Independence is overrated

I’m late with this post, but so be it. Independence is overrated. Here’s why I say so.

Consider American independence. Declared July 4, 1776. Then seven years of war with Britain, renewed for a couple of more in 1812. Followed by a vast westward land grab against Native American resistance and a four-year Civil War that set records for fraticidal homicide.

Think America is uniquely violent? Try Sudan: almost 40 years of civil war, independence in 2011, then civil war within South Sudan starting last year. Or Kosovo: declared independence the first time around in 1992, war in the late 1990s, independence finally in 2008, still trying to establish full sovereignty over its territory and full recognition by the international community.

The downsides of independence are particularly relevant at the moment. Scotland will vote on independence September 18. If it passes, it won’t precipitate war, but it will cause a major headache for the European Union. Catalonia would like to follow suit, but Spain’s constitution does not provide for a referendum. The Catalans may proceed anyway, creating another major headache for the EU.

If either of these referenda pass, it will make a referendum in Kurdistan, which is guaranteed to pass, all the more likely. Parts of eastern Ukraine already held referenda earlier this year, but they were ambiguous and no independence has resulted.  Instead, Kiev is making progress in reclaiming territory. If ever eastern Ukraine were to succeed in seceding, Transnistria, a breakaway province of Moldova, would follow.

South Ossetia and Abhazia, both breakaway bits of Georgia, have already declared independence, but recognition has been hard to come by. They are far from independent, but no longer governed as part of Georgia.

The point is not that independence is a mistake. Certainly the United States was not going to remain forever a British colony. Serbia did nothing for nine years after the war with NATO to make unity attractive to Kosovars. Sudan behaved pretty much the same way towards South Sudan. Independence for Pristina and Juba was the best remaining option, not the worst.

The point is that even the best option is not without difficulties. Clean breaks like Slovakia’s with the Czech Republic are the exception to the rule. While de-colonialization after World War II was absolutely necessary and desirable (for the sake of the nother countries as well as their colonies), it rarely produced the glorious results its advocates advertised. And it sometimes produced mass atrocities on a prodigious scale, as in the partition and independence of India and Pakistan, not to mention the continuing conflict in the Middle East arising from Palestine’s partition and Israel’s independence.

I enjoy July 4 as much as the next American. But it had very different implications for Thomas Jefferson, who was able to keep his slaves far longer than would have been the case had America been ruled from London, and his fellow signer of the declaration John Adams, who had to accept the “peculiar institution” in order to ensure independence.  They both died on July 4, 1826, satisfied I suppose that the first 50 years of the republic were worthy of their revolution but unaware of the accounting on slavery still to come.

We celebrate independence with fireworks, drink and flag-waving patriotism. But we ignore all the complications. There are usually a lot of them. Independence is overrated. More on that later, as I consider the case of Kurdistan.