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- Title
Rights of Secession.
- Authors
Kofman, Daniel
- Abstract
This article argues the need for a right of secession for territorial-based groups with historical-cultural identities. Even normative theories leaning on venerable intellectual traditions need to arrive at a "reflective equilibrium" between general theoretical considerations and intuitions about particular cases. With normative theories of secession, where debate has been relatively new, intuitions about particular cases are bound to loom large. One recent case -- Chechnya in Russia -- should serve as a guidepost to thinking about this issue. Here a group with all the attributes of a distinct ethnic identity -- language, culture, religion, history -- marking it off from the majority of the Russian state in which it found itself, and which formed the preponderant group on its traditional territory of residence, demanded political independence, yet was subjected to a military campaign costing fifty thousand lives. It is no use arguing, though, that the problem in Chechnya and elsewhere was the method of suppression rather than the lack of international support for Chechnya's right of self-determination. To be sure, denial of a right of secession is not a license for the dominant state to commit genocide. It is, however, virtually a license for it to use force. Under the present sovereign state system, the "territorial integrity" of a "sovereign" state means precisely the right of the state to impose its laws on the entire territory. States, Weber famously recognized, claim a monopoly of legitimate force on a given territory. If Chechnya is by right part of Russia, it behooves Russia to put the grave matter of its monopoly to the test, without outside interference. One argument for a right of secession, then, is simply to bring international pressure to bear in dissuading remainder states from resorting to force. Secessions per se do not cause war; almost invariably, unificationist attempts to crush them do.
- Subjects
SECESSION; SOVEREIGNTY; AUTONOMY &; independence movements; CHECHEN War, 1994-1996; NATION-state; NATIONALISM; PRINCIPLE of nationalities
- Publication
Society, 1998, Vol 35, Issue 5, p30
- ISSN
0147-2011
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/BF02686065