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Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (1194)	11/2/1999 5:47:00 PM
From: Raymond Clutts	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

And don't forget the Confederacy. Not all forms of self determination are valid.

To: Neocon who wrote (1194)	11/2/1999 5:56:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3246

Now, wait a minute, Neocon. Slovakia and the Czech Republic had a civilized divorce; they agreed to split, not to secede, from one another. The Baltic states did not "secede," because there quite literally was no longer anything to secede from. Besides, the West never recognized the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union, anyway, so the use of the term "secession" would be inappropriate, in any event. The Soviet Union dissolved, by mutual agreement, along the lines of its constituent republics. The dissolution of Yugoslavia was not by mutual consent, and hence the process was much bloodier. In the case of both Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, the real problem has come when smaller units (former "autonomous" republics) try to secede from the countries (former "union" republics) that have emerged from the collapse of the unified state. In the Soviet Union, full "union" republics had the constitutionally guaranteed right to secede (although they were certainly not expected to exercise it), whereas "autonomous" republics did not. (I think the same thing may have been true of Yugoslavia, whose state structure was modelled after the Soviet Union's, but I am not sure.) And even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "minor" nationalities (and their supporters, like Andrei Sakharov) argued that this was unfair: if the Georgians, say, had the right to secede from the Soviet Union, then why didn't the far more numerous Tatars have the right to secede from Russia? & etc. It was a legitimate question. And in my opinion, it still is. The fact is that the former Soviet Union broke apart, more or less, along ethnic lines, and hence has served to reinforce the latter. In some of the new countries, especially Russia, members of the "titular" nationality tend to regard the whole territory of the country as "theirs," regardless of who lives on it. Here is a little jewel I picked up from a Russian internet discussion board, which illustrates that attitude: Chechnya -- or, rather, the territory that is called Chechnya -- will of course remain in the Russian Federation But what shall we do with the Chechens? What do we need them for? They have never produced anything but trouble. So why don't we just get rid of these rotten people, and kick them out? The problem with the principle "territorial integrity" (or "sovereignty") and with its companion principle of "non-interference" iin the "internal affairs" of other sovereign nations is that they permit the "sovereign nations" to wreak all kinds of horrors on their ethnic and/or religious minorities, with impunity. Are we to conclude that Hitler would have/should have gotten away with murdering Jews, if he had restricted himself to German Jews? Joan