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What Europe Would Look Like if all the Separatists Won

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:09AM   
from the drawing-between-the-lines dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Voters in Scotland have turned down independence for now, but separatist movements continue across Europe, possibly threatening to dismantle Spain, France, and Belgium as well as the UK. The next milestone will be an independence vote on Nov. 9 in Catalonia, the region on the northeast coast of Spain which includes Barcelona; separatists are expected to win handily, but the vote is not binding on the Spanish government. Slate has a neat map showing what a completely redrawn Europe would look like, if accommodations were made for all movements that have joined a loose collective called European Free Alliance; a more complete but visually less satisfying map, including EFA holdouts such as Northern Ireland, appears in Wikipedia. The Washington Post has thumbnail descriptions of eight movements.

• Re:How about the US? (Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:48PM

  by khallow (3766) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:48PM (#97355) Journal

  I say this as a proud blue state liberal who loves his country but sincerely believes that the red state conservative political viewpoint is just wrong and I will never be convinced otherwise (Really. I've heard all the opposing arguments. To me, they're all bullshit. I'm sure many red staters would say the same of me and my views). Nor do I believe that the red staters will ever change their views enough to co-exist peacefully in a regime I would like to live under. As such, I believe we would be much happier living in separate countries without each other. It's not like this isn't personal for me, too - four of my siblings would (probably) become red-staters, as it suits them more politically. I'd still have other blue-state brother to keep me company. Let everyone keep the current constitution (to start with), but agree to a peaceful split with a negotiated settlement over resources and property. Let people keep their property and give the sates a reasonable time to set up programs to help with the inevitable relocation effects.

  I have to roll my eyes at the ignorance here. There's two problems with this. First, when someone's point of view is "wrong", it's generally because you don't understand it. I think that's the case here. Sure, there are times when things are clearly wrong such as the people in charge oh, murdering six million Jews or executing people because they wear prescription glasses. But here, people are just "wrong" because they're on the other team. Oh sure, I bet you have all sorts of straw men rationalizations for why you believe whatever it is you believe. I just don't care.

  Second, how would the blue country feed itself? By importing food from the red country. Such a dependency has a habit of creating long term strategic tensions. After all the "society is three meals away from collapse" observation is a blue country problem not a red country problem. Resources in general would tend to be on the red country side as would most of the nuclear weapons.

  Similarly, the blue country would have the population and perhaps industry to build a huge military advantage. So we have a really bad combination of considerable weakness and considerable strength on the part of the blue country. That tends to lead to wars rather than peaceful break up. And the only sort of war that the red country would be likely to come out ahead in would be a nuclear war - due to its dispersed population.

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