National Secession

Persuasion and Violence in Independence Campaigns

Philip G. Roeder

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781501726002
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How do some national-secessionist campaigns get on the global agenda whereas others do not? Which projects for new nation-states, Philip Roeder asks, give rise to mayhem in the politics of existing states? National secession has been explained by reference to identities, grievances, greed, and opportunities. With the strategic constraints most national-secession campaigns face, the author argues, the essential element is the campaign's ability to coordinate expectations within a population on a common goal—so that independence looks like the only viable option.

Roeder shows how in most well-known national-secession campaigns, this strategy of programmatic coordination has led breakaway leaders to assume the critical task of propagating an authentic and realistic nation-state project. Such campaigns are most likely to draw attention in the capitals of the great powers that control admission to the international community, to bring the campaigns' disputes with their central governments to deadlock, and to engage in protracted, intense struggles to convince the international community that independence is the only viable option.

In National Secession, Roeder focuses on the goals of national-secession campaigns as a key determinant of strategy, operational objectives, and tactics. He shifts the focus in the study of secessionist civil wars from tactics (such as violence) to the larger substantive disputes within which these tactics are chosen, and he analyzes the consequences of programmatic coordination for getting on the global agenda. All of which, he argues, can give rise to intractable disputes and violent conflicts.

1

THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT NATIONAL SECESSION

In recent decades the challenge confronting many countries around the world has not been communist revolution or Islamic transformation but national secession. Among the political agendas that have convulsed the world, campaigns to achieve independence through secession have been among the most momentous. These national-secession campaigns promise a transformation every bit as profound and deep as class revolution or religious transformation—not only in the lives of those they claim to liberate but often in the lives of those whom they claim to be their oppressors and even their neighbors. This book asks why some programs for national secession give rise to such significant campaigns and lead to intractable disputes, and even to protracted intense conflicts.

National-secession campaigns are akin to revolutionary activity. In the name of “popular sovereignty,” they promise to liberate their people by creating new, independent, sovereign states such as Georgia, Quebec, Scotland, or South Sudan. They promise that these new states will empower their citizens and turn old power relationships on their head: levers of government will be controlled by Eritreans rather than Ethiopians, Latvians rather than Russians, East Timorese rather than Indonesians. Independence will purportedly transform not only the institutions of government but also wealth and property rights, social and cultural patterns: the privileges of oppressors will be stripped away. “Foreigners” and their fellow travelers who enriched themselves under the unjust old regime will be divested. The natural wealth of the homeland, including its land, forests, and resources, will be returned to its rightful owner: the nation. Campaigns for independence promise that the speakers of a national language and the faithful of a national church will be freed from humiliation and oppression. The symbols of the nation will be elevated to a revered place on the national flag, its heroes recognized in monuments, and its history taught in public schools.¹

The consequences of these changes do not stop at the borders of the new imagined state. For the common-state government—the jurisdiction that is currently recognized as the sovereign authority over the secessionists’ nation and homeland—the campaign’s promises are threats.² Secession of Crimea, the Donetsk Republic, and Novorossiia (New Russia) threatened to divide Ukraine almost in half and leave it as a landlocked rump. Secession by East Pakistan threatened to shrink Pakistan’s territory by more than an eighth, its economy by almost two-fifths, and its population by more than half.³ Secession by Slovenia and Croatia threatened to upset a delicate balance among republics within Yugoslavia and initiate an unraveling that would dissolve the federation. Secession by the Baltic states similarly threatened to initiate the unraveling of the Soviet Union. For their neighbors these secessions promised and threatened to change power relations in South Asia, transform the politics of the Balkans and Europe, topple a superpower, and replace global bipolarity with a new world order. Since 1991 great-power confrontations over secessionist crises in Crimea, Kosovo, and South Ossetia have raised fears of a new global cold war.

Yet most attempts to initiate a campaign for independence never get off the ground. Most national-secession projects, such as the Mountain Republic, Transcarpathia, and Turkestan, never get on the international public agenda. Most of their platform population—the population that the campaign claims to constitute a nation with a right to a state of its own—is “bought off,” in the secessionists’ worldview, by the false consciousness, intimidation, and bribes of the status quo. The world may be populated by thousands of nation-state projects, yet most of these have remained the pipe dreams of lone intellectuals or the cherished possessions of small circles that never attract followers beyond the walls of their clandestine meetings. Ernest Gellner is noted for his speculative estimates that the world may contain as many as 800 “reasonably effective nationalisms” and another 7,200 “potential nationalisms.” Subtracting the roughly 200 independent nation-states, he estimates that 7,800 potential nation-states have yet to gain independence.⁴ Still, only a few of these projects—as is shown in chapter 2, only about 2 percent of these—have become what I label “significant” national-secession campaigns by attracting international attention.

Campaigns for independence can become unusually persistent, and their disputes with existing states may become intractable—with secessionists unwilling to concede or compromise. Victory in a secessionist dispute typically does not come easily or quickly—if at all. The campaign to establish an independent Euskadi for the Basques, which has sometimes been visible and public, but oftentimes invisible and clandestine, has continued for more than a century. The campaign for an independent Ukraine—often small, clandestine, and ignored by most of its platform population, but episodically boisterous and violent—persisted for over seven decades before independence.⁵ The campaign for an independent Eritrea—usually violent, but sometimes not—continued for over four decades.⁶ Negotiations over independence for Abkhazia, Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria—what have come to be known as the “frozen conflicts” of the post-Soviet space—have dragged on with little apparent progress more than two decades after their initial declarations of independence. Negotiations over independence for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus have failed to reach agreement for more than three decades.

Campaigns for independence can become intense—for example, by provoking deadlock in common-state politics or destruction through violence—yet it is only a few that account for the mayhem associated with national secessionism. Still, those few campaigns that do become intense can upset the politics of the common-state, the region, and the world.⁷ The conflicts over such national-secession projects as Republika Srpska, South Sudan, and Tamil Eelam unleashed broad destruction, leaving victims dead, wounded, homeless, displaced, or orphaned. In just twenty-three years of national-secession insurgencies from 1989 to 2011, over a quarter-million lives were lost in battle-related deaths alone, and the highest estimates put this closer to 400,000 deaths. In these same years more than 28,000 lives were lost in terrorist acts attributable to groups associated with these national-secession campaigns.⁸ To cite just one of these conflicts: in the thirty-year-long armed struggle for Eritrean independence, according to the estimation of David Pool, “around 65,000 fighters had died, 10,000 were disabled, an estimated 40,000 civilian deaths were directly associated with the fighting and around 90,000 children were left without parents.”⁹ Wars associated with national secessionism have tended to last longer, to be more resistant to negotiated settlement, and to recur more frequently than other civil wars.¹⁰

The intensity of these campaigns for independence often touches lives well beyond the borders of the common-state from which they seek to secede. Secessionist projects in Kashmir (from India), Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka), and Air and Azawad (Mali) have brought neighboring countries into conflict with one another. The conflicts for independence within Yugoslavia dragged in participants not just from the Balkans and Europe but also from around the world. Campaigns for independence have spilled over national borders with spectacular terrorist attacks, so even countries with no significant indigenous national secessionism, such as Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, have become targets of terrorist attacks attributed to national secessionists with grievances against other common-states.

Nevertheless, even among campaigns that drew international attention, most struggles do not resort to violence. Indeed, as will be documented in succeeding chapters, the relationship of campaigns to violence needs to be specified far more carefully, for national-secession campaigns seldom initially emerge in wartime, subsequently engage in violence, or achieve their objectives on the battlefield.

The central question of this book can be stated very simply: how and under what conditions do national-secession projects (1) become significant campaigns, (2) give rise to intractable disputes with their common-state governments over independence, and (3) sustain protracted intense struggles? As will be explained more precisely in later chapters, significance refers to getting a claim on the international public agenda; intractability refers to the inability to reach agreement with the common-state on the issue of independence; intensity refers to the means or public acts mounted by the campaign, such as forcing deadlock within the government, mounting demonstrations on the streets, or launching terrorist attacks; and protraction refers to the length of time that this situation persists.

The answer developed in this book can be summarized in an equally simple formulation: the key is coordination of expectations in a platform population—such that other members will see the national-secession program as authentic and realistic. This coordination of expectations concerning the response to the campaign’s goals is something broadly overlooked in the literature. As explained more fully in later chapters, authenticity refers to the expectation that members of the platform population actually see themselves as a nation; realism refers to expectations that statehood is a practical possibility. In this context, authenticity and realism are not issues of one’s belief but rather of one’s expectations about others in the platform population. Coordination of these expectations can have profound consequences: national-secession projects become significant campaigns only if the leaders coordinate expectations within the platform population around a program for independence. Intractability is a natural consequence of successfully coordinating the platform population’s expectations around this program. Protracted intensity in a national-secession campaign is possible only when there is already substantial coordination of expectations and is typically a tactic used to build and maintain this coordination and therefore to reinforce intractability.

This analysis builds on the strategy most commonly used by national-secessionist campaigns—the strategy of programmatic coordination—and argues that this strategy should guide the ways in which we analyze national secessionism: our primary focus shifts to the choices made by campaign leaders and their platform populations. The primary loci of their activities are not battlefields but meeting places where programs are drafted and explained, campaign strategies to achieve programmatic goals are designed, cadres are inducted, tactics are selected and taught, and the platform population is persuaded. Our primary analytic attention shifts from sensational acts, such as terrorism and battlefield violence—although these can be important tactical choices made by some campaigns—to seemingly prosaic acts to persuade populations.

Constraints: Bold Ambitions, Weak Forces

The analysis in this book begins from the observation that most national-secession campaigns pursue lofty strategic objectives without the operational capabilities to achieve them. The popular mythology, and the story that secessionists often tell about themselves once they gain independence, constructs images of a bold, direct challenge to the common-state that brings victory over oppressors. During particularly intense periods of a struggle, campaign leaders will inspire the platform population with exhortations that they are about to deliver a decisive blow against the enemy. Yet this is seldom true. And few strategically minded campaign leaders who calculate the likely responses of the common-state government can reasonably expect armed victory. Most national-secession campaigns are far too weak to challenge the common-state directly—a constraint that I label operational weakness. Indeed, even among the 171 significant secessionist campaigns tracked here, the median platform population constituted just over 3 percent of the common-state’s population. With such limited capabilities, attempts to achieve spectacular victories would spell disaster for most campaigns. Instead, they must await opportunities to receive or pick up independence rather than seize it; that is, they must engage in strategic opportunism.¹¹ Moreover, because they are so weak, most campaigns cannot influence the timing of these opportunities, nor can the campaigns forecast the nature of those opportunities with certainty—a constraint labeled forecast uncertainty. Instead, campaigns must await a fortuitous development such as collapse of the central government brought on by its other domestic opponents or international intervention. These opportunities typically come as exogenous shocks to which the campaign must respond rapidly.

Even the few secessionist successes give campaign leaders little evidence that planning for armed victory on the battlefield is a prudent strategy. The reality of strategic opportunism and forecast uncertainty is revealed by the twenty-six national-secession campaigns that actually did achieve independence between 1946 and 2016. None achieved independence by marching to the stronghold of the common-state government and imposing victory. Instead, since World War II, and as described more fully in chapter 2, only two states (Croatia and Slovenia) come close to the myth of armed victory. Over half of the secessionist states achieved independence by simply walking away from a collapsing central government. Another quarter achieved independence after international intervention imposed or guaranteed independence from a resistant or reluctant common-state government.

Indeed, in the face of overwhelming central governments and their own strategic weakness, national-secession campaigns are often open about their objectives of influencing international intervention or waiting for collapse.¹² For example, in China’s two most substantial campaigns, many secessionists expect that outside intervention or collapse of the central government in Beijing is the only way that they can achieve independence. In Tibet, Warren Smith reports that when it embraced the goal of independence, the Tibetan government-in-exile focused its campaign on building international political support.¹³ In Xinjiang, Gardner Bovingdon reports that when attacking the Public Security Bureau in Lop County, “the protestors are reported to have shouted, ‘We’ll invite the U.S. and NATO to come, and we’ll blow up Xinjiang.’ ”¹⁴ Bovingdon also recounts a conversation with an unusually outspoken Uyghur editor in 1995: “Minutes later, he mentioned what would happen when China ‘disintegrated’ (jieti), using the very term that had been applied to the Soviet breakup. Taking my lack of expression for skepticism, he assured me that China would follow the Soviet example.”¹⁵ For weak campaigns, preparing for intervention or collapse is typically the only prudent strategy.

When operating under these constraints, campaign leaders must prepare a capacity not to force independence on a resistant central government but to demonstrate to leaders of major foreign powers that the campaign’s platform population is coordinated around the program of independence, that the proposed nation in control of its homeland will be able to fulfill the obligations of a sovereign state, and that alternative programs offered by the common-state or other campaigns are not viable options. That is, their objective must be to build the capacity to demonstrate programmatic preemption. For example, in more than two-thirds of the successful campaigns, referenda on independence demonstrated programmatic preemption by delivering strong support for independence—and in most votes more than 90 percent support.¹⁶ These victories at the ballot box came after long groundwork to coordinate the platform population behind the programmatic goal. A campaign may seek to wear down the common-state government, to influence third parties to create an opportunity to walk away with independence, or simply to await collapse at the center, but in each of these scenarios the campaign must be ready to demonstrate pro...

Table of contents

• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Three Questions about National Secession
• 2. Strategic Constraints: Goals and Means
• 3. Organization and Mobilization in Campaign Development
• 4. Programmatic Coordination in Campaigns
• 5. Significant Campaigns: Getting on the Global Agenda
• 6. Intractable Disputes: Consequences of Successful Campaigning
• 7. Protracted Intense Struggles: Reinforcing Intractability
• 8. Complementary Explanations: Motivations and Opportunities
• 9. Looking Forward: Implications of Programmatic Analysis
• Appendix to Chapter 2
• Appendix to Chapter 5
• Appendix to Chapter 7
• Appendix to Chapter 9
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index