ll peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that

right they freely determine their political status." Within that same document, moreover, there is the apparently contradictory statement that "[a]ny attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the Purposes and the Principles of the Charter of the
United Nations."
Efforts to harmonize this and other similar contradictions in various UN documents have generally limited the "political status" ingredient of self-determination to the decolonization process. The dismemberment of multinational empires was legitimized although secession from an existing country was not, particularly from a UN member state, whose territorial integrity was to be respected.
Ten years later, in 1970, the UN declaration on friendly relations, after an eight-year study and debate, essentially reaffirmed the 1960 declaration with all of its ambiguities and potential contradictions, but it added an important new dimension.
Self-determination was justified as an aid to peoples victim of "alien subjugation, domination and exploitation." But the statement went on that it was not authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
Thus the principle of self-determination does not subsume within it the right to secede, which would obviously "impair" the territory or political unity of the state from which the group is seceding. Furthermore, it would appear under the 1970 declaration that the protection of a state's territorial integrity and political unity is conditioned on that state's observance and respect for human rights, including minority rights. Individual states have placed on the record their own interpretations of the words, but it is not unreasonable to conclude that the 1970 declaration disassociates the right of secession from the right of self-determination at the same time as it provides justification for secession from a state that is in violation of human rights.
In February 1970, UN secretary general U Thant issued a public statement on this subject:
[T]he United Nations has never accepted and does not accept and I do not believe it will ever accept the principle of secession of a part of its Member states....When a state applies to be a Member of the United Nations, and when the United Nations accepts that Member, then the implication is that the rest of the membership of the United Nations recognizes the territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of this particular Member state.
During all of these developments in the UN, the official position of the United States remained virtually constant. It was enunciated in 1952 by Eleanor Roosevelt, then the
U. S. representative to the UN General Assembly, who stated:
Does self-determination mean the right of secession ? Does self-determination constitute a right of fragmentation or a justification for the fragmentation of

nations? Does self-determination mean the right of people to sever association with another power regardless of the economic effect upon both parties, regardless of what the effect on their internal stability and their external security, regardless of the effect upon their neighbors or the international community? Obviously not.
An interesting twist to this question was provided in 1972 by an International
Commission of Jurists studying events in East Pakistan. Their report referred to the
"widely held view" that self-determination is a right that can be exercised only once.
Thus, if a people or their representatives have once chosen to join with others within either a unitary or a federal state, that choice is a final exercise of their right to self-determination; they cannot afterwards claim the right to secede under the principle of the right to self-determination.
This effort to address the issues of colonialism and secession in the same context leads to difficulties. We can assume, according to the jurists, that colonies have not chosen to join the arrangement from which they desire to secede, which gives them the right to be free of their colonial yoke. Areas and peoples within noncolonial states are presumably within an arrangement to which they consented and, therefore, have no right to secede. A practical difficulty with this approach is that of determining conclusively whether in fact consent was given freely or at all.
NEGOTIATION PROCEDURES
The act or goal of secession may at times be the most equitable and just solution to a tension-producing conflict. It is, however, a goal to be sought peacefully, through negotiation, with the assistance of any international moral and political pressures that may be available.
One tool for pursuing this goal and marshaling this pressure is the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.
Strengthened by a flock of elaborations agreed upon in a series of additional statements and concluding documents beginning with those adopted in Madrid in
1983, that agreement establishes a norm of responsible international and national behavior. The rules it codifies establish a pattern that is practical and consistent with both the idealistic attainment of human dignity and the pragmatic requirement of stability as an essential prerequisite for peace.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Warsaw Pact, the disintegration of the Communist party throughout Eastern Europe, and the breakup of the Soviet
Union, euphoria gripped Europe. The democratization process created by the CSCE, with its emphasis on human rights and human dignity as indispensable ingredients by which to judge the responsibility of behavior by states, was credited with establishing the foundation for and impetus toward a new, free, and united Europe. This euphoria, accompanied by self-congratulations, permeated international meetings in 1990 and
1991. There were hearings in the U. S. Congress as to whether the Helsinki principles might not be applicable in the Middle East and in other trouble spots. A group of
African leaders asked to learn more about whether the process could work on their

continent. Similar explorations took place in Latin America. The People's Republic of
China sent its diplomats to consult and report. Japan wanted to join.
Yet, by 1992, within a few short months, the euphoria had turned to a feeling of impotence among European diplomats. Europe tried and failed to prevent violence in a Yugoslavia that had begun to break apart. Long-simmering ethnic grievances and even hatred led to wars and killing that now permeate our press headlines. The CSCE, having stretched from its initial 35 members to 53 with the creation of new nations in
Europe and on the territory of the old Soviet Union, has called meetings, established mechanisms for conflict resolution, and tried to stop the rapid deterioration of its aspirations, but so far without success.
There are no simple reasons for that failure to date. The CSCE's digestive system was obviously overloaded with its willingness to rapidly absorb into its midst a large number of new states, many of which had no deep commitment, understanding, or training in the political culture of human dignity. Furthermore, the new size of the organization led to a demand for institutionalization and a permanent civil service, with all the rigidities and limitations associated with that development.
A case can be made that the rhetoric of "self-determination," rife in the deliberations and talk within the CSCE, significantly contributed to ambiguity about the organization's goals and its resultant impotence. Didn't Croatia have a right to secede and be free and independent? Didn't Serbians within Croatia have a right to rule themselves and even secede? What about Kosovo and Moldova? And how about
Siberians in Russia? Appealing slogans too often replaced clarity of thought.
The Helsinki process and its documents do not refer at all to a right of secession as a principle of international law. They champion the principle of self-determination of peoples and then elaborately set forth specific and general standards for state behavior in areas of religion, education, political democracy, commerce, language, human contacts, science, and culture. One may reasonably conclude that these very specific standards define the rights that people may determine to exercise for themselves. The inviolability of existing boundaries is an integral part of this process, not because the boundaries are necessarily sound or just, but because respect for them is necessary for peace and stability. The assumption is that if those boundaries are unjust, they can only be changed by mutual agreement through negotiation, public opinion, moral argument, practical appeal, and political pressure.
SOLUTION NEEDED URGENTLY
The twenty-first century is at hand. Those of us who have lived our lives in the twentieth have witnessed and absorbed more changes than any other group of human beings in the history of our universe. I can think of scores of "things" that we today enjoy and take for granted that were unknown to our grandparents, from instant coffee, the microwave oven, air conditioning, and frozen foods to miracle medicines, nuclear energy, transoceanic air transportation, and the pill. During the lifetime of most of us, medical knowledge available to physicians has increased perhaps more than tenfold. More than 80 percent of all scientists who ever lived, it is said, are alive today. The average life span keeps steadily increasing. Advanced computers, new materials, new biotechnological processes are altering every phase of our lives,

deaths, even reproduction. We are living in a period of information power. Combining all these developments produces near miracles. And it is only the beginning. As an indication of that, more than 100,000 scientific journals annually publish the flood of new knowledge that pours out of the world's laboratories.
These developments are stretching our minds and our grasp of reality to the outermost dimensions of our capacity to understand them. Moreover, as we look ahead, we must agree that we have only the minutest glimpse of what our universe really is. We barely understand the human brain and its energy, and the endless horizons of space and the mysteries found in the great depths of our seas are still virtually unknown to us. Our science is indeed a drop; our ignorance remains an ocean.
We are brought up to believe that necessity is the mother of invention. The corollary is also true: invention is the mother of necessity. Technology and communication are necessitating basic changes in our lives. Information has become more accessible in all parts of our globe, putting totalitarian governments at a serious disadvantage. The world is very much smaller. There is no escaping the fact that the sound of a whisper or a whimper in one part of the world can immediately be heard in all parts of the world--and consequences follow.
The international mood does not reflect the optimism that should accompany the awesome, potentially positive, developments in science, technology, and communication. Serious challenges look to be insuperable. Ethnic strife and xenophobia are dividing people, villages, and neighborhoods. The human race is once again demonstrating its capacity for savage cruelty. The question may well be asked:
Are we entering an age of democracy or an age of disorder?
The facts are, however, that the promises and realities of modern technology for better living cannot be hidden and their availability cannot long be denied. The communication age has opened up the world for all to see. The less fortunate are now aware that they can live in societies, including their own, that respect their dignity as human beings. They want that dignity and better living for themselves and their children--and they do not wish to wait.
Keeping up with scientific and technological opportunities requires openness to information, new ideas, and the freedom that enables ingenuity to germinate and flourish. A closed, tightly controlled society cannot compete in a world experiencing an information explosion that knows no national boundaries. Peoples now trapped in the quagmire of ancient ethnic and national grievances and enmities will soon come to recognize that they are thereby dooming themselves, their children, and their grandchildren to becoming orphans of history, lost in the caves of the past. There is no room for ethnic, national, religious, racial, and tribal pride, but if that drive for self-identification is to produce respect and self-realization for the individual and the group, it must be peaceful and in harmony with the aspirations of others in our evolving interrelated world community.
As national boundaries are buffeted by change, the nations of the world become ever more interdependent. We are clearly in a time when no society can isolate itself or its people from new ideas and new information anymore than one can escape the winds

whose currents affect us all. National boundaries can keep out vaccines, but those boundaries cannot keep out germs, or thoughts, or broadcasts.
This suggests, among many other implications, the need to reappraise our traditional definitions of sovereignty. The requirements of our evolving technology are increasingly turning national boundaries into patterns of lace through which flow ideas, money, people, crime, terrorism, and nuclear missiles--none of which know national boundaries.
All of this requires a modernization of political principles and arrangements to catch up with the globalization of science, communications, and economics. A retreat into the traditional restraints of national sovereignty can no longer serve our interests or even work. In this context, the identification of ethnic pride or national selfaggrandizement with sovereign independence becomes self-defeating and counterproductive. Certainly, the price of war and violence associated with secessionist movements seeking sovereignty is too high for the participants reasonably to pay and for the international community to tolerate.
A lack of clarity with respect to self-determination, associated with demagogic appeals, has polluted the debate. I respectfully suggest that this regrettable intellectual failure has today contributed to the chaotic political violence and anarchy we now see tearing apart Eastern Europe and much of the former Soviet Union. There is still time for the intellectual community to provide guidance on this question to our political leaders, who are desperate for clear and unambiguous guidelines based on both principle and pragmatism.
~~~~~~~~
By MAX M. KAMPELMAN
Mr. Kampelman was counselor of the Department of State. From " Secession and the
Right of Self-Determination: An Urgent Need to Harmonize Principle with
Pragmatism" by Max M. Kampelman, The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1993, pages 5-12.
Copyright of Current is the property of Heldref Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Source: Current, Nov93 Issue 357, p35, 5p.
Item Number: 9311087685
52 of 70
Result
[Go
To
Full
Text]
[Tips]