Kosovo’s recent unilateral declaration of independence and the quick U. S. recognition of Kosovo as an independent country has made me start thinking about national identity, sovereignty, and national interest.
The U. S. implicitly has a long established policy on the subjects of secession and sovereignty. Article IV, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution says:
Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
Eighty years after that was written we fought a lengthy, bloody civil war in part over the question of whether, once it had joined the United States, a state maintained the right to secede from the country solely on its own discretion. That issue was resolved decisively in the negative.
Is the Declaration of Independence, the meta-law of the land, in contradiction of this? I don’t think so. The Declaration opens:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
which is followed by a statement of principle asserting the idea of natural rights, a substantial bill of indictment against the Crown, a denunciation, and conclusion. There’s no recognition in that of a generalized right of secession only explication of the pragmatic necessity of secession once all other avenues for the redress of grievance had been exhausted.
At the very least I think we can conclude that U. S. policy holds a predisposition against secession.
Turning the question completely around, let’s assume that there is a generalized right of secession in which secession is a fundamental right in any venue if you can cobble together a majority in that venue. That certainly appears to me as a formula for chaos and disorder. What’s the limit on national sovereignty? The county? The city? The city block? The household? Do I have the right to declare a Benign Republic of Schuler and demand a seat in the United Nations?
That’s obviously unworkable but I think it’s also damaging. More than 350 years ago after more than a generation of war without limits or boundaries, Europe decided to end that situation through a system of nation-states. These nation-states were not all the same size. Some were large, multi-ethnic territories, some were single cities and their adjoining territory. But they theoretically shared several characteristics: the right of sovereignty within their borders, the responsibility of preserving order within those borders, and indivisibility without their assent.
It laid the foundation for the Enlightenment and the modern day.
This is more than just airy temporizing—it’s a matter of significant concern. From Anatolia to the Hindu Kush there’s a swath of territory in which nation-states are less important than tribes, sects, and ethnicities. The putative nation-states in the region assert the rights of nation-states without upholding the responsibilities of nation-states which they may be unwilling or unable to enforce. It is a breeding ground for international terrorism and a prospective return to the pre-Westphalian world of war without boundaries or limits. There are similar areas in Africa and South America—nominally parts of nation-states, practically ungoverned territory.
Why has the United States recognized Kosovo? As suggested above, it’s against U. S. principle and I see no national interest in our doing so. Kosovo is tiny, the size of three U. S. counties, smaller than all but two of our states. It is landlocked and without notable resources or national identity. Russia and Serbia see the move as a landgrab by a handful of ethnic Albanians, conducted under the aegis of NATO’s protection, seizing Yugoslav property that doesn’t belong to them. The move was taken without “decent respect for the opinion of mankind”, without exhausting other alternatives and in the midst of discussions with the Serbs on the position
Russia, China, Spain, Cyprus, and the other countries who oppose the recognition of Kosovo all have their own dissident, separatist minorities. Nations that have supported recognition are coming to the realization that their act may come back to haunt them:
QUEBEC CITY — Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence is a clear example of how powerless the federal government would be to stop Quebec from doing the same, according to influential Quebec City lawyer André Joli-Coeur.
Mr. Joli-Coeur, who 10 years ago made the same argument before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec secession reference, said that should Ottawa recognize the declaration of independence of Kosovo, it will have difficulty refusing Quebec the same status should the province eventually declare its independence.
“The case of Kosovo clearly demonstrates that the essential factors in the creation of a state are the will of the population of the territory concerned and the attitude of the international community,” Mr. Joli-Coeur stated in a letter to The Globe and Mail. “The predecessor state does not necessarily play a decisive role in such matters.”
Recognizing Kosovo independence could one day backfire against Ottawa, he argued.
“Canada will be reminded of its probable support for the declaration of independence of Kosovo when the matter of Quebec’s sovereignty arises in the future,” he stated.
Five hundred years is a long time for a grievance to fester, but it does. Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, says he has “no territorial ambitions for any part of England”, but his MSPs do. One of them, Christine Grahame, has tabled a parliamentary motion calling for Berwick to “return to the fold”.
The SNP MP, Pete Wishart, tabled a motion in Westminster calling for “negotiations to begin between the Scottish and English governments” to decide Berwick’s fate.
Are they serious? Well, having spoken to nationalists about this, I am not entirely sure. Some of them regard it all as a bit of a joke – a silly season story. Perhaps a good way of getting publicity for the nationalist government, since the UK media generally shows more interest in quirky stories like Free Berwick than in serious stuff like the Scottish budget.
Others seem genuinely to believe that Berwick – whose football team plays in the Scottish league – should have the right to secede and become part of Scotland if its people wish it. The Liberal Democrat MP for the area, Alan Beith, says it is all about Berwick people wanting free elderly care and free tuition fees, and nothing to do with nationality. And he’s probably right. But as we know from other parts of the world, extinct communal grievances have a nasty habit of becoming active again.
Closer to home, a few Indian activists recently declared their independence from the United States:
The Lakota Sioux Indians, whose ancestors include Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence. A delegation delivered the news to the State Department earlier this week.
Portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming comprise Lakota country, and the tribe says that if the federal government doesn’t begin diplomatic discussions promptly, liens will be filed on property in the five-state region. Here’s the news release.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” said Russell Means, a longtime Indian rights activist. “This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically Article 6 of the Constitution,” which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
“It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent,” he added during a press conference yesterday in Washington.
On what basis would we reject their claim?
On the grounds that they’d have to fight it for us and win, just as it has always been. Kosovo’s ability to secede is because NATO is willing to fight to allow Kosovo to be independent, as far as I can tell as punishment for the Serbs being warmongering nationalist jerks in the 1990s, not because of any given legal status. In international affairs, thinking in Hobbesian terms is still a pretty good approximation of how things really work.
Presumably, “fight us for it”. That presupposes that we’d fight.
I don’t think that NATO’s position is quite that strong. Are NATO forces “willing to fight to allow Kosovo to be independent” or are the just willing to fight to prevent the Serbs from stopping them? Subtly different.
We fought Serbia over Kosovo already. They have to assume we’d do it again, particularly since we have troops already stationed there at this point, and a more belligerent president. We don’t necessarily have to fight; we merely have to convince the Serbs that we would fight.