The Return Of The Age Of Small Countries?

Duly Noted

Visiting Croatia has triggered a perception. The small country which is not a Balkan state, proved to be well managed. The indicators pointing to successful modernization abound. A multitude of peoples, beginning with the ancient Greeks, then the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Muslims and the Venetians all came and are now gone. The edifices of their thriving small states have become eye-catching ruins that lure tourists. 

The foregoing might convey the impression that this will be about travel. Such as in, “how to visit where there are no other obnoxious tourists besides you”. Actually, the idea of the essay comes from the perception of a “trend”. It deals with a changing state system and with empires that have either disappeared or shrunk to insignificance. 

Quite a few years have passed since your correspondent used to be temporarily young. When I was thirteen, I spent what became two and a half years as a deportee. At the time, I attributed my involuntary servitude not only to Stalin but also to my birth in a small country located in the wrong half of Europe. Due to her size related power, she could not defend my rights against the imposed system of a nasty world power. Then, while still a Teen, the same ill-tempered colossus’ armor crushed “my” revolution and the reassertion of independence. Facing a T34 tank with a pistol will influence you in two ways. One is that you will demonstrate great physical agility in the effort to deprive the scene of your presence. The other impact will jog your mind to develop an explanatory general context for your petty personal experiences. 

The trip to Croatia led me to the many local remains of successful economic-political cultural entities of the region. The visual impressions bonded into an intellectual insight. At their time, by today’s perspective miniscule states could be important powers within the now shrunk European and Mediterranean world. Among others, Venice, Ragusa/Dubrovnik, Zara come to mind. If you look further back, the Polis of ancient Greece appears on the mental map. Rome, an overly successful city-state, breaks the pattern. Similarly, feudal Europe consisted of petty states. In that context Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Burgundy, Florence, the Hanseatic League, Genoa, as well as the Papal States, could be major players. Concurrently they enjoyed stability, wealth and achieved intellectually and artistically. 

This churning world composed of successful and nimble lightweights came to end with the rise of intruding heavyweights. That signaled a new era. One, the Ottoman Empire was a world power due to its mass and Islam that gave it the goal of global conquest. Several of the small countries of south Eastern Europe lost, after a heroic struggle, their independence to the Sultans. In the East, the “Mongol Yoke” convinced Moscow, originally a city-state, that the small units of pre-conquest times and decentralization imperiled the Russian people’s existence. Safety lay in the offensive, in expansion and in the forging of an empire. 

The other path along which Europe -and thereby the world- came to be lorded over by large countries came about through the rise of the so-called national states. These could become great powers if their ethnic base was large and if they had neighbors that were, due to their size and inadequate organization, easy prey. One recalls here the 18th century dismemberment of Poland. No wonder that, the rise of the Great Powers went hand-in-hand with the rise of Dictatorship. The ultimate outcome of the story in the Netherlands and in England departs from this pattern. 

The Italians and Germans overcame fragmentation only after a significant delay. As long as they did not participate in the process that made “big beautiful” –also safe and prosperous- they were at best the laughing stock of the major players. At worse, the weak served as their battleground and prey. 

In the spirit of their experience, the “Great War’s” victors tried to create in 1919 strong, meaning large, allied states. They did so by incorporating ticking bombs into the blown-up constructions. Here Yugoslavia, whose bloody disintegration is still not entirely concluded, comes to mind. The attempt to prolong the colonial order is equally symptomatic. On the personal level, when I got to America, it made me feel good to count how many millions we are. The numbers suggested that there will be no more “class alien” status or forced labor for me! 

Counter acting the growth of the Soviet sphere of influence, after the last world war, a process of decentralization set in. True, in the war’s aftermath, the USA attained global power that no other state, including Genghis Khan’s, has ever achieved. The Soviet Union got control over areas of which Tsarist Russia could only dream. However, the traditional colonial empires were gradually melting like a cube of sugar in hot coffee. Some once-great powers, such as France and England, not to mention divided Germany, have discovered the limitation of their means. Therefore, they pursued a European unity project that was to guarantee the integrity of its small members. (The courage to admit to smallness and the patienc consensual politics require might now be jettisoned. “Brussels’” bureaucratic centralism is an indicator of the continued attraction of past failures.) 

By 1989, the USSR has become a victim not only of Socialism but also of her artificial size. Yugoslavia has died but it left behind six states. Czechoslovakia separated. Secessions, such as in Sudan continue to redraw the map. That being a bloody process, rational movements that demand cultural autonomy and local self-government abound. Overall, regional autonomy represents a suitable means to correct problematic boundaries and questionable territorial divisions. The process of reverting to small entities not only defuses tensions but also furthers “democracy”. An emerging new world order makes it tenuous to claim that the alternative to centralism is chaos, defeat and extermination. 

That today’s order does not equal the imposed will of a few dominant states finds evidence in a phenomenon that might not be to our taste. The Mugabe’s, Husseins, Gaddafis, Assads, the Kims and the Ahmadinedjads are able to challenge the world order. The malevolent dwarfs get away with their defiance for several reasons. Admittedly, they benefit from the connivance of some leading countries that use them as their pawns. For our purpose, however, their abuse of the chances offered by our time’s trend indicates that small countries are, regardless of their size, increasingly “safe”. (At the same time, some of the richest countries are small states.) The possible “trend” away from might being the foundation of rights is the reason. 

The other supporting factor is found in the core of the only state that would be able to play the role of the “Hegemon”. There is only one world power that could continue the trend of domination by a few “Great Powers.” However, that superpower is reluctant. This is the case because it is a democracy; it has a federal system and is committed to the rule of law. Additionally, the potential dominator is a saturated state and as such she has no interest in either expansion or the imposition of her system. Meanwhile, she is committed not to prevent changes in the global status quo while she only insists that the process be subjected to orderly procedures. At the same time, that entity has the military means to deter lesser aggressors. This circumstance raises what would be otherwise merely a pious intention to the status of American policy.

..now for America as it is.

There is only one world power that could continue the trend of domination by a few “Great Powers.” However, that superpower is reluctant. This is the case because it is a democracy; it has a federal system and is committed to the rule of law.

American federalism is more theory than fact, and has been so ever since the conclusion of the War of Southern Cessation. Federalism had always been in jeopardy from the beginning, as represented by that line of political thinking we commonly call Hamiltonian (in contrast to a more rural Jeffersonian agrarian model). It could generally be counted on within Federalist and Whig Party platforms, along with the latter's reconstituted post-antebellum Republican inheritors. There is no doubt that the original colonies turned sovereign states were prior to the founding of the Republic, and that the center was a creation of the States, but all this has long been forgotten, and now the center has in effect gained dictatorial hegemony over the States.

The idea of a federal system “committed to the rule law” is, today, risible. Legislators have no idea regarding the extent of their legislation, unelected clerks implement statutory rules with little oversight, the Judiciary has morphed into an unelected legislative body, and the Executive is hardly limited in his ability to conduct war regardless of whatever Constitutional limitations were codified at the Philadelphia Convention (or later in the War Powers Act). Congress has “delegated” its Constitutional pecuniary mandate, and as a result our currency has been debased through the actions of a private central bank along with its own deficit spending. In the “private sector” mercantilism supports multi-national corporations with no clear ties to national origination, and whose actions in fact work against the nation.

Indeed, the present system is mostly unworkable, at least as far as efficiency and responsiveness goes, and now relies mostly on inertia (and loans from China) in order to continue its day to day operations. It would be better if the current social balkanization led to political disintegration and subsequent reformation along smaller, more governable lines—at least from the standpoint of representative government. But it is also doubtful that short of a catastrophe, which I would not out of hand discount, anything will change, anytime soon.