The instinct, as a socialist, is to sympathise with the downtrodden, the people being stamped on by the boot of history. It's why I think anti-Imperialism appeals to so many on the Far Left. The instinct is to support people's desire for national independence, because it represents their struggle against a stronger power. That goes for everyone, Basques, Palestinians, Chechnyans etc. But that instinct gets complicated in global power politics: sure, Kosovo should have their own state if they want it, but maybe not if they use a bigger bully to get it for them. US supported separatism leaves a bitter taste, that maybe the rise and fall of smaller nations is all about Empire moving pieces around on a chess board.
The Right to National Self-Determination (TM) sure ain't what it used to be. Not least because sovereignty isn't what it used to be. In what sense could Kosovo declare itself to "independent", when so blatantly under US sponsorship? Let alone the fact that any new European states are, long-term at least, going to seek EU membership and become subject to that para-state. What use then, a Basque state that would have to continue exist within the context of economic integration with Spain and Europe? Why would the Kurdish people want a new state, when the one de-facto one South of the Turkish border is so rancid?
Beyond that, new nations continue to prove that sovereignty is no protection against the global governance juggernaut. The ANC's Freedom Charter was tossed in the dustbin, not because it's electors had any say in the matter, but because that was the arrangement that pre-dated liberation. The absurdity that is power-sharing in Northern Ireland has left Sinn Fenn in government administering neo-liberal unionism.
The reality for new nations to face is as described in Hardt & Negri's Empire: "sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we call Empire...
The passage to Empire emerges from the twilight of modern sovereignty. In contrast to imperialism. Empire establishes no territorial centre of power... It is a decentered and deterritorializing [original emphasis] apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers."
So, demands to create new states are quixotic. An anachronistic attempt to close one self off from the new world order. Older, more powerful states have watched their sovereignty wither in the face of globalization, so why should any give themselves unto fighting for the opportunity to have their patch administered by representatives of Empire that happen to resemble them physically and culturally?
That's far from saying that people don't experience brutality as a result of the nationality, culture or ethnicity. It's to say that it is that brutality that is issue, and the structures that enable that brutality that are the target. Which is where the central fallacy of the 'decent left' comes in. On Harry's Place recently Mark Attila Hoare argued that the Left should stand for principles, not for peoples or groups. But principles exist in the interaction of different groups, they are ideologies that attempt explain or obscure social relations.
To take democracy as an example. That the organisation of a society should reflect the will of its people is a fine principle that I could not disagree with. But it is not a binary concept. Imagining the world as being comprised of regimes that have functioning democracies or not is a nonsense in a globalised system. Over the course of the last 100 years, capitalist democracies have been responsible for some of the most brutal acts in human history. This has extended to torture, genocide, rape and mass murder. Indiscriminate killing and violence in the name of national security. The only difference was that these nations chose to outsource their killing to non-nationals, and carry it out in other people's countries. The principle, of political violence in defence of their system (and of their superiority in that system) was the same.
It is impossible to conclude from recent decades that western nations have a benevolent interest in recreating the world, even along the lines of the principles they claim to stand for. Putting aside the idea of cultural imperialism, of forcing their ideas on others, it's not 'our ideas' that are being propagated, it is our interests. Democracy and civil rights cease to have any meaning when applied in a global context, in which 1st world citizens are given a certain quantity of rights (which extend for the most part to having an opinion, but not to wielding a significant ability to actually impact on the way society is run in general), but their governments are given carte blanche to deny those rights to others.
Instead, you are left with a society that is marked by actually existing relationships (disparities) of power, in which the vast majority have none and a small minority exercise their control in a variety of different ways, different modes of sovereignty. The only worthwhile political act, for someone who believes in justice, is to join others in pushing forward the power of the majority in contest with that minority. It is not a matter of principle, but one of leverage.
