Start with that before gossiping about how other countries should be run.

Sione Vatu

I’m anglo-american, my wife is from the catalan minority in Spain. Either regional “commonwealths”, such as the European Union (or a world commonwealth) is needed so that the internal tensions created by imposed and/or otherwise artificial “nationalist” identities are reduced as much as possible. In the case of Spain, there is still a lot of hate/prejudice amongst groups, but it seems to be lessening as people develop a “european” cultural identity that transcends their ethnic and nationalist identities.

historical background:

http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Vernacular.html

Will splitting up a country reduce the hate with in the groups? In the contrary I think it will increase the hate. So if US wants to apply the divide and rule policy that the english used in the 18th century in their colonies, the region will have lots of fights with each other. If US tries to mediate, it will give rise to terrorism in the US. So, I guess a unified country is good for everyone.

“However, nobody mentions the successful splits throughout history: Czech and Slovak from each other, the U.S. from Britain, the former Soviet republics and satellites from each other, Canada and Australia from Britain. ”

Well, I’d say Britain and these former colonies aren’t very good comparisons as they were never single countries which needed to be split. And the resulting separands don’t share borders that get disputed.

The Czech / Slovak split was succesful, and maybe some of the soviet republics also. However, in these cases, the split was voluntary and supported by both sides. (And where the split isn’t mutually supported, as in Yugoslavia and Chechnia, things are much uglier)

But the india / pakistan analogy is most compelling because it’s an example of a country being split into it’s constituent factions “for it’s own good” by an external power. In fact it’s a plausible hypothesis that however much factions in countries or neighbours fight among themselves, in the long term they hate even more to have political solutions imposed from outside. Pretty much all the endemic trouble-spots and “failed states” in the world are places where colonial powers drew the map orthogonally to locally sorted out (in however bloody a manner) solutions.

I cannot help but think Philip is trolling here. In his own words, he seems to establish quite the opposite argument:

(From ‘Travels with Samantha’)

I tried to defuse the argument by reminding folks that I hadn’t passed judgment on anyone but only said that I didn’t think German attitudes had changed much.

“The main lesson I would expect Germans to draw from World War II is that attacking the U.S. and Russia simultaneously is a bad idea. Why would attitudes about racism have changed? Attitudes that are deep-seated in a culture aren’t going to change easily. One doesn’t learn about people by killing them; one learns by living with them. Americans who have day-to-day contact with different cultures tend to re-evaluate their stereotypes. Unfortunately, since there are essentially no Jews left in Germany, that option isn’t available to Germans.”

Michael violently disagreed with this.

“There aren’t any young people who are anti-Semitic in Germany anymore. Germany today is full of Jews. In my life, I’ve actually met five.”

Actually there’s another great historical example of this. British India was partitioned into (majority Hindu) India and (majority Muslim) Pakistan. Now that there are two separate countries, everyone gets along much better….

Alas, not only is that not the case, but the Partition era itself was an extraordinarily damaging period of uprooting, mass migration, and sectarian violence.

-Motts

There’s bad historical pecedent from the India / Pakistan split. A lot of people kill each other during the separation. There are more borders and therefore more border disputes. And as Patrick pointed out, there’s a problem of fair distribution of the country’s natural resources which is likely to exacerbate the hatred between the groups.

Also, if you physically separate the factions into different nations, you probably *reduce* their opportunities to meet, socialize, and work together on collaborative projects. I suspect the long term success of reducing the rivalries and resentments is based on building larger, collaborative structures. Take the example of the European Union, which is likely to have eliminated the possibility of war between France, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy etc. for the conceivable future.

I’ve been thinking the same thing. It would be great if the US could jettison some of the stupider states, like Texas, Mississippi, and Massachusetts. It would be great to have a president without a hillbilly accent for a change.

By the same token, should the United States have been broken up during the Civil War ? Or for that matter the “blue” and “red” states today that clearly do not see eye to eye ?

The whole region was screwed-up by the Brits, etc. after WW1 when they created the various countries in the Mid East.

The area should have been broken up by tribes.
A country called Kurdistan should have been created from the Kurdish parts of Turkey and what became the Kurdish part of Iraq.

Same goes for Saudia Arabia and any other area made up of multiple tribes.

The League of Nations should have set up the two countries of Isreal and Palistine after WW1.
Then Zionists would not have taken over Palistine in 1948. Which caused, and still causes so much trouble in the region.

Unfortunatly this was not done and it’s too late to do it now.