http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060605/wl_csm/ostatelet
The coming of the micro-states
By Fred Weir
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Mon Jun 5, 4:00 AM ET
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MOSCOW – As goes Montenegro, so goes Kosovo, Transdniestria, and South Ossetia?
As Montenegro officially declared independence this weekend, accepting the world's welcome into the community of nations, a handful of obscure "statelets" are demanding the same opportunity to choose their own destinies.
In the latest example, Transdniestria, a Russian-speaking enclave that won de facto independence in the early 1990s, declared last week that it will hold a Montenegro-style referendum in September as part of its campaign for statehood.
Experts fear that many "frozen conflicts" around the world – in which a territory has gained de facto independence through war but failed to win international recognition – could reignite as ethnic minorities demand the same right to self-determination that many former Yugoslav territories have been offered by the international community.
Even more significant than Montenegro's rise to statehood would be the international community's acceptance of Kosovo's bid for independence. The province of Serbia was seized by NATO in 1999. Ongoing talks discussing that possibility are being watched with intense interest by rebel statelets. But as tiny, newly independent states such as East Timor find themselves mired in ethnic violence, international observers are wary of the implications of such a move.
"If Kosovo becomes independent, this precedent will cause further fragmentation of the global order and lead to the creation of more unviable little states," predicts Dmitri Suslov, an analyst with the independent Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow.
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Maybe I'm just an injineer, but what is the problem? What makes these little states "unviable"? It would seem that this is the way to end ethnic violence. We saw it on a large scale when the British left India, and Pakistan was a result.
We have had "diplomats" drawing lines in the sand. That is how we wound up with Iran and Iraq. The diplomat's motivation was to deliberately create "opponents" that would "balance" each other. I guess that comes under the theory that, if they are too busy shooting at each other, then they will be too busy to shoot at me. And, of course, someone has to sell them the guns and ammo. (Is that too cynical?)
In a libertarian America, we would allow people to organize themselves as they saw fit. We have no "dog in that fight".
When we were "liberating Iraq", which I opposed, I wondered to no one in general in my scratchings, that each town should have been organized, held elections, and treated as a political entity. No need for a giant centralized entity. Let them organize "organically". If you are a "one man; one vote" fanatic, then each "municipality" could elect one elector that would go to "Congress" with a list of verifiable names. That count would be the number of "votes" he could cast. I can see it now. "I'm Jack from Isjackistan (they always have funny names) and I cast my people's 10,239 votes for passage of the "Thanks Amerika; Now leave" bill! Wouldn't that be a stich. Each town "freed" could have sent a rep to their new Congress with their proxy. The mayor could call a new election if the people didn't like what the rep did. It could be a working in nothing flat. Or perhaps, it wasn't desirable because it couldn't produce the required results.
Any way, I don't see a problem with allow people the freedom to organize and conduct their affairs in any manner that they see fit.
IMHO
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