See previous posts regarding fun facts about the coldest inhabited regions of the world, such as France’s Icelands, Iceland’s bankruptcy, banks of seeds, and seeding arctic populations.

Tribalization and nationalism in the arctic continues! Following on the push for independence from Denmark by the Faroe Islands, Greenland this week voted with a supermajority of more than 75% to receive greater autonomy from Denmark. This may even lead to independence for this enormous island of just 56,000 people. With the approval of more than 3/4 voters, Greenland now has the sovereign right to take control of its security, system of justice, and police force.

Greenland scenery.

What is so bad about Denmark? Greenlanders elect two representatives who sit in the Danish parliament, so the region receives due political representation. The current primary export is fish, but Denmark provides a whopping half billion dollar grant for public services such as education and health care, so there is plenty of economic assistance. Locals may believe that independence promises a greater shares of profits from possible exports of oil, rubies, gold and diamonds—if they can ever convince anyone to invest the money to exploit these possible resources. But that’s a long way off. And who only knows how it would defend itself. (SIDENOTE: does anyone know if Greenland is within the US defense perimeter along with Iceland?)

Ultimately, this referendum comes down to tribalism and the phenomenon of arctic nationalism, the same factor that plays into Faroese identity, as noted previously. Greenland may be the sovereign territory of Denmark, but it shares little history with that nation. Up to 88% of the population is Inuit or mixed Danish and Inuit in ethnicy. Only 12% are of European descent. And Greenland explicitly chose to leave the European Community in 1985, just as the Faroese chose to opt out of EU membership.

A century ago, nationalism led to the breakup of the imperial world order and World War II dismantled the remaining few empires. Since then, the nation-state system was forced upon much of the world, and more specifically, decolonized parts unready and unable to handle it. Integral to this system was the sovereignty to which each state was entitled meaning, among other things, that each state was master of its own territory and affairs. Others had no right to involve themselves in the domestic affairs of another state. Like nationalism, this system is also leading to the breakup of the world order we’ve come to rely on.

Failed states, ungoverned areas and transnational threats are on everyone’s tongues and in blogs and magazines everywhere. However, in retrospect, stubbornly sticking to our current system will only continue to foster that which threatens it, just as the imperial system fed nationalist movements that destroyed it. This author does not contend there is a single decision making body able to rewrite the rules (at least an effective one) nor that everyone would agree on such, but the idea needs to be marketed. Whether talking about limited sovereignty like in a future Kosovo, protectorates, peacekeeping and making, or guardianships, the fact remains that we’re already talking about and implementing a post-nation-state system of sovereignty. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about.

The UN Responsibility to Protect was the first step meant to formalize this reality as a political agreement. It breaks down into the responsibility to prevent, react and rebuild. According to German professor Joachim Kraus, around 6 million people died in the 1990s as a result of both inaction and ineffectiveness of the United Nations. From this, the United States began to reevaluate the system of collective security which dated back to the Cold War, namely that of multilateralism. Europe, however, did no such thing and the 2003 liberation of Iraq brought to light the widening gap between the two.

Yet, both within the United States and between the US and EU, debates tend to be idealogical and thus superficial. More worrying than the debate itself is that the ongoing instability in Iraq has confirmed many Europeans’ view that multilateral action is the only solution. Here, however, Europeans and the American left fail to further specify exactly the nature of the multilateral action they support. Whereas the UN is an open and large scale multilateral institution, the other post-WWII institutions like the IMF and World Bank are not, but are rather selectively multilateral. It is therefore no surprise that the dominating Western influence in the latter two has made them far more effective than the UN. Europeans don’t want a truly multilateral approach to transnational security issues, they don’t trust the Russians, Chinese and third world strongmen anymore than we do. They simply want to participate in the decision making process.

Yet, how can a political institution which has not yet revised its outdated policies expect to play such an important role? Far more important than the outcome of the ongoing hostilities in Iraq for Iraqis is that for Europe and the US because it will foretell the fate of those in similar situations around the world in need of help. It is highly doubtful that the United Nations is politically able to follow through on the responsibilities it took on with The Responsibility to Protect nor that they could pass a stronger version thereof. In addition, countries like Russia and others would attempt to use humanitarian intervention as a fig leaf for self-interested control of smaller states. Future interventions will need to be and will likely be be ad hoc coalitions of the willing within a select club of countries included in NATO and the G8.

Kosovo has been not only a success of selective multilateralism through NATO but a model for future interventions. Iraq called existing European security policies into question. The unresolved status of Kosovo is an opportunity for Europe to begin to answer it.