A question.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Is it always a good thing for a hegemonic power to break down? When the USSR broke up a lot of people were expecting good things to come from it. Instead Russia's more or less returned to dictatorship, most of the smaller former SSRs are dictatorships and/or mired in ethnic conflict, and there's the issue of what happens with the Russians the Soviet government had the desire to colonize non-Russian lands with it. Yet the USSR and its Romanov predecessor were hardly the most benevolent governments that have ever existed. Then there's Habsburg Austria and Austria-Hungary, which did a damn sight better ruling even the Austrians than its successor states have done. There's also the Ottoman Empire, which provided about 6 centuries of peace in the Middle East prior to its dismemberment. The USA, Canada, and Mexico establishing three imperial states has pretty much stifled feuding here on the Continent.

Yet what I don't understand is that some people at least appear to be enthusiastic about national self-determination, which is the root of the ills of places like Yugoslavia and the root of things like the Azeri Genocide and the Rwandan Genocide. So....which is better? A functional but somewhat-repressive multiethnic state or a nation-state democracy that gets that way after it ruthlessly exterminates all minorities it can and expels the ones it can't?

Comments

[robert-johnson.livejournal.com]

"Is it always a good thing for a hegemonic power to break down?"

It's neither. It's just inevitable. And probably nessecery. Nothing lasts forever, either the works of God or the works of our hands. Our political organizations either break down, or change so much that even when they keep the brand, the actual organization bears little or no resemblance to what it was when it was named. You postpone it, deflect the worst of it, but it can't be stopped.

And a discussion like this....first you need to define good. You ask what is good, then what is better, you need to define those terms.

Let's throw in Republic of Greece and the Republic of Turkey. The Greeks and the Turks kept going to war until the population exchanges of 1922. Then after that, there has been tension, but no more wars unless you count Cyprus, which was an aberration,resulting from a civil war from both sides and the result of mixed populations.

In forcing out the other ethnicites that refused to be "Turks" in 1922, Ataturk saved himself a whole lot of trouble. Where is Turkey's number one internal problem today? The Kurds. Telling.

The Greeks did the same. At their 19th Century independence the reformed their language, and forced it on all of their little ethnicites. Within a generation, most people in Greece spoke demotic Greek, regardless of what their family had spoken before. Had they not, then the Aromanians in Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia (proper not FYROM) might have tried some crap and gone all ETA in the 1940's or later.

Just fromt hese two examples, if you either repress the people to keep them from fighting, or you kick out anyone who is part of a group that can't be assimilated, you can maintain order and prevent bloodshed. But is that good? Or better than what?

In theory if you can keep these different factions from killing each other, in enough time they learn to interact, and with enough successful interactions, they will grow together. I think that won't work quickly unless they are actually speaking the same language. The Czechs and Slovaks and Slovenians, were pressed together and learned not to fight each other, but they still split up as soon as they could. And it took about 1500 years for the Europeans to give it a shot voluntarily.

So maybe it's better to keep the groups small enough so they can self determine. This would work in a largely decentralized EU Europe of the regions. But where else? I don't know, No one else has that kind of model right now.