The United States and Foreign Self-determination
The problems with self-determinists and the effects of the US support for them.
For hundreds of years, ethnic minorities have been using self-determination movements to fragment or secede from their homelands and claim independent statehood. While some instances of secession have proven beneficial to the seceding state, the majority of recent and current self-determination movements have severely damaged the likelihood of democratic development in non-democratic nations. The US government should not support the demands of ethnic minorities abroad for self-determination and statehood because fragmentation rarely enhances democratic development, it strains economic success, and it promotes unhealthy cultural homogenization.
The recent assumption has been that breaking large states into smaller individual states will assist in creating more responsive, democratic governments; this assumption is flawed. The trend in fragmentation resulting from self-determination movements has been for large, undemocratic empires to break into smaller, tyrannical, local governments. This trend is evident in the undemocratic regimes that have taken over in many of the former Soviet states. Another example of failure to create responsive governments and peace through fragmentation is the creation of separate black territories in South Africa. These separate territories created little positive development and caused much human suffering. The goal of self-determinist minded sects should be to have a voice and fair representation in their national governments. Rather than separating from the larger community, measures should be taken to ensure government responsiveness to all people in its territories.
Self-determination movements are started largely as a result of an ethnic minority or subgroup, many times in a basically democratic state, feeling as though they are under-represented or isolated from the larger national community as a whole. In the United States during the 1960s, African Americans realized that the creation of a separate black state within the US would not suit their needs; rather they needed better representation and more responsiveness in their national government. Rarely do fragmented states have the ability to provide for their needs like a larger state could. Because fragmentation is detrimental to the development of responsive, democratic governments, the United States should refrain from supporting self-determination movements for independent statehood abroad from ethnic minorities.
The economic consequences of fragmentation provide reason against secession. Fragmenting nations will likely become severely disadvantaged economically after splitting into smaller states. In a perfect world, it would stand to reason that with free trade, national borders would not create economic problems; yet, in the existing, imperfect world, national borders do have economic implications. CitizensÂ’ tendency to buy domestic products is a small, insignificant example while the creation of industrial policies that are intended to give a competitive advantage to domestic producers is a more pertinent example. The implications of fragmentation extend past the economy and into environmental issues as well. Fragmented states are not capable of dealing with large, border-crossing environmental issues. Deep-rooted countries also face environmental issues which can only be dealt with by creating international organizations; an increase in the number of fragmented states makes creating international communities much more difficult.
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