Geopolitics has its vagaries and vicissitudes. The culture of regionalism found across the world manifests itself in the tendency to secede from a mother country or come out of a political system that may be seen to be undermining a province’s existence. Instances of provinces stirring emotions because of demands for separation are aplenty. From the Canadian province of Quebec to the Falkland Islands to Scotland to Catalonia and Crimea, the list is exhaustive. The ethnic Kurds who straddle the border across Iraq and Turkey have been demanding the right to self determination for a long time.
Most nation states of the present day exist with the assumption that they would be indivisible. America was created from provinces that came together to form the United States of America. The Soviet Union was an entity comprised of republics that forged together to form the USSR. However, tectonic political changes brought about the death of USSR.
The tendency to separate reverses what has been achieved by integration. Let’s take the case of Spain where an agitation is brewing in the region of Catalonia that wants to wean itself away from Madrid’s influence. The government maintains that the right to decide a region’s status belongs to all the Spanish people. This is in keeping with the European nation’s 1978 constitution drafted in the aftermath of the death of Francisco Franco. The people of Catalonia claim a distinct culture and ethnicity. However, that does not give them the right to demand separation.
The Canadian province of Quebec, over the years, has been demanding the right to self determination. It claims a French heritage and wants to stand apart from largely Englishspeaking Canada. The Scottish argument for separation from the United Kingdom rests on the premise that the wealth generated from the oil-rich region is spent across Britain, leading to skewed income distribution. The idea of secession goes against the very grain of statehood that demands a loyalty to the federal authority, which is invested with powers to hold the state together. To deal with fissiparous tendencies, nations have found the weapon of autonomy an effective one.
Autonomous region in the world have been formed to strike a balance between commanding loyalty to the state and remaining relatively free. The Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang is a case in point. The northwstern province of the country that has a sizeable Muslim population is different from other parts of China. The region has not been without its share of controversies as there have been fears of the sprouting up of hardline groups. There are hundreds of regions that would want to separate in scores of countries. At times the causes might be ethnocentric, at others they may have been stoked by sub-nationalism. In many cases, the political ambitions of regional leaders are to blame.
