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TOC | Key Points | Foreword | Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | Acknowledgments | Author Sovereignty after Empire Self-Determination Movements in the Former Soviet Union Introduction This study is a modest contribution to the ongoing debate on the problem of group rights—primarily, the right of a people or "national group" to self-determination. That the problem has been with us for the past ninety years or so and has so far frustrated attempts to arrive at definitive answers is a testament to just how nettlesome a concept self-determination can be in contemporary international law and politics. Finding its advocates among such disparate political figures as Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin, this idea has developed into a norm of international law, mentioned in the United Nations Charter and enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Nevertheless, the "right" to self-determination has recently emerged once again as the focus of much debate, as its fulfillment—or denial—quite often results in mass violence. Such conflicts are aggravated by the uncertain position of the international community, which cannot rely on precise guidelines for such situations. The right of a people to make a collective choice about its common destiny still awaits full recognition in international society. In fact, in the realm of international law, the collective right to self-determination is usually considered secondary or even tertiary to the rights of the individual or the state. For diplomats, the rights of the state generally prevail over the rights of peoples living in that state, even though the UN secretary general has stated that "The sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of states within the established international system, and the principle of self-determination for peoples, both of great value and importance, must not be permitted to work against each other."1 From a liberal point of view, the protection of individual rights is paramount, while the rights of collectives—nationalities—are somehow considered an anachronism of tribal society. The UN Human Rights Committee has therefore declined to define the term "people," arguing that self-determination is not an individual but a collective right; it is, therefore, beyond its jurisdiction to investigate any complaint regarding the violation of such a right. Ethnicity is a collective characteristic, and there are examples of how collective rights do find advancement within nations, specifically in the equal opportunity and affirmative action programs that have existed in the United States for the past three decades and were created to compensate for the inequalities of an era of racial discrimination and segregation. However, global society continues to display a stubborn resistance to such collective impulses. Indeed, world politics at the end of the twentieth century has come to be almost a fight for "separateness" among the many minority groups that have suddenly been released from their neo-imperial bonds. Is it possible to understand this phenomenon as an attempt to preserve global cultural variety and its multicolored mosaic, in preference to the gray uniformity of globalization and the increasing irrelevance of borders? What other explanation can be given for this process in light of increasing transnational forces, such as trade and finance, and the worldwide spread of new information and communications technology? A few years ago, bewildered foreign commentators were hard pressed to appraise the situation after the "outburst of self-determination" in the former Soviet Union and other postcommunist countries. One well-known American journalist observed at the time, "The roll call of warring nationalities invokes some forgotten primer on the warring tribes of the Dark Ages—Ossetians, Georgians, Abkhazians, Daghestanis, Azeris, Armenians, Moldovans, Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauz, Tatars, Tajiks. They die for lands much of the world has never heard of—Nakhichevan, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Transdniestr republic, South Ossetia—or for causes lost in the fog of history."2 But these people died not so much for their land as for the preservation of their unique cultural identity. They were ready to sacrifice not only their individual freedom, but even their lives to rescue their historic heritage and to preserve their ethnicity. My ethnological field work, as well as my experience as a government official in charge of ethnic affairs during the period of turmoil in the former USSR, has presented me with striking evidence of the readiness of individuals to make sacrifices for the sake of something they themselves can call "national." I have visited Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Transdniestr region, Palestine, and Ulster. In each place, I witnessed the surprising solidarity of individuals endeavoring to defend their own nation in the face of tremendous adversity and hostility. Years of living behind the Iron Curtain have given the many peoples of the former Soviet Union the hope—perhaps a naive one—that their aspirations for national identity will be acted on by the United Nations, the European Parliament, the International Court of Justice, and other international bodies, according to standards of justice in international society. The beginning of the drive for self-determination in colonies or in ethnic enclaves within multinational totalitarian empires has often been accompanied by the hope of swift intervention and help by the world community in the name of justice, which to many of these peoples transcends the more staid and established principles of international law. Creating their own state becomes the only hope of ethnic minorities struggling to preserve an identity. In many cases, these struggles mean secession and territorial disintegration; more important, they typically mean the threat of territorial losses for other states. Some cases of self-determination have resulted in the creation of a new state or the restoration of an ancient one. Such a case arose in Palestine nearly half a century ago with the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinians, on the other hand, gained the right to create their own autonomous territory in 1993 after many more years of conflict. For Chechens, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurds, and many others, however, the situation remains hopeless, owing to the refusal of powerful neighboring nations to relinquish their territory. The bid for self-determination as the realization of a collective right usually results in dashed hopes. Confronting an indifferent world community, self-determination movements often feel forced to take up arms. As one scholar succinctly puts it, "The violence we see around us is not generated by the drive for self-determination, but by its negation. The denial of self-determination, not its pursuit, is what leads to upheavals and conflicts."3 A sacrificial war for justice in one nation will inevitably grow into aggressive nationalism, accompanied by violent war and barbarian ethnic cleansings, unless the world community takes into account the primarily peaceful demands of national groups and until the great world powers learn to treat emerging nations on something other than strictly legalistic grounds. To prevent wars associated with self-determination, however, the world community will need to equip such organizations as the UN Security Council with a more sophisticated legal mechanism that would infringe upon the international legal principle of nonintervention—an issue that is still highly sensitive in some circles, despite such precedents as Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. I am aware that a discussion of group (as opposed to individual) rights, as well as arguments about the possibility of revising either existing national borders or the principle of nonintervention itself, all lie outside the mainstream of contemporary political thinking. Nevertheless, I present in part 3 of this study some examples of both successful and unsuccessful self-determination movements in the former Soviet Union. In part 4, I offer recollections and opinions on self-determination from some noteworthy political leaders—Mikhail Gorbachev, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Senator Sam Nunn, and Lady Margaret Thatcher—who had to address these problems on a daily basis at a time when the concept of self-determination seemed to be going through a historic political and philosophical upheaval. In gathering their opinions of the political dimensions of self-determination movements and nonintervention, I tried to use examples that were removed from the case studies in order to provide a basis for comparison and to draw on their personal experiences. Iraq and the former Yugoslavia were the two most cited examples these leaders referred to. Perhaps the consideration of different approaches to this difficult concept will help in the development of new criteria for legitimizing the right to self-determination. In part 5, I offer suggestions for such criteria based on the case studies and these leaders' observations. I conclude with some thoughts on how more clearly defined criteria for assessing the legitimacy of self-determination movements can help resolve the even more challenging principle of nonintervention when such claims are violently suppressed.
TOC | Key Points | Foreword | Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Notes | Acknowledgments | Author
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