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Saturday, November 08, 2008

Hit the Reset Button

I don't know why the United Nations doesn't end the bloody fiction of recognizing the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) and Somalia. Nobody in either of these "countries" can control all of the territory they nominally represent. And lots of people are dying as factions try to control as much as possible and gain recognition as the nominal national government.

Why don't we end recognition of the national governments and offer to recognize any faction's territory, above some minimum in each area, as a new nation that the United Nations will recognize and grant a UN seat.

Wouldn't it be better to have perhaps a dozen new states that each are capable of controlling their smaller areas rather than persisting in maintaining the fiction that these are real countries composed of all the territory that the map lines say they contain?

If smaller entities are recognized as nations and manage to govern themselves, might not the ungoverned or poorly governed parts then gravitate toward the stable nations? At the very least, the ungoverned failed areas may shrink and become more manageable problems for the international community.

The international community has no will to make these geographic entities actual political entities. Why not stand aside and let them sort themselves out into governable spaces?