National elites often vie for personal gain under popular slogans of self-determination; however, they are playing a dangerous game, and in doing so, they risk losing everything they have. Yevgeny Shestakov, host of the RG Discussion Club, speaks with Alexei Miller, Ph.D. in History and professor at the Central European University and the Russian State University of the Humanities, on how multiethnic countries such as Russia can prevent disintegration.
Yevgeny Shestakov: Almost every year we see certain territories splitting off from existing internationally recognized states and declaring themselves independent. Is this a pattern or are these simply individual events that are not typical of a global development?
Alexei Miller: I would like to rephrase your question as follows: Can we speak of a set of circumstances that encourages the emergence of new states? These events are not merely coincidental, but I would not consider them a growing tendency or suggest a snowball effect.
Shestakov: Why not? The tendency is evident Sudan split into two parts, Yugoslavia no longer exists, Abkhazia and South Ossetia effectively split off from Georgia. One gets the impression that these are not individual events and that more and more nations want self-determination.
Miller: Nations cannot want anything; they do not exist as political actors. All the examples you cited are very different from each other, and each of them needs to be considered individually. For example, Russia played an important role in the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In that case, we had a country that, on the one hand, had tensions with its ethnic minorities and, on the other hand, had a standoff with its large neighbor who was ready to back these ethnic minorities. This is only one example.
Another example is Yugoslavia, in which many actors had their hands, including the United States.
Finally, there is Sudan which, to my mind, became a split state long ago. The recent referendum was an attempt to establish more efficient entities in that space. I would also like to cite Czechoslovakia, which peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia without any further conflict between the two. This is why I say that the set of factors that causes existing countries to fall apart and new ones to emerge is unique in each case. So, the one-size-fits-all approach does not work here.
Full version of the interview was published on valdaiclub.com
Yevgeny Shestakov: Almost every year we see certain territories splitting off from existing internationally recognized states and declaring themselves independent. Is this a pattern or are these simply individual events that are not typical of a global development?
Alexei Miller: I would like to rephrase your question as follows: Can we speak of a set of circumstances that encourages the emergence of new states? These events are not merely coincidental, but I would not consider them a growing tendency or suggest a snowball effect.
Shestakov: Why not? The tendency is evident Sudan split into two parts, Yugoslavia no longer exists, Abkhazia and South Ossetia effectively split off from Georgia. One gets the impression that these are not individual events and that more and more nations want self-determination.
Miller: Nations cannot want anything; they do not exist as political actors. All the examples you cited are very different from each other, and each of them needs to be considered individually. For example, Russia played an important role in the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In that case, we had a country that, on the one hand, had tensions with its ethnic minorities and, on the other hand, had a standoff with its large neighbor who was ready to back these ethnic minorities. This is only one example.
Another example is Yugoslavia, in which many actors had their hands, including the United States.
Finally, there is Sudan which, to my mind, became a split state long ago. The recent referendum was an attempt to establish more efficient entities in that space. I would also like to cite Czechoslovakia, which peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia without any further conflict between the two. This is why I say that the set of factors that causes existing countries to fall apart and new ones to emerge is unique in each case. So, the one-size-fits-all approach does not work here.
Full version of the interview was published on valdaiclub.com
