A phenomenon has been taking place in our world since February 7, 1990, that has been reshaping the political landscape of our world vastly. That phenomenon is the dissolution of nation-states into component nations, and its modern history began on that date when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union gave up its monopoly on power. At that point, the governments of the constituent states began to assert their independence from Moscow, beginning with the government of Lithuania, whose independence movement had staged a rally of over a quarter of a million people during a visit by Mikail Gorbachev. The Republic of Lithuania declared its independence on March 11; before the end of the month, Estonia had declared its independence as well. Little more than a year later, the August Coup attempt had failed; on September 6, 1991, the Soviet Union had recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Not coincidentally, a little more than two and a half years before, the second modern suicide terrorism campaign, and the first one in the effort to gain national independence for a minority population, had begun. On July 5, 1987, a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Captain Miller, drove a truck loaded with explosives into a Sri Lankan army camp in Vadamarachi. This event made Captain Miller the first of the "Black Tigers", who have been the most prolific suicide terrorists in history, committing 76 suicide attacks over a fourteen year period, killing a total of 901 people including two national poltical leaders. The LTTE had learned of such tactics when Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, sent fighters to train with the PLO and other militant groups in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. He was especially impressed with the Hezbollah suicide attack against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and decided that the same tactics could be used to compel the Sri Lankan government granting Tamil independence [Robert Pape, Dying to Win p.141].
Since that time, nationalist movements of minority populations have been the flashpoint for much of the world’s violence and the majority of the world’s suicide terrorism. The fifteen constituent Republics of the Soviet Union became independent states, with sub-republican areas such as Chechnya violently resisting continued Russian rule. Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia in a horrifically genocidal series of civil wars. Suicide terrorism campaigns for national independence have been waged against Israel by the Palestinians, India by both the Punjabi Sihks and in Kashmir, Sri Lanka by Tamils, the Russia by Chechnyans, and Turkey by the Kurds. Genocidal campaigns against minorities have taken place in Rwanda against the Tutsis and in Sudan against the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit groups in Darfur. In the case of the Tutsi population of Rwanda, the genocide was not ended until the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front defeated the Hutu government in a civil war; in the case of the peoples of Darfur, the genocide has not yet been stopped.
Considering this recent history, as well as the intercine strife between the Arab Sunni and Shia and the Kurds of Iraq and the American role in shaping those events, it behooves us to consider the meaning of these events and indeed the trend towards the often violent dissolution of nation-states into independent component nations. We ought also consider the foundation of Israel as a manifestation of a similar phenomenon; after a Europe-wide campaign of genocide against the European Jewish minority, the remaining European Jewish population violently obtained national independence in the Palestinian Mandate. That violent nationalist campaign by European Jewry has resulted in another nation-state of an ethnic minority, and has similarly resulted in continuous ethnic violence with its surrounding ethnic groups. These circumstances challenge us in three distinct ways. First, they challenge our political senses and ideals, as multiethnic states are becoming replaced by ethnic nationalist states. Serbia is a nation for Serbs, Israel for Jews, Latvia for Latvians, the hoped for Punjab for Sihks, Tamil Eelam for the Tamils, and Kurdistan for the Kurds. This begs the question of whether multiethnic states and multicultural societies are preferable in all circumstances, and why do so many ethnic minorities even in democracies desire national independence? Second, the severe violence, often directed not only at the governments and ethnic minorities, but of their international allies, often making the United States a target, demands that we attempt to see if there is a means for us to prevent or at least mitigate the spreading ethnic violence throughout the world. Lastly, as the single most multi-ethnic nation on earth, what are the implications of this trend for us as Americans? How does this impact on our as-yet unresolved ethnic and racial inequalities and our goals for their solution?
Perhaps the most disturbing example for consideration is that of the Indian Sihks. In October 1983, Prime Minister Indira Ghandi dissolved the Punjab legislative assembly; this led directly to the Golden Temple Massacre of June 3, 1984, where the Indian Army, in an attempt to root out a group of Sihk militants, killed at least 493 Sihks in an attack against the most holy religious site of the Sihk religion. This led to massive support and involvement in a variety of Sihk nationalist groups, whose most notorious attack was the suicide bombing that killed the Indian government’s Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh along with fifteen of his staff and the bomber, Dilawar Singh, a member of the Sihk group Babbar Khalsa International. In 1995, the time of that attack, the population of Punjab was approximately 20 million, with 61% of that population self-identifying as Sihk. The province of Punjab has the lowest poverty rate of all provinces in India; so the movement towards violence independence cannot be ascribed to a lack of democratic representation nor to poverty or lack of economic opportunity.
What this indicates to us is a limitation of the ability of democracy and economic success alone to satisfy the self-determinative desires of minorities. The limitation of democracy is inherently that, while, when applicable, Constitutional provisions may ensure the legal protection of minority populations, the majority ultimately rules. Permanent minority groups may see themselves protected from official discrimination, but their ability to force the issues that are paramount to them to the political stage is nonexistent and dependent on the goodwill of those in the majority group. Indeed, national political debates which, regardless of the legal outcome, are degrading and intimidating to ethnic minorities, often take place. In our own country, it is difficult to imagine how debates over legally making English the official language or Federally mandated sentencing laws making crack cocaine much more heavily penalized than powder cocaine (a disparity recently pointed out as a racial bias by Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who intends to rectify this by increasing the Federal mandated sentence for powder cocaine) are not confirmations of the "otherness" of minority populations in their own eyes.
That such problems exist even in a pluralistic Constitutional Republic such as the United States, with a long history and proud tradition of at least attempting to make their nation view all of its constituent groups feel equal under their government suggests that this problem will be even greater in other nations. It therefore follows that the idea of national independence will tend to increase among ethnic minorities, and that when such movements are resisted the likelihood that they will become violent is great. Meanwhile, we have ample evidence that international institutions such as the United Nations are very poor at coping with ethnic violence; the lack of international action to end the genocidal campaigns in Rwanda and Sudan, as well as the poor and tardy response to genocide in the former Yugoslavia are apt reminders to minority populations as well as to ourselves that their lives will not be protected if they do not achieve independence by anything but the "goodwill" of the national majority. The major powers supporting many of these ethnic conflicts are in fact beyond the ability for the United Nations to hold accountable; the US support of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, the French support of the Hutu Power regime in Rwanda, and the Chinese support of the Sudanese government are all examples of veto-holding members of the UN Security Council taking an active role in ethnic violence. This assumes that in most cases of ethnic violence, and particularly genocide, any attempt to take international action would take place. Although nearly every nation on earth is a signatory to the International Covention on Genocide, which requires signatories to take collective action to stop genocide anywhere in the world, in over fifty years since the Convention was signed, not once has any signatory invoked it for any event anywhere in the world. And the multiple, worldwide occurance, by peoples of nearly every race, religion, and culture, to seek national independence suggests that those vulnerable populations have paid a great deal of attention to the actions of the world, and have seen that if they do not take their defense into their own hands, they will always be vulnerable and at the mercy of others.
As a person who is both an American and an Israeli, and proud to be a member of both those nations, this particularly concerns me, and challenges my values. It requires me to believe in the possibility and the value of a nation of all peoples, where the central values are ones of voluntary choice to be more than our backgrounds but of a single nation united by the idea of equality for all. And it also requires that I see that Jews are not invited to be a part of that "all", at least never entirely, and that we are there on sufferance, and that it is required that we have a nation of Jews to be allowed full participation. Both those things I both know from experience and believe in my heart to be true. Yet, the realization leaves me feeling participatory in both movements yet aloof from both as well. I believe passionately in a good and responsible Israel as a Jewish nation, yet believe that a nonethnic state is a far better and nobler thing; I believe in a nation of the elective choice in individual freedom yet know that as a Jew, I am not really entirely welcome in it and never will be. I will not live to the day when many people wonder how the "Christian lobby" got them to make Christmas a national holiday or ask why there isn’t a "White History Month". But the implications of that trouble me. It is understandable to me to see one solution as possible and beneficial but not noble, and another as being beyond even the capacity of my life’s labours, and to simultaneously work for both. But what do I make of the fundamental ignobility of the former, or of the belief in something that I know I will never see? And seeing that contradiction in myself, what do I make of the struggles of others, both the struggle of some to live and coexist in multiethnic states and the violent struggle of others to secure their ethnic independence? What politics do I support in my national representatives, who have such power over the fates of those struggles?
These are not problems with easy or evident answers, nor can I claim to have any. But until we face openly these questions, and the contradictions that they pose to our political ideals and values, we cannot hope to either understand the world around us, or effectively lead the world around us in the 21st Century. The old answer was that we should do what was best for us, irrespective of what the consequence was to other around the world. The new Republican vision seems to be a more aggressive version of the old. I’d like to think that I am far from alone in thinking there ought to be a better alternative for the future.