Kosovo close to independence

[Caid Ivik]

So a nation is defined as the people living within the arbitrary lines drawn by armies at war? That is certainly the way things usually work in practice: a group of powerful people with an army establish control over some territory and then declare the inhabitants of that territory to be a "nation" in order to justify their rule. But is this how things should work? If divisions between nations are indeed arbitrary, as I believe and as you seem to agree, then surely there can be no such thing as a right to national self-determination, there can be no such thing as a national interest, and we have no reason to support the continued existence of separate nations against the international unifying tendencies of organizations like the European Union.

It is hard to say how things "should work". Nation, state and territory are different concepts, at least in slovak language (and my thinking) and I believe in english too. State (national or pre-national) has its territory, and as its borders are in most countries defined by wars, even their setting reflects the military needs (natural barriers for passing armies: mountain ranges, rivers). The relation between state and nation is recurrent: as a nation lives separately, its culture is mingled with a tradition of own administration, thus the "statehood" becomes a part of national culture; and vice versa, state supports homogenity in all supportive factors, as it is easier to administrate one nation than hundred. Ideology of EU is to agree on few of these factors, which would not be considered as harmful for national cultures when homogenized. That's why EU as such doesn't make any territorial claims - it unifies roughly at level of economics, travel and "morale" (as in constitutional culture). The state territories are belonging still to the national states, and thus EU doesn't change the relations between these three cultural units at all. Can you imagine a peaceful solution if for example Germany found a legal reason to reclaim Gdansk? EU tries to be a new kind of state, not harming any other. The question stays, in how far a state can be respected without having any territory?