Sorry, my ISP has been acting up, I tried to respond earlier:
I may dig up a little dissertation on this problem I posted on Sanity long ago. The thrust is that "self- determination" should not be a trump card, not that it is an unreasonable consideration, and that it is obviously something which will never be followed to the reductio, so why pretend that it is paramount? Also, I specifically said that I had a problem with the way it de facto enshrined the principal of ethnicity (interpreted in a quasi- racial sense) as the basis of nationality, thus tending to rigidify attitudes against the national minorities scattered throughout the emerging states, and to created irrendentist groups (like the Sudeten Germans). There was no way that the principle of
self- determination was going to be applied consistently enough, because of the ways in which minorities where admixed, or the damage that could be done to an emerging state by denying it an important economic region or security zone.....You ask if I think that the
Austrian Empire should have been retained. Actually, I do, with some revision. By completely ignoring the principles of legitimacy and territorial integrity, we did no one a favor. That was truly a situation where devolution would have been preferable to revolution. Why not the Soviet Union? Because as a practical matter, it was unsustainable; what legitimacy there had been went out the window with the demise of the old Communist Party; and because it was fairly agreeable to eveyone concerned, and accomplished through negotiation of the parties, not as victor's spoils....I specifically said
that the granting of Irish autonomy was separate from what I was complaining about, by the way. Again, though, a big mess was created by application of the principle. Northern Ireland should have been integrated into the Irish Republic on the principle of territorial integrity, and the headache should have been Ireland's. It is possible that with a fait accompli, the militant Orangmen would have emigrated or acquiesced, and, in any event, the British
have gotten kicked for trying to please everyone..... |
