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My friend Barbara in Texas assures me that Texas has the right to secede from the Union any time. As an Australian I am a little dubious as to whether the Washington federal government would permit any such thing to happen. Especially after seeing the rampant stomping of liberty at Waco.
Around the world, different nations have permitted sections of themselves to secede. Singapore seceded from Malaysia. The Russians allowed several Muslim states around the Caspian secede. Indonesia permitted East Timor to secede. Yugoslavia underwent a fragmentation. There is a tribe in Eastern Canada who have undergone a limited secession.
Most of the wars and unrest at the turn of the third millennium are about the right of an ethnic minority to determine it's future. Here are a few examples that spring to mind.
In past times conquest and rape were responsible for absorption of ethnic minorities. China and India are examples of nations that have suffered and seek to apply conquest to absorb ethnic minorities.
A cynic might notice that many of these secession movements seem to be in resource rich provinces. Resource rich province secession movements in the list are marked with a hash #.
Many of the remaining secession movements are long standing and seem based on a deep seated philosophical (religious or political) difference. These secession movements are marked with an ampersand (daemon) &.
Taiwan is a special case. It is a wealthy in that it has industrious citizens living under a liberal political system .
The states of Kashmir, Taiwan & Tibet are the result of war.
Is the right to secede the ultimate test of democracy? Or is the drive for secession driven by a failure in democracy?
Where there is good government there should be no impulse to secede.
Should the resources of a region belong to
the people whose ancestors owned (presumably through conquest) the
region?
Or should they be shared world-wide?