Should there be an American Union?

[Thanas]

Nobody wants to join a union where there is nobody to counterbalance the greatest member (aks UK vs Francs vs Germany) or where the political goals are so disparate (Mexico is not interested in anything besides fixing themselves, Canada cares about the arctic while the US cares about the whole world).

[Tribble]

Article XI of the Articles of Confederation:

“Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States,”

Canada is defined by the fact that it was offered to join the USA and refused to do so. That belief still continues to be the foundation of Canadian identity today: yes we are neighbours, yes we are allies, yes we are friends... but we are not American. Whether or not that belief has much merit is another debate, but that's how we choose to identify ourselves. Ask 100 Canadians whether or not we should join the USA, I'm willing to bet that 90-99 of them will say no. Would North America really benefit from a political union between two nations when at least one of them is openly hostile to the concept? I doubt it.

Which is why our current government likes to try and sign deals which avoid the public's eye... such as granting the right for American police officers to cross the border and not be subject to Canadian laws. So I can see a scenario where Canada becomes a de-facto part of the USA (if it isn't already), and the idea of Canada as a nation is just a politically expedient illusion.

[Lagmonster]

Okay, so the last question is, what about Africa? I'm not a politics buff, but I have to assume that cooperation is better than opposition, in any terms. Would an AU be able to control its resources better? And pool their resources to protect and serve its people better? Given the wild politics of that continent, what would a united Africa even look like?

[Borgholio]

Given the wild politics of that continent, what would a united Africa even look like?

North America, Circa 1862.

[Simon_Jester]

If anything, some of the existing African countries are too big; they're left over from when some European said "well, whatever" and drew a random blob on a map in the 19th century. They might honestly be better off subdivided into multiple ethnic units that could at least stop hating each other long enough to get things done.

[Borgholio]

They might honestly be better off subdivided into multiple ethnic units that could at least stop hating each other long enough to get things done.

Sounds like the old argument about splitting up the state of CA...

[Darth Tanner]

If anything, some of the existing African countries are too big; they're left over from when some European said "well, whatever" and drew a random blob on a map in the 19th century. They might honestly be better off subdivided into multiple ethnic units that could at least stop hating each other long enough to get things done.

Wouldn't their first action in this case be to purge themselves of their now minority populations of whatever tribal populations got left behind when dividing up the starting country. South Sudan didn't last too long before that seems to have started.

Regardless the actual African Union seems to be doing ok considering what it has to work with, especially if their plans for a free trade zone and single currency have any reality behind them.

[Ralin]

Wouldn't their first action in this case be to purge themselves of their now minority populations of whatever tribal populations got left behind when dividing up the starting country. South Sudan didn't last too long before that seems to have started.

Pretty much, yeah. Which is the problem that sort of idea usually runs into. If you try to go down that road you're going to be left with smaller and smaller minority populations all clamoring for their own share of recognition, right up until you end up with everyone standing in their own circle with them at the center.

[Simon_Jester]

They might honestly be better off subdivided into multiple ethnic units that could at least stop hating each other long enough to get things done.

Sounds like the old argument about splitting up the state of CA...

There is such a thing as an administrative unit too large for its own good.

If anything, some of the existing African countries are too big; they're left over from when some European said "well, whatever" and drew a random blob on a map in the 19th century. They might honestly be better off subdivided into multiple ethnic units that could at least stop hating each other long enough to get things done.

Wouldn't their first action in this case be to purge themselves of their now minority populations of whatever tribal populations got left behind when dividing up the starting country. South Sudan didn't last too long before that seems to have started.

Yes, but since this already happens anyway on a larger scale, I'm not sure that's a problem with the idea.

I'd rather have the Kosovars of Kosovo chasing out the handful of Serbs in Kosovo than having the Serbs of Serbia chasing out all the Kosovars in Kosovo.

Wouldn't their first action in this case be to purge themselves of their now minority populations of whatever tribal populations got left behind when dividing up the starting country. South Sudan didn't last too long before that seems to have started.

Pretty much, yeah. Which is the problem that sort of idea usually runs into. If you try to go down that road you're going to be left with smaller and smaller minority populations all clamoring for their own share of recognition, right up until you end up with everyone standing in their own circle with them at the center.

True up to a point.

The real problem is that a developing nation needs a sense of its own social, economic, and political identity. The government must feel responsible for the well-being of all the people, not just their own tribe, ethnicity, or race. This is often not the case in a country arbitrarily flung together out of three or four competing peoples that have different styles of government and sharp religious or ethnic divides, which were often further exacerbated by colonialism.

Subdividing a nation until it reaches a minimum-sized unit that CAN work on behalf of its entire population, that is not so blatantly dominated by one plurality ethnicity that it ignores all others, is a pretty obvious minimum for the success of the country.

[Siege]

Okay, so the last question is, what about Africa? I'm not a politics buff, but I have to assume that cooperation is better than opposition, in any terms. Would an AU be able to control its resources better? And pool their resources to protect and serve its people better? Given the wild politics of that continent, what would a united Africa even look like?

Efforts are underway. It remains to be seen what the result will be like.

With regards to ethnic tensions in Africa keep in mind that many tribal conflicts are to a significant extent caused by Western colonialism. I'm going from memory here but as I recall in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at least the concept of tribe was extremely fluid until the Belgians came along with what passed for scientific colonialism at the time, which boiled down to dividing people up into mutually exclusive groups and categorizing them. These very large and diverse groups of people were then pigeonholed ('lazy', 'warlike', etc.) and subsequently the white authorities taught each tribe that they were X unlike the others. Couple this with the usual colonial divide-and-conquer and after a few decades you end up broadly where we are now.

That doesn't mean there wasn't ethnic strife before colonial authority arrived, but do remember the dynamics of ethnic conflicts rarely revolve around mostly imaginary concepts like 'tribe' and all the more often around much more tangible things like power inequality, wealth inequality or resource scarcity. Tribes, like religions, aren't the real problem: they are only a mechanism that lets people simplify complex problems into a more straightforward 'them' versus 'us'.

Consequently I would advise against a "gotta keep 'em separated" approach of segregating people into ethnic units. That idea first and foremost does not actually address the very real and actual problems that Africa faces, but it also smacks of the simplistic and distasteful colonial approach of just declaring that 'these people cannot get along they must be too different from one another' that initially exacerbated tribal tension. You're basically repeating the mistake that got us into this situation to begin wtih.

Splitting multi-ethnic entities into Wilsonian nation-states also adds fuel to ethnic tensions because when inevitably minority X remains behind in the territory now formally defined as belonging to ethnicity Y they can be easily persecuted with "you don't belong here this is Y land" rhetoric. This predictably leads to revanchism, further fragmentation and counter-persecution in territories where the majority is X and the minority Y... And at some point it'll turn out that in your split the territory now owned by ethnicity Z happens to have vast stores of natural resources / strategic access to the sea / the biggest trade hub / some other attribute X and Y lack but desire, and then you're off to the races.

I would argue that defining people in a fashion that specifically and deliberately otherizes different groups has rarely lead to beneficial long-term outcomes. A prosperous future should be sought in cooperation, not exclusion.

[Simon_Jester]

Consequently I would advise against a "gotta keep 'em separated" approach of segregating people into ethnic units. That idea first and foremost does not actually address the very real and actual problems that Africa faces, but it also smacks of the simplistic and distasteful colonial approach of just declaring that 'these people cannot get along they must be too different from one another' that initially exacerbated tribal tension. You're basically repeating the mistake that got us into this situation to begin wtih.

If two ethnic groups are trying to get along, then that's fine and should be encouraged. Larger is better IF there is domestic tranquility among the population of the larger unit.

There's a problem if the groups are not all trying to get along. For instance, if one group dominates the government at the expense of the other (Sunnis in Iraq under Hussein). And (or?) if one group has a larger/richer population and is systematically trying to drive out and massacre the other (Israelis in the land formerly known as Canaan, Sudanese against the people of Darfur and what is now South Sudan).

Pluralism is better than balkanization, if pluralism is possible. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't... and I submit that balkanization is better than a generalized massacre of all members of a large ethnic minority.

I would argue that defining people in a fashion that specifically and deliberately otherizes different groups has rarely lead to beneficial long-term outcomes. A prosperous future should be sought in cooperation, not exclusion.

For me, it's mostly just that in a lot of cases, there are current, ongoing acts of ethnic cleansing and oppression between one group and another, and separating the groups is better than letting them fight it out until one group is dead or enslaved.

[Ralin]

For me, it's mostly just that in a lot of cases, there are current, ongoing acts of ethnic cleansing and oppression between one group and another, and separating the groups is better than letting them fight it out until one group is dead or enslaved.

What makes you so confident that drawing a national border is going to effectively separate them? You're going to end up with substantial parts of any given ethnicity on the wrong side of any border, and I doubt their compatriots in the new ethnic homeland are going to sit on their side during the inevitable persecutions that follow. Especially now that they have their own sovereign nation and military to fall back on.

Pakistan was founded on similar logic, and it didn't turn out all that well for everyone concerned.

[Siege]

There's a problem if the groups are not all trying to get along. For instance, if one group dominates the government at the expense of the other (Sunnis in Iraq under Hussein). And (or?) if one group has a larger/richer population and is systematically trying to drive out and massacre the other (Israelis in the land formerly known as Canaan, Sudanese against the people of Darfur and what is now South Sudan).

Yes, there is a problem when groups are not trying to get along, and the solution to this problem is not sequestering them, it's getting them to get along. This is very difficult indeed and may take decades of hard work but then nobody said fixing colonialism's fuckups would be easy. And it's still better than repeating the mistakes of the past.

Your solution depends on defining people by their differences, on segregation and on nationalism. These are not positive forces and wherever they were tried before they resulted in more persecution and murder. They didn't work when breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they didn't work when Israel was founded and they won't work in Africa either. In fact I would go so far as to say they encourage precisely the sort of ethnic cleansing you want to prevent. Fanning the flames of nationalism is simply short-sighted and ill-advised. It fosters grudges instead of reciprocity and envy instead of unity.

And that's not even getting into practical problems with your solution, like the underlying assumption that it's even possible in the first place to draw clean lines on a map that will conveniently separate X from Y, or that doing this will result in a fair distribution of wealth and resources. You mentioned the Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq as an example; if we go by your plan we'd end up splitting the country in a Sunni upper Iraq that includes large cities like Baghdad and owns the upper Euphrates and Tigris but is completely landlocked and a Shia lower Iraq that owns the coastal oil terminals and controls all access to the sea. And you've defined these two Iraqs by the feud between their respective ethnicities. Does this strike you as a sensible or stable setup? Because it sounds like a recipe for blood-spattered war to me.

In another thread I saw you charge your opponent with thinking in terms of frictionless spherical, i.e. fictional and oversimplified, solutions. I say you are doing the very same thing here. Your approach smacks of a simplistic desire for an easy technocratic solution to complex human problems. There isn't one, and forcing one will just make you the next in a long line of Woodrow Wilsons.

[K. A. Pital]

I agree with Siege. Although some straight-line borders hardly make any sense, if readjustment between two states follows, it can be a tool to ease tensions as both nation-states correct borders. But if we split nation-states into smaller entities that have different access to resources, like in the case of Kosovo, Southern Sudan and which may quite soon happen in Libya, we do risk a massive bloody war in the future. It will be the continuation of the civil war as a war between nation-states. If the underlying reasons for the civil war have not been dealt with, it may repeat as a nation-state war later on when rump states choose to solve their internal problems by pointing at someone across the border.

[Lagmonster]

I'm curious about how failed states such as Somalia, or states with weak or challenged governments, would be represented at the bargaining table in any process to establish such a union in the first place.