[118404] in Cypherpunks
Geodesic Nationality
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Sep 26 18:40:43 1999
Mime-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <v04210140b413e39a99de@[204.167.100.139]>
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 10:52:22 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
--- begin forwarded text
From: believer@telepath.com
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 08:28:43 -0500
To: ignition-point@precision-d.com
Subject: IP: Annan: Crossing the mini-state frontier
Sender: owner-ignition-point@precision-d.com
Reply-To: believer@telepath.com
Status: U
Source: Washington Times
http://www.WashTimes.com/opinion/op1.html
Crossing the mini-state frontier
By Arnold Beichman
As the 20th century might be called the Century of
Totalitarianism with a barbed wire fence as its symbol so
the 21st century will probably be known as the Century of the
Mini-State, its emblem a mass grave-pit surrounded by
onlookers in breathing masks.
. . . . For Kosovo and East Timor are only the initial battles of
subnational secessionist movements which, because they give a
damn, will involve the United States and other Western
democracies in singular or U.N. occupation exercises,
international peace-keeping and relief programs if not actual
warfare.
. . . . U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has ensured the rise
of the mini-state with his revolutionary declaration Sept. 20
before the U.N. General Assembly that national borders are no
longer inviolate when humanitarian concerns arise. As a
headline in the British Independent summarized this position --
"Annan: U.N. intervention 'everywhere or nowhere.' " The
Annan challenge to national sovereignty could mean an end to
the international system as we have known it for two centuries.
. . . . Mini-states are blossoming everywhere as never before.
There were 51 signatories to the United Nations Charter in
1945. Today there are almost 190 U.N. members and that
doesn't include countries like Taiwan that are not U.N.
members at all. And more nations, some as breakaways from
existing states, are being born, regardless of area, economy or
size of population.
. . . . What the coming century will witness to a greater degree
than ever before is a challenge to national sovereignty
occasioned by the rise and expansion of powerful
subnationalisms. It is a different kind of patriotism. Its
adherents will in some cases be prepared to forgo diplomatic
negotiations in favor of violence, terrorism, abductions,
assassinations, blackmail. Not only is subnationalism rife -- the
Czechoslovakia split, most recently and the separation of
Eritrea from Ethiopia -- but we have a post-U.S.S.R.
subnationalism phenomenon -- as witness the battles between
Georgia and a rebellious Abkhazia. Within the Russian
Republic itself, we have claimants for sovereignty from
Chechnya, Dagestan, Tatariya and Vologda and if you haven't
heard of some of these names, you will when they come
knocking on the door of the U.N. Security Council. And recall
the war by a failed secessionist Biafra against Nigeria, which
took a million lives by 1970 or the ongoing 12-year war in Sri
Lanka between the Tamils, onetime migrants from India, and
the ruling Singhalese. India itself has its own secessionist
problems: the question of Kashmir and the Sikh demand of
India for an independent Khalistan. Indira Gandhi was
assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, her son was assassinated by
Tamil nationalists.
. . . . Soon we'll be hearing the names of subnational groupings
never heard before -- Assyria, Bashkortostan, Bougainville,
Buryatia, Cabinda, Eastern Turkestan, Karenni, Kumyk, Mon,
Nagaland, Ogoni, Scania, West Papua, Zanzibar. These are
some of the 35 members of the "Unrepresented Nations and
Peoples Organizations" (UNPO), headquartered in the
Netherlands. Spokesmen for UNPO members say the people
they represent want out from a new kind of colonial masters, a
new kind in the sense that the colonial masters are not
European but rather local governments, once colonies of
Western powers.
. . . . Indonesia is the latest example of a challenge to its
sovereignty, a challenge that could mean, after existing for
half-a-century, the dissolution of the island archipelago as we
know it. East Timor, its population largely Roman Catholic,
was grabbed up by Indonesia when Portugal gave up that
colony and it has been hell for the Timorese ever since. And
over in a Sumatra enclave called Acheh, a bloody rebellion
against the central government has been under way for three
decades with thousands of Achenese killed, tortured or exiled.
Even in the Moluccas, there is an irredentist movement.
. . . . What kind of policy are the Western democracies to
adopt in the face of these rebellions? Ignore national
sovereignty even though colonial governments in their scramble
out of Africa created artificial states, like Nigeria, the Congo
and Indonesia, states with subnations which will not or cannot
live together as in Rwanda and Burundi? Should the U.N.
Security Council, in the name of humanitarianism, support
rebellious peoples of a future mini-state against the wishes of
the central government? Has every subnationalism a right to a
state regardless say of economic viability? Does Tibet? Should
distinctions be made between secessionist movements in
democratic countries -- Quebecois in Canada, Basques in
Spain or Corsicans in France -- and secessionist movements in
undemocratic countries like China, Burma or Sudan?
. . . . Take a specific case we have heard little about. Some
Okinawans want for various reasons to become independent of
Japan. That's not our problem but supposing a violent rebellion
ensues and we see in Okinawa the likes of an East Timor
humanitarian tragedy developing -- what then? If the United
Nations and NATO moved into the Kosovo crisis ignoring
sovereignty claims by Belgrade and as it is now moving into
East Timor, are these operations then precedents for future
international action? We watched the war of Moscow against
Chechen rebels as we watch now the war of Moscow against
Dagestani rebels. Does U.N. action in East Timor or NATO
action in Kosovo legitimate active concern over bloodshed in
the Northern Caucasus while Moscow apartment blocks go up
in terrorist flames? Is Osama bin Laden a legitimate participant
in the recasting of Russian boundaries?
. . . . And whatever scenarios we can create, there is one crisis
that is not a scenario -- the future of Taiwan. Even without a
plebiscite Taiwan is quite clearly a legitimate nation-state,
regardless of Communist China's claims of sovereignty over
Taiwan. Are we faced with a crisis for which there is no
solution?
. . . . Redefinitions of sovereignty, legitimacy, nationalism,
secessionism, civil war are in order. These were redefined
during the "winds of change" era in Africa, where a colonized
continent became a continent of independent states, in most
cases peacefully, in some cases, like Algeria or Kenya,
belligerently. In other words new concepts of international law
are essential before a global anarchy takes over.
. . . . Alan Bullock, the British historian, once described
nationalism as "a mass emotion [which] has been the most
powerful political force in the history of the modern world."
Today, it's not nationalism; it's subnationalism.
Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution Research Fellow,
is a columnist for The Washington Times.
Copyright © 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
**********************************************
To subscribe or unsubscribe, email:
majordomo@precision-d.com
with the message:
(un)subscribe ignition-point email@address
**********************************************
<www.telepath.com/believer>
**********************************************
--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
