Started with a lie

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Eh, the "one people one state" principle was seriously tried exactly once - after WW1. It turned out to suck beans and caused endless grief to everyone concerned, and would most likely have ended up in the dusty locker of other dubious Edwardian paraphenelia (like phrenology...) after WW2 had assorted separatists not kept it alive for fairly obvious reasons.

I disagree. The 1-p-1-s has almost never been employed in any systematic way. Take just the continent of Europe for example.

The Congress of Vienna affirmed the idea of a unified Belgium crafted from two peoples, the Flems and the Walloons as well as a Russia that included the Ukraine. The AHE itself was a motley collection at best, and they hosted the gathering.

Versailles, following the Great War (always loved that particular oxymoronic misnomeration ), carved up the AHE, Montenegro, and Serbia into several states: Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. While Hungary and Austria could make a fair claim as to being one "people" the rest of the area included: Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians, Montenegrans, Macedonians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sudeten Germans (plus a few I've probably missed). This was done because all of the groups involved felt entitled to most of the Balkans since their group had, at some point in history, been in control of a large chunk of it. The area was hardly calm throughout the inter-war period.

Yalta and Potsdam divided up the spheres of influence, and Soviet domination squelched internicine rivalry for decades, but the dissolution of the USSR in 1989-1991 left the area free to decide things for themselves. As you know, Czechoslovakia has split, Yugoslavia has splintered, and many of the factions within the region promptly went to war to conquer the rest. Were NATO forces withdrawn, this would likely continue.

Separatist movements in the Basque region and in Ireland want to re-draw their corners of the map, Spain continues to have some level of strain between the Andalusian and Catalonian components of that country, and Italy has effectively separated itself into two separate entities with a shared foreign policy.

....And that's just Europe. If you want to go into the disconnect between the lines on the map and the tribal "people" boundaries in Africa, we could spend a few weeks just sorting out the contenders and their claims.

One-people-one-state has NEVER really been tried, save where geography has allowed for nearly complete homogenization (i.e. Japan -- and even there some might argue about Hokaido). Could the 1-p-1-s model actually work to defuse tensions and conflict if it were implemented? Not sure, but with humanity in control, I always err on the side of cynicism.

Seamus

[Rosacrux redux]

I disagree. The 1-p-1-s has almost never been employed in any systematic way. Take just the continent of Europe for example.

One-people-one-state has NEVER really been tried, save where geography has allowed for nearly complete homogenization (i.e. Japan -- and even there some might argue about Hokaido). Could the 1-p-1-s model actually work to defuse tensions and conflict if it were implemented? Not sure, but with humanity in control, I always err on the side of cynicism.

Seamus

I think you are wrong here. Because, following the wake of nationalism after the Enlightment (now that's an oxymoron...) the aim for every "people" that have found (or thought they have found... ) their "national identity" was excactly that: Ein land = ein volk.

Everybody took a shot at that - or was forced by external factors (see AHE) to follow that path. Sure it was usually implemented poorly, because it is a rather unnatural way to sort things out - nations are an artificial invention most of the times and in many occassions failed miserably. But you can't say it wasn't a goal- it was what everybody was aiming for.

Numerous attempts at ethnic cleansing (even large-scale genocide, as in Turkey 1914-17 and Germany during WW2), a huge number of separatist movements, and other similar incidents, declare in the most vocarious fashion that the effort to creat homogenous single-nation states was and in most occassions still is, the case.

The effort, not the outcome. That is quite different, as I said before. But it is a very, very, very tried "solution". Which has proven to be more of a problem than a solution, anyway...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I think you are wrong here. Because, following the wake of nationalism after the Enlightment (now that's an oxymoron...) the aim for every "people" that have found (or thought they have found... ) their "national identity" was excactly that: Ein land = ein volk.

Everybody took a shot at that - or was forced by external factors (see AHE) to follow that path. Sure it was usually implemented poorly, because it is a rather unnatural way to sort things out - nations are an artificial invention most of the times and in many occassions failed miserably. But you can't say it wasn't a goal- it was what everybody was aiming for.

Numerous attempts at ethnic cleansing (even large-scale genocide, as in Turkey 1914-17 and Germany during WW2), a huge number of separatist movements, and other similar incidents, declare in the most vocarious fashion that the effort to creat homogenous single-nation states was and in most occassions still is, the case.

The effort, not the outcome. That is quite different, as I said before. But it is a very, very, very tried "solution". Which has proven to be more of a problem than a solution, anyway...

Good points. I never said it wasn't a goal for the participants, but you are correct in that I am taking a more structural read on events and not fully addressing the obvious efforts towards an ein reich-ein volk situation that so many of the participants attempted. Most of the combinations I referenced were the "compromise" solutions enacted in the face of these competing tensions. The theme you bring out is important, and vital to understanding how Europe ended up with those artificial conglomerates.

Seamus

[hoom]

Gulf War Episode I?

Plenty of lies on both sides there.
Curiously I do believe that Saddams' claim that Kuwait was illegally drilling at an angle under Iraq was since proven to be actually very true.
The 'it used to be part of Iraq so it should be ours again' bit was not true/legitimate.

Stuff like the Iraqi soldiers tipping babies out of incubators as testified in US Congress (or wherever it was) & widely reported was lies.
Most of those 'Media' lies were fed to them by the US military/government.

The Korean War was also pretty straightforward. The North wanted to 'liberate' the South and the UN didn't want that (because China and the SU were boycotting the Security Counsil).

Plenty of lies/half-truths right there.
The Liberation was (depending on your view-point) bogus.
The Soviet Union & China boycotted the UN & the UN intervened because the UN was being blatantly manipulated as a tool of US/Western foriegn policy as shown by since declassified documents.
Calling it a 'Police Action' instead of a war was a lie.

[Kraxis]

Plenty of lies on both sides there.
Curiously I do believe that Saddams' claim that Kuwait was illegally drilling at an angle under Iraq was since proven to be actually very true.
The 'it used to be part of Iraq so it should be ours again' bit was not true/legitimate.

Stuff like the Iraqi soldiers tipping babies out of incubators as testified in US Congress (or wherever it was) & widely reported was lies.
Most of those 'Media' lies were fed to them by the US military/government.

Plenty of lies/half-truths right there.
The Liberation was (depending on your view-point) bogus.
The Soviet Union & China boycotted the UN & the UN intervened because the UN was being blatantly manipulated as a tool of US/Western foriegn policy as shown by since declassified documents.
Calling it a 'Police Action' instead of a war was a lie.

Yes, but the reasons for the wars were not lies. In the Gulf War, I am pretty certain too that the Kuwaitis were drilling in the far side of the fence, but then again the border was rather fluid away from the highways. So Iraq had perhaps a reason. And Kuwait was indeed a province of Iraq when it had been a British protectorate, so it wasn't that far off as a claim. It was not reason enough in both cases for a complete annexation, but they weren't lies.

Also, the Congress had already decided to expell Iraq when the 'horror' stories came out. They were mere frosting on the cake. The real, offical, reason for the war was to expell an invader from a sovereign country. That was no lie, and the rest of us (rear: the world) pretty much accepted that. The bad-mouthing of Saddam and Iraq in general was just to make certain the public was entirely behind the Coalition. They were not the causes for the war.

Korea was artificially cut in half at the end of WWII. Neither part accepted that (and why should they?). To an extent the North Koreans were right that Korea should be united again, but their point of view of how that should be done didn't go well with the West. And honestly, South Korea was an oppressive and dictatorial coutry at the time. The living standards were quite a bit better in the industrial North (yes, it was better to be a North Korean at the time). So there is a certain degree of truth in the liberation, and there were also quite a few insurgents in South Korea (like in Vietnam later).
So for North Korea it was more a case of extending the rules a bit. While the West said that it would fight communism teeth and nails. That was no lie either. How the West went about and go the rest of the world in on it was like any other case of politics (lots of bargaining, bartering, offering stuff up, pressing and so on). But they didn't lie about the reason for the war.