The Wages Of Kosovo
Perhaps they can also let the Szekely into NATO after independence. Actually, they are currently seeking autonomy, but these things often don’t stop there. As someone who is part Hungarian, I can’t say that I am entirely indifferent to the concerns of Hungarian minorities outside Hungary, but it is very risky to start going down this road of increased autonomy, especially when there is no question of Romania going along with it. I appreciate James pointing out this story. It seems that we are still at odds on how significant these stirrings of autonomist and separatist feeling will be. Perhaps I have been lecturing on the Balkan Wars too much over the past few months, but when I see autonomist and separatist movements gaining momentum I am fairly confident that these movements will reach a point where the Great Powers cannot stop them from taking action. The Powers ultimately have two means at their disposal, force and incentives, and nationalists tend to reject the latter and resent the former. James’ confidence in a new concert of Powers also does not take into account the possibility that one or more of them will blunder or deliberately stoke a separatist cause for short-term gain (as the West just did in Kosovo, except that we didn’t gain anything from it). Currently, Russia and China are playing the role of guardians of the existing international state system against the Western states that want to throw wrenches into it, and this is a very, very bad arrangement for rather obvious reasons.
Perhaps I am obtuse in sensing an inconsistency in this post. Certainly I can see the danger in nation-states using the autonomist and separatist urges of their cousins in neighbor states as stalking-horses for irredenstist mischief.
On the other hand, if one values local traditions and mistrusts a homogenizing nationalism, it is hard not to sympathize with the desire of the Catalans to preserve their language and to resist Castilianization, the Szekely to speak Magyar, and forth. Why should the Cajuns be Anglicized or the Friulians refused education in Furlan?
The multiethnic state is not in tune with the Zeitgeist, but what, after all, is wrong with it? In the context of federations, such as Russia and the EU, there seems no principled basis for opposing these aspirations.
Szekely can speak Hungarian already. What they speak isn’t the issue. They want concessions of self-governing authority, something like a state within a state. In theory, that’s all Kosovo was supposed to get in 1999, but the hope of autonomy turned into the dream of independence very quickly (since this was always the short-term goal of the KLA anyway). Nation-states are already breaking down, and I don’t see much good coming from encouraging their fragmentation.
Grumpy raises a question not address in the response: By what principle does a conservative oppose locally-governed, culturally homogenized ethnic states? That not only seems to be the direction we’re heading, like it or not, but it might present the only solution to the ever-brugeoning managerial state. What does traditionalism mean, anyway, in the modern, multicultural nation-state?
If their separation from their existing states is illegal under the relevant constitutional systems, the emergence of such states conflicts with the legitimate authority of the local government (whose authority conservatives generally believe we are obliged to obey unless it becomes tyrannical or abusive) and undermines the sovereignty of that state, which will destabilise that state and its neighbours. This contributes to greater chances of armed conflict and regional conflagration. The conservative opposes it *in these instances* because self-determination is a dangerous fantasy.
Conservatives as a rule do not oppose “locally-governed, culturally homogenized ethnic states” where they exist, but we are not interested in stoking the fires of nationalism within existing multiethnic states, nor do I think we should be in the business of encouraging Lausanne-like relocations of population. That obviously goes against a number of conservative concerns for rootedness, local history and basic justice. If there had been less of a mania about “freeing” nations from the “prison” of the Habsburg empire and putting the idea of self-determination into everyone’s minds, a good deal of instability and injustice in central Europe might have been avoided.