Building on one of my favorite subjects, devolution, the decline of the state and the proliferation of microstates, I’ve put together a map of the future of Europe in 2020. It is purely speculative and in no way a firm prediction, but rather a sketch of the possibilities and list of the most likely cases. It is by no means exhaustive and you’ll notice seemingly obvious states such as Wales, Sicily, Crete and others are not listed. This is in part because I will argue that two local conditions are necessary for a viable movement and successful independence.

First, the state must be well off economically and able to hold it’s own, i.e. it must have more to gain than lose. Hence, states like Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria are the two richest in Germany, essentially subsidizing the rest would have more motivation than the poor underdeveloped east German states which feed off the rest. The second condition is that the region must have a well developed and unique identity which comes in the form of a strong dialect or different language, history of independence or autonomy and other characteristics that go into defining a culture. Thus, Bavaria (which is actually what most people think about when they think of Germany) is both rich and has a long cultural past and different identity. It has its own dialect, a history of independence and a host of other unique traits including traditional song, dance, clothes etc that other regions lack.

Given that Europe already has a number of microstates – Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City – and growing list of independence movements (Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia, North Italy, Bavaria), I find the map a reasonably accurate picture of what Europe would look like should this trend continue. Click on the picture below for a full size version of the map.

Effects in Europe

Even if only a few of these microstates were to be born, it could have serious consequences regionally, transatlantically and globally. In Europe, it would suddenly create a host of rich and poor states, which their previous host states balanced out. Northern Germany will get poorer and the two southern states stay very rich for example. Over time, the lack of wealth transfer from southern to northern Germany, or from northern to southern Italy will likely create less developed and poorer states within Europe no longer able to stay afloat. As an Italian friend once joked, without the north, southern Italy would turn into a Catholic Pakistan. As reader DJ noted, now more than ever, regions of today’s states are trying to maximize the economic benefits of globalization while minimizing the social costs, leading to richer regions breaking from poorer ones.

So what will independence look like? It won’t have the same meaning that we think of today. At the local level, these newly minted states will enjoy previously unparalleled independence, flexibility and likely prosperity. However, at the same time, they will be subservient to the European Union on international matters such as defense, some foreign policy, trade agreements, transportation and environmental issues. Also and perhaps most importantly, a credible Europe wide defense would have to exist to make the creation of new states viable.

Conclusion

Naturally, this is an exercise in conjecture and the implications of such events would be far reaching indeed. For example, what would become of US bases in Germany and Italy? And to take the trend even further, could we one day see old school “Greek” leagues of states, perhaps a constellation of conservative states and more liberal ones (or rather rich vs poor), or Germanic vs Romance? Only time will tell.

From tribes to city states to states, humans have always sought security, and used familial ties (constantly redefined) as the links to achieve that. Similarly, humans have an innate need to differentiate themselves whether by family, race, region, culture, religion etc. Globalization is confronting people with more and more differences (other countries, cultures, civilizations, religions and more) at an unparalleled pace. This is leading to individuals worldwide to redefine their identity and their loyalty creating both upward and downward trends. This recent telegraph article on an independence party for Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, has a quote by a party spokesman on exactly this trend:

“The EU makes it possible for countries such as this one to split up. We believe we are experiencing both globalisation and localisation. Some problems are global, like defence or the environment, and these need to be dealt with by the EU. But at the same time democracy needs to be closer to the people, and that is why we are a regionalist party. The two trends go hand in hand.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. More on this topic within the next week or so.

The results are in, and the outcome is clear—Center-Right parties across Europe made solid gains in elections that finished up yesterday. But beyond that, far-right fringe parties in many EU members states came out with sizable margins. Part of this may show the effect that an economic recession can have on the body politic.

Some examples of the far-right gains:

• The anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders came in second in the Netherlands with 17% in the Netherlands on Thursday.
• The Hungarian anti-Gypsy extremist party Jobbik took three of the country’s 22 seats.
• In Austria two far-right parties mustered 18%.
• Extreme Slovak nationalists gained their first seat in the European parliament.
• “Eurosceptic” parties won more seats in Denmark, Finland, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

Comments made by observers:

• The leaders in France and Italy benefited from tough anti-immigration and law-and-order stances, despite the tabloid scandals of the private lives of both.
• Turnout was the lowest in 30 years, estimated at around 43%, compared with 45% last time and 62% in Europe’s first election in 1979.
• Despite jobless numbers soaring amid the worst economic crisis, center-leftist and socialist parties are not benefiting from the political fallout.

As awful as this current recession is for many, consider how good life is compared to how bad it could be. Food prices could be crippilingly high; inflation could be dehabilitating; unemployment figures could be double what they are now. Suddenly, the context in which Hitler won election, and in which America almost elected William Jennings Bryan, doesn’t seem so far-fetched, or so much like outdated history.

The EU and Japan are two major economic and political global powers today. But it’s no secret that, due to aging populations and the rise of BRICs and other competitors, their power will wane in the future. The Global Threats report sums up the situation in both regions as follows:

EU

Europe by 2025 will have made little progress toward achieving its current vision of becoming a cohesive, integrated, and influential global actor. It will be in a position to bolster political stability and democratization on Europe’s periphery by taking in additional new members in the Balkans, and perhaps Ukraine and Turkey. However, continued failure to convince skeptical publics of the benefits of deeper economic, political, and social integration and to grasp the nettle of a shrinking and aging population by enacting painful reforms could leave the EU a hobbled giant distracted by internal bickering and competing national agendas, and less able to translate its economic clout into global influence.

There are no easy fixes for Europe’s demographic deficits except likely cutbacks in health and retirement benefits, which most states have not begun to implement, or even to contemplate. Yet the drop-off in working-age populations will undermine Europe’s social welfare model. Progress on economic liberalization is likely to continue only in gradual steps until aging populations or prolonged economic stagnation force more dramatic changes—a crisis point that may not hit before some time in the next decade and might be pushed off even further.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just yesterday I again recommended that Georgia aim to internationalize its conflict with Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia as its only hope for eventual victory is diplomatic and not military. Today, the headlines seem to confirm that either the Georgian Foreign Ministry readers our blog or that this blogger should perhaps go work for them. According to reuters,

Georgia wants the European Union to send police to the separatist region of Abkhazia, Georgian Deputy Prime Minister Georgy Baramidze said on Wednesday. “We are going to present this request to the European Union, we are going to ask for European police forces to be sent to Abkhazia,” he told a news conference after a Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg. “What we need is for everyone to take part, including Russia.”

Indeed, the Georgian strategy should aim not to exclude Russia but to include them wherever possible, however, along with Europeans and Americans. Additionally, the Georgian strategy must stay on message that it aims to solve the problem or end the conflict and humanitarian crisis, not to take back its territory. In this way, Russia will have difficulty rejecting any offer which indeed includes them and aims not at retaking territory but at solving the problem.

Additionally, the European Union is now dispatching a delegation of foreign ministers to visit Abkhazia, assess the situation and to cool tensions. The makeup of that group should be rather sympathetic towards Tbilisi as it consists of the Slovenian, Swedish, Polish and Lithuanian foreign ministers.

Check back for more as the situation develops. For the moment, a former ambassador of Greece has written an op-ed in support of Georgia and condemning Europe’s cowardice and unwillingness to stand up for its own principles.

Jamestown also has similar advice for Georgia and a further analysis of the peacekeeping situation.

… on Iraq and the Iraq War, NATO and the EU, Pakistan and Iran, radical Islam and pacifism, George Bush and Obama and McCain, objective reality and moral considerations, and plenty more.

The interview is short but the content is real—highly recommended reading (and the articles comes from Der Spiegel of all places). To quote a few choice morsels:

I do not know many Europeans who would deny that the victory of radical Islam in Baghdad, Beirut or Saudi Arabia would have huge consequences for the West. However, they are not willing to fight to prevent it… [this] is not a sustainable position. In the long run, we cannot have two categories of members in the NATO alliance: those that are willing to fight and others that are trying to be members à la carte. That cannot work for long.

With regards to this, check out this interview with Prince Harry of Great Britain, etc., who holds the rank of cornet in the Household Cavalry and who recently talked of his pride and excitement on serving on the front line in Afghanistan—a real anomoly in the European political sphere.

Nixon sat down with Mao three years after we had initial contact. I think a meeting with an Iranian president would be at the end of a process, not the very beginning.

Food for thought for those presidential candidates who say they would sit down and chat with Chavez, Kim and Ahmadinejad the moment they take office.

We face three challenges currently: The disappearance of the nation-state; the rise of India and China; and, thirdly, the emergence of problems and challenges that cannot be solved by a single power, such as energy and the environment. We do not have the luxury to focus on one problem; we have to deal with all three of them or we won’t succeed with any of them.

Yesterday it was strength in numbers. Today it’s efficiency alone. It seems Montenegro may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Readers will surely have read by now that Catalonia has opted for yet more autonomy within Spain.

Catalans, Spaniards and Europeans all have reason to be proud of Sunday’s democratic decision to expand the powers of self-government available to the citizens of Catalonia. The Catalans wanted it. The Spanish parliament mandated it as constitutionally lawful. And the European Union provides a framework – part architecture, part shock-absorbers – that should make such exercises perfectly ordinary.

Indeed, as the Financial Times note, the key here is the European Union, a framework within which such moves aren’t as potentially violent as they otherwise would be. In most other regions, this would be one or two steps short of war. In the past, regions with (often) shared linguistic, cultural and historical ties banded together to become states, to better throw their weight around. Of course, others were unified by force like Germany but as politics and government evolved, the world moved towards central governments. Today, with the breakup of empires, decolonization, the spread of technology and globalization, centralization has peaked and we’re headed towards more devolution or a reconfiguring of states, as Daniel Nexon at the Duck puts it.

However, despite his reservations, this is indeed more than just a reconfiguration because it’s occuring for many of the same reasons as neo-medievalism and global guerillas. In the case of Catalonia, the supply side of government so to say, has changed. Today, smaller regions are increasingly able to provide all the necessary services and functions of a state. Does Atlanta need Washington or does Istanbul need Ankara? The answer today is more often than not, no, or not much longer. With an airport and a few roads and phone lines, regions are increasingly directly connected to the rest of the world. On top of that, within Europe, with a supranational economic and security structure and national governments which are continuing to cede sovereignty to the EU, national goverments are becoming unnecessary middle men. And middle men get cut:

In Europe’s case, pressure is being exerted on the central government from both above and below.
This can be seen as the beginning of a correction in the market of government services. The demand is simply following the supply elsewhere. As Lexinton Green of Chicago Boyz noted in my post on the coming micro-states:

I would think the EU government would like to see all the existing European states disintegrate into regional units, or smaller. Then there would be nothing left to challenge it. Less cynically, it makes sense to be a breakaway state in Europe, under EU supervision. No one is going to come in and massacre you, probably.

Call it what you will, but the trend is real. However, don’t take this to be all doom and gloom. In fact, this will indeed be positive as long as it happens within some overarching economic and security framework. In fact, even fellow empire enthusiast Niall Ferguson has changed his tune on union between Scotland and England.

“I now find myself feeling that independence would be preferable to this halfway house we have at the moment. Ireland and some of the east European countries like Estonia are showing that small countries which embrace economic liberalism can thrive.”Â?

John Robb chimes in as well:

A recurring theme of global guerrillas is that smaller organizations are often better suited for success (more agile, responsive, and cohesive) within the fluid/chaotic environment spawned by globalization’s new rule set—as with all ubiquitous platforms, this new global rule set is minimalist (that’s all we can agree on). The same is true for economic “white” competition at the nation-state level.

However, as this process plays out peacefully in the Core and most likely to the Core’s overall benefit, the same process is occuring in the Gap under the opposite conditions. Instead of moving towards smaller more efficient units under a larger economic and security umbrella, the trend is moving forward in regions which have just lost one. Russia’s near-abroad is the most obvious example. An Abkhazia or Nagorno-Karbagh in Spain wouldn’t make people think twice. But in the chaotic Gap, it’s a recipe for violence.

As for the rest of Europe, this tidbit from Italy piqued my interest:

Success in the Catalonian referendum for independence signals the direction for the whole of Europe, claimed the President of the Lombardy Region, Roberto Formigoni, commenting on the Catalans’ vote in support of the referendum, whilst at the Assolombarda meeting “Not everything in the referendum is good – Formigoni observed – matters have been put together that have nothing to do with independence, and if I’d had to vote I’d certainly have had problems. Even with a policy that I don’t agree with, it’s pretty clear that the direction of Europe has been flagged up, and it is that of recognising that the regions have more power to make decisions. It’s exactly the road that Italy has taken up and I hope that on Sunday this will be confirmed. Our referendum is better formulated that the one in Catalonia, because it talks about real devolution”.

Anyone know more?