Abstract

This work is a call to re-evaluate nationalism, mid more specifically its manifestation in movements seeking secession and statehood. Western thinking about secession on both the conceptual and policy levels has been distorted by a philosophical discomfort with ethnic nationalism. My project in this work is both to address that discomfort directly and to modify the anti-secession policies that it has produced. ;My central conclusion is that the West should support secession more frequently than it has in recent decades. Because them are different kinds of nationalist conflicts, my broad recommendations will often break down into more than one policy prescription. To summarize, secession should become: a more serious policy alternative for ethnic conflicts, alongside ethnic federalism and autonomy; a democratic response to more peaceful and less urgent nationalist agitation, so that letting minority nations leave their state when a majority of their members want to is something that progressive, democratic states are expected to do, unless they can point to a specific and demonstrable reason not to. While it is both a bad and an improbable idea for secession to become routine, it needs to become more normal, something that Western powers and international organizations consider as an option and try to manage peacefully in a variety of circumstances. Part of my argument for this conclusion comes in the moral psychology of nationalism that I discuss in the first three chapters, while in chapters four through six I am mainly occupied in clearing away some of the scare stories that have dogged policy discussions of secession. There is much more reason to be flexible towards nationalism, to judge each potential secession on a case by case basis, than foreign policy professionals and analysts worried about causing bloodshed or oppression have realized. ;I begin with a philosophical and sociological analysis of the nationalist demand for statehood. The understanding which emerges from that analysis should lead us, I argue, to a fuller and more sympathetic ethical appreciation of nationalist demands. I then discuss the most widespread and serious objections to the break-up of states: in Chapter Four, fear of encouraging war if existing borders may be challenged on grounds of nationality; in Chapter Five, the problem of minorities living in proposed new states and mixed national territories more generally; and in Chapter Six, the ethical and practical difficulties of democratically verifying the real sentiments for independence of a majority of a national group. These difficulties, especially the minorities problem, should override nationalist aspirations in a good number of cases. National 'self-determination' cannot be the unconditional procedural rule that such a phrase implies. Nevertheless, we should not allow the real problems sometimes associated with secession to overwhelm the good that statehood can provide and has provided for many national communities