Monday, April 28, 2014

Small Nations

These questions drive the composition of nations:
What are the limits of size to efficient governing?
Should a country be ethnically homogeneous?
How can new nations be created peacefully?

If there are answers to these questions,
what and where is the available research?
Certainly many learned papers could or should
be devoted to these critical issues.

What should be done about countries
which are ungovernable, like Haiti and Somalia?
Should they continue to be U.N. mandates
or be annexed by other nations?

What about countries that oppress their people,
rob them and starve them, imprison and execute them,
enrich the monsters in charge, yet are allowed
to live on with no substantive improvement.

North Korea, Syria, and Cuba seem to despise
the idea of anyone having a satisfactory life
in their countries, to the point of deliberately
seeking to reduce the number of their citizens.

The Soviet Union was too big to
be effectively governed, now
Russia seeks to emulate the failures
that collapsed its Communist empire.

Iraq is already three nations
masquerading as a single entity
united only by shares in the oil revenues
which they fight vigorously about.

China and India are so huge in population
as to defy efforts to control them,
yet each survives in its own way,
while their smaller neighbors implode.

Israel is a speck no bigger than Rhode Island,
yet it is powerful in technology and innovation
in the middle of a hostile environment and
not a shred of natural resources.

We believe that small is beautiful,
that a nation with a healthy identity
among its citizens, has the best chance
to succeed . . . like Switzerland.

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