Folks have been picking on the last Game of Thrones episode for a variety of unrealistic or unearned developments. Here's my take on the secessionist element. Folks have been picking on the last Game of Thrones episode for a variety of unrealistic or unearned...
As I was chatting with my dissertation adviser yesterday while in DC (yes, my dissertation was completed in 1993 but the relationship goes on), I had an epiphany that had been on the edges of my...
Now that Canada has decided to continue to train and support the Kurds in Iraq along with the Iraqi government, the question of the future of the Kurds is being questioned. Indeed, yesterday, I...
I am not a fan of Scottish independence, so I thought we should get equal time from the Yes/Aye side:
Lots of words have been spilled on this Crimea thing, and so it is reasonable to ask whether our opposition to Crimean self-determination might be more about our feelings about Russia than about secession/irredentism. Chris Blattman asked: Bleg: Someone please explain to me why I should accept that the annexation of Crimea is a terrible thing https://t.co/Op7T0aNN7T — Chris Blattman (@cblatts) March 20, 2014 It raises a legitimate question: shouldn't people be allowed to choose their destinies? Shouldn't folks be allowed to engage in self-determination? I responded with heaps of tweets,...
Keith Darden points out that if Crimea secedes from Ukraine, electoral outcomes in Ukraine would shift with fewer pro-Russia voters in the political system, and that would be bad for Russia. This is not unique to this case. In any successful secession or irredentist effort (the latter refers to annexing a "lost" territory inhabited by ethnic kin), the boundary moves, changing who votes in the rump state (Ukraine in this case) and who votes in the new state (Crimea if independent, Russia if this is irredentist and Crimea gets annexed). In this case, new voters in Russia would be largely...
My colleague, Charles King, has a great piece (gated) in Foreign Affairs on what the success of the Scottish National Party says about secesssionist movements everywhere.Opinion polls suggest that the Scots are unlikely to approve independence outright. Instead, they will probably settle for some form of "enhanced devolution," an increase in the considerable policymaking power granted to Scotland over the last decade and a half. But the rise of Salmond's SNP has sent an unexpected shudder through British political life. The outcome of Scotland's vote will also reverberate throughout Europe,...