Recently, a columnist-friend, Matt Kenney, sent me a 25-year-old
newspaper with his chiding that my column had been given better play.
Both had run in The Orange County Register on June 30, 1991.
“Is there no room for new nations in the New World Order?” was
my title, and the column began:
“In turning a stone face toward embattled Slovenia and Croatia,
President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker have not only put America’s
chips on the wrong horse. They have bet on a losing horse.
“Can the U.S. Government seriously believe that a Yugoslavia of
such disparate peoples, all of whom wish greater freedom, most of whose
republics wish to be free of Belgrade, is a viable nation?”
The State Department had denounced “these unilateral steps by
Croatia and Slovenia” to break free: “As Secretary Baker made clear last
Friday, we will neither encourage nor reward secession.”
Croatia and Slovenia are today free and members of NATO.
A month
later in 1991, George H. W. Bush, in what Bill Safire dubbed his “Chicken Kiev”
speech, warned that Ukraine’s desire to break free of Moscow manifested a
“suicidal nationalism.”Nixonu2019s White Hous...Patrick
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Today, Ukraine is independent and the Bush-GOP establishment
wants to send weapons to Kiev to fight pro-Russia secessionists.
As nationalism tore apart Yugoslavia and the USSR in the 1990s,
and surged to propel British secession from the EU and Donald Trump’s triumph
in 2016, that primal force appears on the march again.
Wrote The Wall Street Journal Monday:
“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban barely mentions his
political rivals as he campaigns for a fourth term. Instead, he is targeting
the European Union and its biggest members. ‘Our fiercest opponents are not in
Hungarian opposition parties,’ Mr. Orban said in a speech last week, ‘They are
abroad … Berlin, Brussels.’
“In neighboring Poland,” the Journal goes on, “government
rhetoric is even harsher. Politicians have one-upped each other in attacking
France and Germany, arguing they are forcing multicultural liberal democracy on
more traditional Poles.”
Not only in the east of Europe but also in the west, nationalism
is surging. Wrote The New York Times Friday:
“The
accelerating battle over Catalonia’s status hit warp speed this week. Catalan
lawmakers voted to go ahead with an Oct. 1 referendum on separating from Spain.
Spain’s constitutional court declared the vote suspended. And Catalan
politicians said they would proceed anyway.”The Greatest Comeback:...Patrick
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Yesterday,
thousands of Catalans paraded through Barcelona under a banner proclaiming
“Goodbye, Spain!” It was the Catalan National Day, which commemorates the
1714 capture of Barcelona by Philip V, the first Bourbon monarch of Spain.
Spain’s wealthiest region, Catalonia believes it is being milked
by Madrid for the benefit of regions that contribute far less.
The question being raised by Catalonia is one America has faced
before. Do peoples in a democratic republic have a right to declare their
independence, secede, and establish a new nation, as the 13 colonies did in
1776 and the Confederate States of America sought to do in 1861?
Though America was born of secession, the U.S. establishment
since the Cold War has been far more transnationalist and globalist than a
great champion of new nations. Perhaps that is because the New World Order
proclaimed by Bush I in 1991 envisioned the U.S. as the benevolent global
hegemon.
Another ethnonational secession may be declared even before the
Catalans go to the polls Oct. 1.
The
Kurdistan Regional Government has scheduled a referendum for Sept. 25 — on
independence from Iraq. Should it go forward, a massive vote to secede seems
certain. And Kurds are relying on U.S. support. For they have sustained many
casualties and shed much blood backing us in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic
State.Churchill, Hitler, and...Patrick
J. BuchananBest Price: $6.38Buy New $9.49(as
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Yet while our sentiments may cheer the cause of an independent
Kurdistan, our national interests may call for caution.
For though the Kurds, 30 million in number, are probably the
largest ethnic group on earth without a nation-state of their own, creating a
Kurdish homeland could ignite a Middle East war the Kurds could lose as badly
as did the Confederate States.
Why? Because, the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 not
only left millions of Kurds in Iraq, it left most of them in Turkey, Iran and
Syria.
A free and independent Kurdistan carved out of Iraq could prove
a magnet for the 25 million Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Syria, and a sanctuary
for Kurd rebels, causing those nations to join together to annihilate the new
country.
Then, there is Kirkuk, seized by the Kurds after the Iraqi army
fled from an invading ISIS. The city sits on some of the richest oil deposits in
Iraq.
Yesterday, Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan, told
the BBC that if the Kurds vote for independence and Baghdad refuses to accept
it, they will forcibly resist any Iraqi attempt to retake the city.
Tribalism appears to be doing to the Bush New World Order what
it did to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.
Patrick J.
Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the
author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His
latest book is Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke
a President and Divided America Forever See his website.
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