Secession

From: William A Galston, "A Russian Test for Obama: The White House must forge a strong and united international response to Putin's grab in Ukraine," Wall Street Journal (March 11, 2014)

States are one thing, peoples another. Nearly every state contains multiple ethnic groups, and nearly every ethnic group lives in more than one state. If the years between World War I and World War II taught us anything, it was that the purported right to defend compatriots across borders can dynamite the system of sovereign states. That principle led straight to Munich and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. So when Moscow alleges that Russian speakers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine are in danger, President Obama should push back hard—not only on the facts, but also against the idea that what happens to Ukrainians who identify with Russia can justify armed intervention.

In recent days, Americans have gotten a crash course on how Crimea came to be part of Ukraine in 1954. So what? Most boundaries have questionable histories. The state system requires us to take boundaries, however arbitrary they may be, as the point of departure and to alter them through processes that command international legitimacy.

This principle doesn't rule out secession. But it does mean that secessionist movements must be indigenous and popularly based—and that their grievances must cross a threshold of gravity sufficient to justify what is likely to be a drive for separation marked by conflict.