The richer parts always want out

MEMO FROM ...: "Seams of Belgium's Quilt Threaten to Burst," by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 14 May 2008, p. A11.

As mulitnational unions grow in number and size (these United States being history's first great package), they encourage further "splittism," to use the Chinese term.

I mean, if we're all in the EU already, what's the big deal if Flanders wants to divorce itself from Brussels and Wallonia?

Globalization encourages two opposing trends at the same time: multi-unionism and nation-state fracturing. So it integrates and disintegrates at the same time.

Take that concept, F. Scott Fitzgerald!

Comments

[stuart abrams]

Brilliant post. I would not be surprised if we see an independent Scotland in the next decade. But this is the problem with Tom's idea for new states. Except for the original 13, the US has added territory (and therefore states) either by conquest or purchase, not through voluntary union. I don't think our constitution is flexible enough to handle it. Sure you could grant statehood to territories that are already part of the US, like Puerto Rico and DC, but that's a lot different from adding states by entering into unions with places that are not currently part of the US, like Cuba, Western Canada, or Northern Mexico. If you are going to add states through voluntary union, then you need to have a system that is flexible enough to allow them to break up if they want to, or secede from the union without causing a civil war (Norway and the EU). So I still think that adding new states will either require some serious adjustments in our constitution, or else a different kind of union. My preference would be to work on the expansion of NAFTA, so you get to something more like the EU - economically centered, highly flexible politically. Imagine a system in which California or Texas could decide that it wants to become a separate country, and it could happen without setting off Civil War II.

[Nathan Machula]

Stuart,Texas was an independent republic for almost a decade before it was annexed by the US, which its residents voted for.

[stuart abrams]

Nathan - I am aware of the history of the Texas Republic, but that was essentially a sham. Slaveholders moved into Texas from the American South with the goal of making it part of the US, and waged a war that successfully separated Texas from Mexico. Mexico agreed to independence on the condition that Texas not join the US, but the more important impediment was the fact that anti-slavery forces in the US Congress were not prepared to accept the addition of a new slave state. The Texas Republic was always a stopgap until you got a pro-slavery President (Polk) who was willing to go along with annexation and take on both the Mexicans and the anti-slavery forces in the US. Interestingly, there was some debate in the US at the time as to whether the Constitution authorized the addition of new territory by annexation as opposed to purchase. When you refer to voting, anyone who had supported Mexico during the Texas war of independence was disqualified from Texas citizenship, so the residents who voted in favor of annexation were basically the slaveholders who had moved into Texas from the US in the first place. Essentially, it was a two-step expansion of American territory by conquest, and not in any way analogous to what Barnett has been talking about (Cuba or Northern Mexico becoming new states).