> What do you view as the civilizational risks of national self-determination?
At some point I might forward you something I worked on while in grad school on this issue, if you're interested. But most of my PhD work was focused on conflict in Eastern and Central Europe after the USSR's fall. Central Asia and the Middle East, to a lesser degree.
There's a phenomenon we've come to recognize as "Balkanization," which typically refers to a series of events leading to the fragmentation of a larger state into smaller ones, disputed territories and the like --- typically that fragment along ethnic/national lines.
While the term's roots trace back to the Ottoman Empire's dissolution, the nastiest, most brutal and most deadly border/ethnic conflicts largely broke out around the world after the Cold War ended. Essentially, there was fragmentation at two levels. First, the world order had been redefined from a bipolar hegemonic order in which the United States and USSR were dueling superpowers (or so they were said to be); to a unipolar hegemonic order in which only one superpower remained, the United States. Second, the geopolitical utility of maintaining alliances with great and even regional or lesser powers totally changed ... almost overnight.
So, what that meant was that powder-kegs of ethnic conflict like Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Albania, Azerbaijan and others remained relatively at peace due to overlapping alliances that kept them from fighting with one another. For example, ethnic disputes within the USSR or between Warsaw pact members were dispersed with swift and exacting brutality. The idea was that the costs of doing anything that would threaten the integrity of the Eastern Bloc's alliance against the West was greater than any threat posed by the neighbors that people hated. On the other hand, ethnic disputes within NATO-allied countries were sanctioned and their leaders usually dealt with by the intelligence agencies of one or more of the United States, England or France --- if not handled appropriately, internally. And conflict between any particular Warsaw-pact-allied ethnic group with a rival affiliated with NATO would never dare throw the first stone, given the risks of escalation.
All of that changed when the USSR fell. The most horrifying violence seen in Europe since WWII swept across the slavic world, mostly along ethnic/national lines. You can look into the breakup of Yugoslavia and particularly the Bosnian war for examples of this. I was a kid when that was going on. Though, our church hosted refugees from Bosnia inside and outside the United States. Similar, and sometimes even worse, things took place in Africa a well; largely for the same reasons during the same time period. And while it may sound racist, the patterns of ethnic conflict that characterized Africa before colonization and which now characterize much of sub-Saharan Africa now would be the mean to which the world would regress if national self-determination were the norm.
And the risks should not be discounted, either. There are at least 218 identifiable and discreet ethnic groups in Russia at this time, more than 100 in China (I don't know the exact number) and about a dozen or so substantially represented in the United States. Russia is the most ethnically diverse country on earth and for the most part has always been, if you were curious. But the risks aren't limited to Russia. If Palestine gets a state, for example ... why can't the Chechens? On the other hand, if the Chechens CAN have a state, why not the Palestinians?
Consider the implications, in view of the blood Putin spilt during the Chechen wars throughout the 1990s. That's why, whatever Putin, Lavrov, Peskov or others may claim; Russia will never support Palestinian statehood. Ever. China would make the same argument about, at least, the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Behind closed doors, Spain would make the same argument about Catalonia and the Basque. The list goes on and on.
I think most of the world's leaders recognize that, while Palestine might not be the domino that sets everything in motion, the risks that it might outweigh any benefit. So they do what they can to maintain the status quo. If all of Palestine's alleged supporters (none of them actually give a shit about Palestine) actually united their efforts against Israel, it would force the United States' hand. They do not, because they know that Palestine is a problem that could one day be their own. Meanwhile they condemn Israel and pass resolutions that mean nothing in the UN, while "Islamic scholars" decry Israel's purported "violations of international law," where the "international law" at issue isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
People do not understand this, even though it's the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
