Country Right-Sizing

Have you ever thought about whether it was "fair" not to let the South secede? We seceded from Great Britain. Why shouldn't the South have been allowed to secede from the north? I was thinking about this topic in the context of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's relationships to Georgia.

These were semi-autonomous provinces, whose autonomy from the Georgian government was encouraged by Russia, which Georgia tried to pacify and re-conquer/re-occupy. Is that fair? Is it right to force someone to be part of your country?

Here, I explore this issue somewhat. A few notes...

A Country of One
The right size for a country, or a nation, is probably not one person. It's probably not just two people, either. Whether defining a nation-state as a collection of ethnically or culturally similar people who live in a common society with shared infrastructure and societal rules and norms, or as a group who individually participate in a social contract for their mutual defense and benefit, there will likely to be many people in the same society.

Why do we Unite?
Whether to manage the use of a pasture or water-supply, or to protect from invasion, the smallest size that makes sense is at least a whole village or town. As communication and transportation have improved, though, the much larger nations, with millions of people spanning multiple thousands of square miles, have made more and more sense.

But what about uniting cultural or ethnic groups? In the old days, there was much more overlap between cultural or ethnic group and mutual defense or common markets than there is now in Western countries. In other parts of the world, though, such as Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, there are still many who see ethnic or cultural similarity as the primary basis for participation in a common government.

The Case Against Secession Differs
The case against secession differs vastly depending on why you are united in the first place. If you're in a society that unites or conquers for common benefit and mutual defense (much like the 13 original colonies of the United States, or the Roman empire), then a secession that endangers or weakens the whole can be rationally (and perhaps legitimately) resisted. When Benjamin Franklin originally said, "Either we all hang together or we all hang separately" he was quite serious. It was literally untenable for the colonies to secede separately, because they were too small, in comparison to England. Disunity would endanger them.

The case against secession from an ethnic group or a culturally defined body politic, though, is quite different. The argument in that case focuses on two factors:
1) Whether or not people actually represent a distinct group, and
2) Whether being a distinct group entitles a people to self-determinism or autonomy.

The Nation State is a Fairly New Concept
Weird as it may seem, the nation-state is a fairly new concept. Multi-ethnic empires have been around for a very long time. Even the Akkadians and Sumerians were cognizant of the need (real or perceived) to incorporate other cultural groups into their "empires" for strategic (or sometimes just greedy) reasons.

While there were culturally defined groups which also functioned as political entities, these tended toward the city-state size until the 19th Century, when they had really outgrown the feudal model of control. It wasn't even until the late 19th Century that Germany or Italy was united as a single country.

One problem that we have had since about the 19th Century is that the Slavic world, the Caucasian world, and, in general, the entire area from Japan to East Germany, has struggled mightily with the tension between culturally or ethnically defined political entities and political entities defined more by what we might call a "social contract."

So, What Size is the Right Size?
The tension between these two notions of government comes into play when the East and West clash (as well as within the Eastern and Western worlds, separately). When we think about whether South Ossetia is more "Russian" or more "Georgian" what we are really asking, in some ways, is whether or not Georgia is a country based on an ethnicity or based on a compact between individuals for mutual benefit and their common defense. If the latter, we then ask, in which country are these people better off and to what extent are the different parties able to defend such claims?

Russia's position of advocating for South Ossetian and Abhkazian independence is ideologically nearly untenable. If Russia believes these people need to be part of Russia for strategic reasons, or that the benefits accruing from such a relationship outweigh those of unification for the tiny regions with Georgia, then it must complete its own (Russian) takeover to realize such gains. If Russia believes these peoples are ethnically similar to Russians, then they cannot pretend they want these tiny states to function autonomously. If they think that these people are ethnically similar to NEITHER Russians NOR Georgians, then it would make sense to encourage independence, but it would make even more sense to encourage the independence of many others who are currently part of Russia, but are less similar, ethnically.

Which Side Should We Take?
Whereas the American Civil War was largely about the right of self-determinism, state vs. federal control, and the disagreement over the economic and strategic viability of differently sized unions, with most of these issues taking the form of arguments about slavery, the situation in Russia is more of a conflict between a "nation-state" mentality and a "social contract society."

When we ask ourselves whether we should have supported Georgia more or less in the reconquista, we really must ask ourselves, "Are we advocating against the idea of nation-states?" When we compared stopping the ensuing Russian attacks on the Georgian capital to halting the German advance in the 1930's, were we really saying that we feared the (re-)surge(nce) of a Slavic nation-state?

Democracy is more than just self-determinism, because true and complete self-determinism is just anarchy. So, given that democracies limit self-determinism and individual liberties in key ways, we must ask, "for whom are these rights to be protected?" For ethnic groups? Or for societies organized willingly for the common benefit? Answering this question will help us frame our approach to the five-day war in Georgia this August.