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Understanding the Secessionist Surge
National self-determination was a key engine of twentieth-century geopolitics, driving the creation of many new countries after the two world wars, and again after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But, rather than correcting imperialist aberrations, most of today’s attempts at statehood pose a threat to global or regional stability.
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MADRID – A rather capacious interpretation of the right to statehood, along with various political and economic forces, is now destabilizing many regions of the world. In just the past few weeks, the regional governments of Catalonia in Spain and Kurdistan in Iraq have held unofficial independence referendums. And in Cameroon, separatist groups in the English-speaking region of Ambazonia have unilaterally declared independence from the country’s French-speaking regions.