Alright well that wasn't clear before. To me it's sort of like giving people the right to vote on/reject school budgets. Give them the right and of course they'll reject them. You still run into the problem of who gets the "right" to independence. Are there any criteria at all? It's unsettling even if it's not carried out. I think Canadians would agree vis-a-vis Quebec.

@Putin, the fact that two states can come to blows doesn't mean the HAVE to stay together, nor does it mean they should

Sudan only became two states as a result of a carefully negotiated peace agreement. They were only trying to end the conflict. That there hasn't been peace in the past 6 years (since the agreement on holding an independence referendum) isn't because people tried to re-arrange their borders, it is because the state as a whole doesn't exist in the same way as other states. It exists as an entity imagined by only a few foreign diplomats...

you can't very well run a country when half the population thinks that you are a foreigner who has no right to impose law on you.

It certainly wasn't imagined by the British and the Egyptians, who fostered this sense of separation prior to independence. The two sides were officially prohibited from interacting with each other, beginning in 1922 with the Passports and Permits Ordinance. Egypt fostered South Sudanese nationalism, in order to play the divide-and-rule game that the British loved to play, because they wanted Sudan to remain part of Egypt. The South Sudanese adopted English as their official language and were deliberately isolated from the outside world, which shows you how they fit into the whole program of discouraging the Sudanese national movement, which was influenced by the pan-Arabism of the anti-colonial period. They purged everything Arab - clothing, religion, language, commerce, from the South.

Like most "independence" movements, especially in the development world, this is yet another divide-and-rule ploy to seize the oil resources of the South (70% of Sudan's total, which doesn't include the disputed Kurdufan region where fighting has broken out after 5-6 years of peace) from Khartoum. Sudan had a working federal state for the past decade and now the end of the civil war has been replaced with new territorial disputes. Except the difference this time is that South Sudan can be legitimately armed as a sovereign state.

I can't think of a single partition where the result of partition was more peaceful than the period which preceded it. The only way partition can succeed is if there is large-scale ethnic cleansing of all other groups from the partitioned territories. In cases where a residual minority presence remains, there will be continued fighting. Indeed there is intensified risk of conflict because everything is now up for grabs. Once established boundaries are now unsettled and fought over by the new states.

putin i agree that partition is usually a bad thing, but you have to respect the right of people to declare independence, even if they are subject to the influence of history. aren't we all? are you going to walk into south sudan, give them that lecture, and tell them they will still be under khartoum come july 9? i don't think so.

so far s. sudan is admirably refusing to retaliate for attacks in the disputed region, last i heard anyway. i am cautiously optimistic about this partition, in that it may not be as bloody as it could have been.

the criteria are a well established majority in favor of it, in a vote deemed fair. the sudan vote was fair, so there you go. on what basis can you tell a group of people they have to stay a part of a state if they want to leave?

again let me re-emphasize that i am not fan of secession. but if that's what the people in the area really want, something should be done to meet their demands. secession can often be avoided by autonomy grants, concessions, and so on. but sometimes that doesn't work, and people have a right to self-determination.

i can sense questions coming to me about the CSA. and to you i must truthfully say that although the civil war ended up working out for the best, if i had lived in that time period and not felt strongly about slavery (which as much as i'd like to believe i'd be a free radical like john brown, i probably would have not had an issue with), then i likely would have defended the south's right to secede, whether i was a northerner or a southerner.

that would be all other things being equal though. the slavery thing complicates it a bit. regardless, that was a long time ago and like someone else pointed out a lot has changed since the 19th century.

and i think in most cases the people can usually be convinced that secession is a bad idea. because it usually objectively is. that's why scotland and quebec and so on can talk all day about seceding, but they won't. in a more volatile zone like sudan, it's harder to tell the people that they'll be better of with north sudan when they've been treated so poorly.

"so far s. sudan is admirably refusing to retaliate for attacks in the disputed region, last i heard anyway"

Really?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110615/wl_afp/sudanunrestabyei_20110615180858
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/20/c_13885930.htm
http://allafrica.com/stories/201105220003.html

The South Sudanese army is also busy killing southern cattle-herding tribes.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Hundreds-of-civilian-casualties-in-S-Sudan-battle-1406737.php

"but you have to respect the right of people to declare independence"

No I don't. Especially not if that "right" comes at the expense of other peoples rights. Should a group be able to seize control of territory by declaring independence in an area which has historical and religious significance to a group of people which happens to be a minority? Especially when the majority which declares independence then proceeds to annihilate the historical treasures belonging to the unfortunate minority? Things aren't as clear-cut as you make them out to be.

"the criteria are a well established majority in favor of it"

What counts as "well-established"? What if an area has an exponential increase in a particular group, because they keep flooding into the area to create demographic facts on the ground.

" on what basis can you tell a group of people they have to stay a part of a state if they want to leave?"

On the basis that they do so without the consent of the rest of the country, or they do so without the consent of a large minority which has long-standing historical rights to be present in the territory, on the basis that it violates international laws which uphold territorial integrity of all states, and on the basis that independence presents an existential threat to the geographic unity of the country. For example, India didn't allow Hyderabad to become independent, because it was in the heart of India and made no sense geographically. But Hyderabad did the exact same thing the Kashmir prince did, except it was a Muslim prince and a Hindu population and not vice versa.

@Putin

Your attack on South Sudanese independence is curious. By all accounts I have read, both parties (north and south) have made a concerted effort to end a devastating and exhausting civil war by partitioning the country. It is true that there are still armed militia groups and trigger-happy soldiers fighting each other in periodic flare-ups of violence. However, given the behavior of the government in Khartoum towards the south during the course of the longest-running civil war in Africa, I would assume that it will take some time for both sides to renounce violence entirely. And I would like to remind you that in the vote for independence, it wasn't a close vote - 98.83% of the population voted for secession.

"I can't think of a single partition where the result of partition was more peaceful than the period which preceded it. The only way partition can succeed is if there is large-scale ethnic cleansing of all other groups from the partitioned territories. In cases where a residual minority presence remains, there will be continued fighting. Indeed there is intensified risk of conflict because everything is now up for grabs. Once established boundaries are now unsettled and fought over by the new states. "

yeah, except the partition of the Ottoman empire, where Greeks and Turks partitioned a land which had been more or less unified for thousands of years. Instead of a any ethnic cleansing there was just some forced migration, marching turks from the new 'greek' lands and greeks out of the new turkic republic.

Sure all changes of territory are to be feared, because otherwise we might have more wars, but NOT changing the borders just because they were arbitrarily set down at some point simply allows us to freeze conflicts for decades or even centuries.

I'd take Ireland as a case in point, except being that 'Ireland' refers to an Island near that other island Britian, there has never been much of a territorial dispute, just a juris-diction and religion issue - which is more about sectarianism and self-determination (home rule, as the power-sharing agreement in northern ireland now proves as a concept) than about territory.

What i think we need to accept is that 'traditional' border are becoming less and less meaningful and useful for peace and stability. The geography of a region still has a massive economic effect, but the ability of our technology to surpass these limits and to bring people together is going to continue. I would advocate the end of the nation-state.

From charter Cities, to virtual republics, the idea that everyone believes a nation-state is the only, or even the best is an example of a belief in belief.

Yugoslavian communist party members didn't believe in communism or marx, they believed that everyone else believed their state was the only option they had. They didn't necessaries consider it an ideal, but it was a practical reality. And technology will continue to change practical reality.

To survive and prosper we need to be able to adapt, take advantage of the latest tools, and escape flawed traditional social structures which are too slow and unwieldy to function in the 21st century.

see: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/paul_romer_the_world_s_first_charter_city.html

see: webdiplomacy (this is not how boardgames were once played, yet it is successfully promoting the hobby on a global scale)

Borders are a thing of the past, there's a really good talk about the lines connecting countries (rail/roads, network infrastructure, oil pipelines, inter-connected water and electrical supply) being more important than the lines dividing them (borders) and this will become increasingly true as our society continues to push forward.

I must admit your opinion irks me, though i must admit it is valid. I have failed to come up with a decent alternative (other than EU like supra-national entities, but the EU is a perfect example in my mind of the failings of democracy and bureaucracy... and i'm a Europhile) however it is reasonable to suggest that trade will continue to be the means to the end of war. Economic incentives such as packages to help build the communications or transport infrastructure (on condition that the fighting ends) might be useful tools in peace-keeping, especially if funding is dependant on the upholding of a cease-fire. But more importantly most wars are fought over economics.

When did germany finish the rail-line through the ottoman empire to buy oil directly from the arabs? What impact did it have on English purchasing power there, and the fuel required to power the biggest navy in the world? This must be considered a major part of the build up to world war 1.

Borders aren't things of the past. The abstraction of the "global community" has no meaning for people's lives. The fallacy of free trade and free capital is being exposed before our very eyes. People are becoming increasingly insular and inward looking. Our world is moving towards what it was like in the 1920s - regional economic blocs and protectionism. Europe is preoccupied with Europe. Japan is preoccupied with Japan. The emerging countries are preoccupied with their own affairs. While the US doesn't have the resources to provide public goods and an international agenda anymore. We have a "global economy" with parochial actors. People want their own backyard taken care of. They don't give a flying fig about global problems.

I don't see what this issue has to do with the present discussion on independence and partition, I'd just add that the Greek/Turk thing is exactly what I'm talking about when I say ethnic cleansing. In areas where there is still a residual minority, like Cyprus, we have conflict. The Turks were successful at displacing the Greeks from their historical capital - Constantinople, and turning their holy sites into mosques or museums.