Secession and International Relations

If you’re not a pointy-headed intellectual, you might want to skip this post.

The international intellectual community is struggling to fit the secession of Kosova into the framework of international relations theory – and struggle is the correct word. One example is this article by Sumantra Bose on the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) site out of Zürich, Switzerland.

In “Kosovo to Kashmir: Self-determination Dilemma”, the author compares the role of the United States and other great powers in dealing with the attempted secession of Kashmir from India and Pakistan, and that of Kosovo from Serbia. Why did the powers help move Kosovo out, while insisting on leaving Kashmir in?

The author's arguments are inconsistent. On the one hand, Prof. Bose states that Kashmir is a polyglot mix between pro-Pakistani, pro-Indian, and pro-independence factions, justifying American insistence on working out a compromise between India and Pakistan. On the other hand, we read that Kosovo’s independence is justified by a 90% Albanian majority, despite the fact that the country is dotted with heavily-Serbian enclaves. The conflict between Israel and Palestine “can indeed be ended only by an equitable two-state solution,” but Kurdistan’s independence would be “regionally destabilizing.”

Prof. Bose ends with wishful thinking:

“the vast majority of confrontations between states and self-determination movements in the contemporary world can be assuaged without creating new states. Kashmir, again, is a prime example: there, territorial autonomy combined with internal power-sharing and cross-border institutions linking Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir constitutes a necessary and sufficient solution. If only such compromises were to come to pass, the world would be a much more democratic and much more peaceful place.”

A question comes to mind: how will cross-border institutions with two nations that maintain nuclear arsenals to defend themselves from the other contribute to peace? More likely, they would contribute to the growth of terrorist movements operating in both directions.

In other words, Prof. Bose wants to maintain the status quo of relatively large nation-states on the grounds that the world would be a “much more democratic and much more peaceful place.”
However, the reverse is true. While organizations such as the European Communities may prove helpful in securing the peace and building economic cooperation, the European Community is not a nation-state, much as European idealists would like for it to become one.

“Peace and democracy” will only come from nations small enough to be accountable to their people, and which respect and promote the culture (note singular) of their people. This is true self-determination. The necessary means for achieving it will usually be secession.