[stextbox id=”black” caption=”SELF-DETERMINATION”]The highest form of self-determination is that of people defining and designing their own communities, deciding who or what comes into their lives, determining their own standards and rules of conduct. People have a right to decide who to live with, who to be friends with, who to invite into their home, who to join their community. If their chosen standards don’t seem “fair” or “moral” to someone else, it is none of their business. Its not that they bear any ill-will to anyone else, its just that they know what atmosphere they like. I recall reading about a drilling ship where the all-white crew – mostly Norwegians, Russians, and Americans – all worked quite happily together until meal-times when they all automatically self-segregated at their own tables.
SELF-DETERMINATION IS SIMPLY A POLITE TERM FOR “SEGREGATION”
“Self-determination” is considered good and natural and even wholesome whilst “segregation” has a bad name having become synonymous with “racial segregation” as any Google search of the word will show. “Discrimination” also. And yet everyone practices segregation and discrimination in their daily lives without giving it even a 2nd thought. We segregate ourselves from others whose company we prefer to keep at bay by living in a particular street or suburb or town or city, and ultimately by country. We don’t just segregate by race and religion but by wealth, by education, by occupation, by shared interests, or a combination of all these factors called “social status”. “Because they can”, wealthier people segregate themselves from poorer people at every opportunity, most obviously in airline seating. There are many other ways in which we segregate ourselves in the public sphere – we choose our preferred cafes, pubs, restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and airliner seating, because we feel more comfortable sharing our space with people who are “more like us”.
SEGREGATION BY SECESSION
Many right-wing whites in the US fantasise about seceding a group of states, a single state, or even parts of states – from a Union which they feel no longer represents them. But these US states, mainly those in the Mid-West or North West, are huge in area and have populations in the millions. If secession ever happens, the non-white minorities (and liberal-minded whites) in those places who opposed secession would have 3 choices. They could either stay, leave voluntarily, or be forcibly exiled. But, even if this were to happen – which would be a traumatic and bloody event to say the least – how would those newly founded states secure their borders? Since those states are huge with boundaries mostly un-defined by nature – long straight lines drawn on a map – the new nations will have a constant battle to prevent infiltration let alone an outright invasion. All of which will take a lot of money and probably would need a large conscripted defensive force, like Israel. I have a much better idea.
COUNTRIES FOR SALE OR LEASE –
IT HAPPENED BEFORE, SO IT CAN AND PROBABLY WILL HAPPEN AGAIN..!
In the past it was common for one country to sell or exchange or lease part of its territory to another country.
France bought Corsica from the Republic of Genoa in 1768
The USA, the most prolific purchaser and leaser of territory, has bought at least 4 territories – 2 of which were massive. In 1803 the vast Louisiana Territory was bought from France for $15 million. In the 1853 “Gadsden purchase” the US bought 30,000 sq miles from Mexico for $15 million. In 1867 Alaska was bought from Russia for $7 million. Finally, in 1917, the US bought their Virgin Islands (Britain has others) from Denmark for $25 million. Guantanamo Bay is controversially “leased” from Cuba (the Castro regime refuses to accept lease payments). The Panama Canal Zone was leased “in perpetuity” in 1904 (?) but was given back in ???? The island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is leased from Britain.
Aside from the purchase of the Danish part of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1850, I don’t know of any other instances where Britain has purchased territory, but in 1824 they exchanged Bencoolen (now Benkulu) in Sumatra for Malacca and the Dutch relinquishing their claim on Singapore, founded just 5 years earlier. In 1890 Britain gave Heligoland to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar. (Britain no longer has Zanzibar but Germany still has what is left of Heligoland after the British in 1947 somewhat spitefully blew it up in “the world’s biggest ever non-nuclear explosion”). Most famously of course Britain leased Hong Kong’s “New Territories” from China. (It is not true that Hong Kong island itself was part of the lease – it and the Kowloon Peninsula were both “ceded in perpetuity”).
It was also very common for one country to have enclaves or exclaves surrounded by the territory of other countries and sometimes far from their main land-holdings. There are still a few remaining examples in Europe, but at one time there were hundreds. For example, the city of Orange in the south of France was, from 1163 to 1713, the “Principality of Orange” – a possession of the Dutch Prince of Orange. Germany in particular was an amazing patchwork of small states, principalities and duchies, etc., before unification in 1871. In light of the tragic history of unified Germany, I would argue that unification was very unfortunate. I would make the same argument for Italian unification.
EU rules possibly forbid territorial leasing so it is more likely to happen anywhere other than Europe.
Rather than the huge trauma and possibly blood-letting of political secession, it would be far simpler and less traumatic for organised groups to negotiate with “host states” the establishment of “colonies” (autonomous city states) on long-leased enclaves. But how large might such enclaves be? Paul Romer’s Honduras proposal was to be a Charter City of 1000 sq km (or was it 1000 sq miles?). Either way far larger than necessary. For Deltapolis as little as 10 sq km, which could include enough agricultural land to support the inhabitants, would suffice – and such a tiny area would politically be much easier for a host country government to approve. Such “colonies” could, in theory, be founded almost anywhere in the world but, from a political viewpoint, I think the most receptive governments would be in South/Central America where there are still vast tracts of empty territory where the local inhabitants are not keen to live. (Patagonia or Paraguay or Uruguay, for example). For a medium-sized country like Paraguay (400,000 km2) 10 km2 is not even a pimple. Some governments might support such a concept once they were made aware of the benefits, of which there are very many.