Look Who's Balkan

Dateline: June 15, 2011. Avrik Vyadukshkashvili, an apricot grower in the Caucasus, has declared independence from Vay-Tomatsh, a former county which last year seceded from the province of Gulibjibridze, formerly part of South Ossetia, which succesfully separated itself from the Republic of Georgia in 2009. (Georgia had, of course, been part of the Soviet Union prior to its breakup.) The U.S. has already approached Mr. Vyadukshkashvili with offers of trade preferences and a recommendation for "fast track" admittance to NATO (U.N. membership being, of course, assured). Mutual defense agreements are "still on the drawing board", according to inside sources. Upon admittance to NATO, the new country, covering roughly 40 acres, will be known as Apricotpitva, and will join over 500 other new member states, most of which have been carved out of territory formerly belonging to the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Russia has, of course, expressed strong opposition to this latest fractionation of its former mighty empire. The Russian foreign minister said, "We encouraged the South Ossetians to separate from Georgia, which was not extending them their full minority rights. Then we opposed the secession of Gulibjibridze from South Ossetia because we had proof that it was part of a "splittist" campaign on the part of the United States and NATO. So when our friends the Vay-Tomatchniks came to us with tales of oppression and persecution from the Gulibjibridzens, we naturally took their side, counting on that to settle matters. Now we have this upstart fruit vendor thinking he can declare himself a separate country. What's this world coming to?" The United States ambassador to NATO made almost the exact same statement, with the appropriate changes of who is friends with whom, and whose fault it is.

(back to the present) A wild "Mouse That Roared"-style exaggeration, you say? Well, so would the present state of affairs (and vice versa) have been a few short years ago. All of a sudden we have a resurgence of not only nationalism -- the bane of Europe for lo these many centuries -- but the advent of something brand new, namely that every little ethnic group that can define itself on a basis more firm than the kind of cheese they make is insisting that it not only be recognized as a distinct group -- not all that tall an order, really -- but that it be allowed to separate itself out and declare itself a new country. Many of these groups, way before they are "recognized" by anyone else, have lobbyists working Capitol Hill... they start issuing visas, and stamps... they put out CD collections of their folk songs... they talk Playboy into featuring their country in a "Girls of ... " spread... and so on. Now, all of this is perfectly understandable. Everyone would prefer to be king of their own little mole hill than an anonymous part of something bigger. I mean, look at what has happened in the U.S. in recent years, with "identity politics" starting to take the upper hand. The days of selling one's birthright for a mess of melting pottage are over. Plus, look at all the business it sends National Geographic's way!

I find none of this objectionable per se. It's charming... atavistic... anachronistic... funky... and all the rest. And it constitutes a full employment act for mapmakers. What I cannot see, however, is why the U.S. insists on cheering this process on, and not just from the sidelines but from center field, by providing all the aid and abettance it can. Why is it so important to us, in other words, that the world be fragmented into ever smaller-sized pieces, each with its own government, foreign policy, currency, national anthem, flag, Olympic team, and restaurant in Epcot? I mean, we're a fine one to uphold the "self-determination" efforts of people halfway around the globe -- we fought the most vicious and wasteful war in our history to prevent the Southern states from doing precisely that. We have regretted, in the past, the provincialism in places like the Balkans that seems inevitably to lead the "great powers" into war. We hardly squeaked when the Soviets re-formed the Russian Empire in their own image, and when China took what was left between Siberia and the Sea of Japan, and from the Gobi to the Himalayas. And, of course, we were doing our own empire-building as well -- adding new states in improbable locations, and establishing what were, in effect, colonies in even less probable places. But somewhere along the line this all got turned around, and -- once it was relatively safe -- we started to develop a new respect for the self-determination of "indigenous" peoples. Our own Indian reservations were given new latitude in how they run their own affairs... we let Panama slip away... and we relished the process by which first Yugoslavia, then the Soviet Union, broke into fragments like so many mirrors. Well, it just could be that the old idea of "divide and conquer" had something to do with all of this. If we can't win over an entire country to our point of view, surely we can win over one province at a time. And, after all, we aren't building an "American" empire anyway -- this is NATO, right? -- a nice, peace-loving, harmless -- and really boring -- organization. So how come the Russians don't see it that way? Old-fashioned paranoia, or something with an actual basis? When they tried putting their nukes in Cuba way back when, we protested mightily -- and gave up a similar project in Turkey as a means of keeping the peace. Well, Russia never had any right to feel threatened, did they now? I mean, we're always on the side of peace, as can be plainly seen in Iraq, er... well, forget about it. But we never do anything impulsive and without just cause; remember Vietnam? Oh wait, "oops again". OK, so maybe they do have a reason to get sore. But this is the wave of the future, and they'll just have to get out of the way or get trampled. [sound of phone ringing] Um... yeah... the Hispanics in the Southwest want to secede? Where's General Sherman when we really need him?