Thanks be to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton for giving us the Kosovo narco statelet — a gift that keeps on giving. Think of the opportunities after achieving the near-term options discussed below: Occitania and Bretagnia, Flemishia and Walloonia, and then to the big game: Schleswigia, Bavaria, Thuringia, Pomerania, Silesia, Prussia and the endless opportunities to the east and south.
Spain could wield veto over Scotland's EU membership
Independence for Scots could embolden separatists in Catalonia and Basque region, Madrid fears
Brian Brady, The Independent, Sunday, 22 January 2012
Spain is standing in the way of Scotland's ambitions to become an independent nation within the European Union because of fears that it could spark the break-up of the Spanish state.
Spanish officials have registered concerns with counterparts in the United Kingdom over the Scottish government's independence blueprint, senior Whitehall sources confirmed yesterday.
Spain has indicated it could block an independent Scotland's accession to the European Union, sources said. It has already refused to recognise Kosovo's existence as an independent state. Madrid fears such moves will encourage separatist ambitions in Spanish regions, particularly Catalonia and the Basque region. Spain's refusal to recognise Kosovo has frustrated the former Serbian province's ambitions to enter the union.
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Spinney is wrong on this one. There are 5,000 separatist movements in the world, 27 of them in the USA. 2012 is the tipping point year when “big” and “concentrated” die, and the original indigenous approach of “many small” begins to reinstate itself. It is not possible to micro-manage complexity. As Cambridge professor Philip Allott shows so well in The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State, it was the colonial powers that distorted the centuries old balance among smaller tribes, natural resources, and geographic distribution. The people, not the state, are the center of gravity. The fastest way for any failing state to restore resilience is to embrace separatism. An Alert Reader sends in the following:
I would call it Devolution–perhaps in our own history, a re-look at the concepts contained in the Articles of Confederation (absent the bows to the preservation of slavery)–instead of Separation, but you hit it.
See Also:
Review: A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Review: The Power of the Powerless–Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe
Review: The Unconquerable World–Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)
