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CIAO DATE: 4/00
Foreign Policy
Self-Determination in an Interdependent World
Strobe Talbott
This abstract is adapted from an article appearing in the Spring 2000 issue of FOREIGN POLICY magazine.
IChechnya. Kosovo. East Timor. Aceh. The characters and the settings are different, but the plot is the same: The people who live in a remote corner of a country resent, often with good reason, the powers-that-be in the far-off capital; they are a majority locally but a minority in the larger state; they want independence and are prepared to fight for it. Sooner or later, the resulting conflict becomes a challenge to American foreign policy, either because of the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis or because of the threat to regional peace and stability-or both. Although there is no one size-fits-all blueprint for dealing with this scenario, the rise of interdependence offers a remedy for intrastate conflicts that is better than secession: that is, to combine the promotion of democracy on the part of the central government with efforts to help would-be breakaway areas benefit from cross-border economic development and political cooperation.
The United States itself has lived through a version of this story. It became a melting pot of nationalities, while in Europe, the Treaty of Westphalia had established a system of nation-states. But there are two difficulties with the concept of the nation-state. First, carried to an extreme, it means that every one of the literally thousands of nationalities on Earth should have its own state, which would make for a very large United Nations and a very messy world. Second, a pure nation-state does not exist in nature.
At the end of World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson embraced self-determination as one of the foundations of the Versailles peace. This aroused skepticism and foreboding in his own time, and even in his own administration. In the decades since, many have depicted American foreign policy as a contest between idealism-or "Wilsonianism"-and realism; between a soft-hearted Wilson and Wilson's supposed antipode, the rough-riding U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. But in fact, Roosevelt preached the gospel of idealism before Wilson. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, he called for U.S. intervention and the creation of "a great world agreement ... to back righteousness by force." He believed that "We ought not solely to consider our own interests." Roosevelt would be mightily offended to hear himself depicted as a Yankee Richelieu or Metternich.
Now, in the wake of the seventh Balkan war of this century, here we are, over 80 years later, trying again to get it right: The United States is working with its European allies and the people of Southeastern Europe to remake the region without, this time, splitting up states into ministates that are neither economically nor politically viable. We are trying to define and apply the concept of self-determination in a way that is conducive to integration and not to disintegration, in a way that will lead to lasting peace rather than recurrent war.
There is reason for cautious optimism in the Balkans, but this much is clear: It is neither reasonable nor realistic to expect an enduring peace as long as Milosevic, an indicted war criminal, remains in power. Broader trends in Europe demonstrate why Milosevic is swimming against the tide of history. The old Westphalian system is giving way to a Europe of intertwined economies and cultures. Countries all across Europe are giving autonomy to regions within their borders.
Helping Europe succeed in this experiment is a challenge for the United States. One way to do so is through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). President Clinton and other world leaders reaffirmed one of its longstanding principles at last year's OSCE summit in Istanbul: that international borders should not be changed by force, but that governments must protect the civic integrity of all populations. As a corollary to this principle, the way a government treats its own people is not just an "internal matter": It is the business of the international community, for there are issues of both universal values and regional peace at stake. By extension, this principle gives American diplomacy a template for supporting self-determination without encouraging secessionism.
Russia and Turkey provide two prominent though divergent examples of the effort to deal with self-determination. Turkey has struggled with the "Kurdish question": how to grant these Turkish citizens autonomy without abetting the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or undermining national unity. Both the Turkish government and many Kurds have recognized there cannot be a purely military solution to the Kurdish question: Any settlement will depend on whether the government can safeguard human rights for all Turkish citizens; the EU's recent decision to consider Turkey as a candidate for membership is a positive step.
Russia's conflict with Chechnya, on the other hand, is an especially complex case. U.S. policy has been consistent: The United States supports the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and its right to combat terrorism. But as President Clinton stressed at the OSCE summit, the United States believes that "the means Russia has chosen will undermine its ends." The best way for an ethnically diverse, geographically sprawling state to protect itself against separatism is to protect the rights of minorities and far-flung communities. Democracy is the political system most explicitly designed to ensure self-determination.
Indonesia offers two different examples of the problem of separatism-and its solution. In East Timor, over 30 years of brutal military rule made the local population determined to break free of Jakarta. After a popular vote, the Indonesian government has renounced its claim on the territory. Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 miles away, the people of Aceh are demanding independence. In an attempt to keep Aceh from pulling out of Indonesia, President Abdurrahman Wahid pledged to bring to justice those responsible for past abuses and to increase autonomy.
While every case is sui generis and each will require different policies, they stand a better chance of resolution if all involved take full account of globalization and its sub-phenomenon, regionalization. Countries are subject to forces that-for good or ill-cross borders. The most successful states will be democracies that harness these forces and facts of life rather than deny them. The United States has an obligation to encourage these sensible ideals. By fostering both regional integration and cooperation along with democracy, the United States simultaneously advances its interests and its values. That is a guiding principle on which both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt would certainly agree.