this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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I would not call splitting the baby progress. Vietnam, for instance, wasn't liberated through division. It had to be reunited before either half was free from civil war. Same with Germany. Or Korea, for that matter.
But that's just my perspective
Not when you put it like that! Lol
In those instances splitting may have been an important step forward even if it wasn't the final step. (I don't remember the context that well for those examples) (I looked it up, at least in Vietnam, idk how you expected them to go forward without splitting given all of the external pressure.)
I think the world will always be in flux. Do you think we'll eventually just have a static set of countries with static borders and all of the people will be happy? If so, I'd love to hear why. If not, then by what actions do you suppose those nations change to deal with ever evolving groups, environment, genes, etc? Why would secession be particularly worse than other options?
For example, I'm not so sure the legitimacy of North Korea is affirmed by the existence of south Korea more than it is affirmed by their allies (China, Russia, etc). Why would we focus on South Korea seceding more than other countries supporting?
Again, particularly with regard to Vietnam, you had a country that was fully embracing independence against the French colonialists and Japanese invaders, when the US stepped in an installed a coup government in the south that leveraged a large Catholic population to resist de-colonialization. And what followed was some of the most horrifying years of the decades-long war. A war that spilled into neighboring Laos and Cambodia thanks to machinations by the Kissinger state department and Helms CIA.
Similarly, the Korean peninsula - which had liberated itself from Japanese occupation only years prior - was spit under the same model. Catholics in the south were galvenized into a coup government to resist anti-colonial forces allied with China in the north. In Japan and Indonesia and the Phillipines, the island was fully dominated by a cartel of Opus Dei affiliated business leaders and junior officers.
Germany's division was maintained by splitting the old Nazi military into competing fascist regimes on the opposite sides of the Iron Curtain.
If you're an anarchist, I cannot imagine how a western religious institution propping up a fascist regime's military dicatorship over half the old nation's territory benefits you in any way. It's not as though the Cold War was kind to either side of the border.
I think that conglomerates like the USSR, the EU, the US, the BRICS, and the nascent African Union demonstrate paths out of the rigidly policed micro-states and their endless boarder feuds. We'll always have some degree of flux, but there is a huge difference between Bush v Gore and Lincoln v Jefferson.
The US intervention in Korea and the militarization of the 38th parallel has dragged out what could have been a post-WW2 era decolonialization period into nearly a century of clandestine warfare and bigoted propaganda. A country that should be comfortably on par with its unified neighbors is trapped in a state of suspended hyper-policing and dominated by a handful of oligarchical interests in the name of national security.
FFS, the Far-Right South Korean President just tried to have Parliamentarians arrested on the accusation they were North Korean spies last December.
How on earth does this benefit any kind of anarchist cause?
Man this is really getting into the weeds. I don't have those histories in my head well enough to talk about specifics like that. (Though I do appreciate all that you wrote. It is interesting to read.)
Me either.
I'm pretty sure the main focus is just about the abstract idea of a group wanting to leave a larger group.
Secession is anarchist in the sense that it rejects and fractures a dominant power in favor of one that better represents folks. So not full anarchist, but definitely more in that anarchist than restricting that ability.
Secession is a tool. Of course there are going to be bad examples, but that doesn't mean it's never justified and never a good way forward.
What if you had just been annexed? Not allowed to try and leave?
When has this actually happened?
Are you describing a country where a significant powerful plurality embraced annexation (a la Texas under Polk or Hawaii under the The United Fruit Company).
Or one that's been liberated after a terrible Continental war, a la the Eastern European states after WW2?
Because these are very different situations.
But more importantly, would Hawaii benefit somehow if the island's residents staged an armed insurrection? Secession does nothing to fix the underlying economic problems of the island. It doesn't even address the popular impulses of the proletariat.
You're putting the cart before the horse.