The Austro-Hungarian Empire does not count, Neo; but Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, and Croatia DO count. So do Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., etc. Many of these countries indeed have ethnic minorities, but there is no question about what the dominant ethnic group is in any given country, or about the fact that the culture is a reflection of that particular dominant ethnic group. Europe, I still say, is as close to mono-ethnic as you can get in the modern world. (Okay, we'll exclude Belgium & Switzerland.)
I don't think you need to worry about self-determination being a "trump card"; in recent decades, it is the principle of territorial integrity that has been the "trump card." I agree that balance is necessary, and to that end, it's time to bring the principle of self-determination out of exile.
It is interesting that when you talk about the "incipient racialism" allegedly inherent in the idea of self-determination (the concepts of the"Volk," "organic democracy," "blood and soil"), you clearly are thinking of 20th century fascism and proto-fascism, and of Germany, in particular.
That was my point, I thought. The "big guys" can get away with having a nation state based on themselves, the representatives of the dominant ethnic group. And almost invariably they develop some kind of ideological system to justify their domination, and to insist that everyone else defer to them. What about the "little guys" they are dominating over?
Sometimes all the "little guys" want to do is to get out from under, to preserve their identities, even their lives. A victim of "racialist" ideology is not necessarily going to want to devise his own "racialist" ideology to counter it, although it has been known to hhappen.
It's all very well for us "big guys" to advise the "little guys" to "seek limited autonomy" -- but if their big guys don't want to give them that "limited" autonomy, they're screwed. And nobody is going to help them if they are, because the matter is considered the "internal affair" of one of the big guys. In other words, it is happening on the big guy's "turf," where the little guy is allowed to live only on sufferance -- and then only if he "behaves." (And the fact that the "turf" involved was acquired by conquest doesn't seem to make a difference.)
What I say is this: what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander -- or should be.
Joan
|
