home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
CNN Newsroom: Global View
/
CNN Newsroom: Global View.iso
/
txt
/
wpr
/
wpr1092.001
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-05-02
|
8KB
|
151 lines
<text>
<title>
Separatism: A Doomsday Scenario For Europe
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
World Press Review, October 1992
Separatism: A Doomsday Scenario for Europe
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Jan Urban, former Czechoslovak dissident and chair of the
Civic Forum. He retired from politics in 1990. From the
independent "Nepszabadsag" of Budapest. This article also
appeared in the independent "Gazeta Wyborcza" of Warsaw.
</p>
<p>Could events in Czechoslovakia spur another crisis?
</p>
<p> Central Europe is balanced on the edge of a new historical
crisis that could transform the whole region. Not only national
borders but democracy itself is at stake. In Czechoslovakia,
the winning parties of June's election will divide their
country. This observer is surprised at how unconcerned they are,
given the international consequences of their decisions. But it
is no less astonishing to see how indifferently and passively
the West is watching the demise of Czechoslovakia. The Western
public is calmed by the assertion that war between Czechs and
Slovaks is out of the question: It is not another "Yugoslavia."
They call the Czechoslovak split the "velvet divorce." But no
one believed in the possibility of a bloody and cruel war
before the declaration of independence by Croatia and Slovenia.
What we have to fear is the quick pace of change in Central
Europe--sudden and unintended change. A pessimistic European
scenario is becoming more and more valid. This is what sounds
realistic:
</p>
<p> In any referendum on Czechoslovakia's constitutional crisis,
the citizens of both states are likely to vote for a divorce
from their annoying neighbor. To increase its energy supply and
its political prestige, the Slovak republic may soon reroute
the Danube river away from the border it forms with Hungary and
into Slovak territory. The Hungarians will no doubt contend that
this step amounts to the illegal changing of the state borders.
And from this already touchy quarrel, an open propaganda
campaign could emerge.
</p>
<p> Then, Hungarian nationalists could be propelled to power by a
campaign for the rights of "our oppressed brothers," the
more-than-half-a-million-strong Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
Following a series of armed clashes, the border between Hungary
and Slovakia would be modified. Those regions in southern
Slovakia where the majority of the population is Hungarian would
be attached to Hungary after a referendum.
</p>
<p> In this dispute with Hungary, Slovakia would not be able to
win the support of the Czech republic. On the contrary, if
Slovakia had not become independent by then, the Czechs would
themselves be urging separation from their destabilizing
neighbor.
</p>
<p> The borders of Czechoslovakia were defined by the peace
treaties after the First World War. With the split of
Czechoslovakia, the arguments of Hungarian nationalists would
become clear: Hungary's treaties, they would say, are with a
country that no longer exists. The same argument could be used
by Ukraine to demand the easternmost territory of Slovakia.
Democratic forces in these countries might challenge these
arguments, but they would be called naive or, indeed,
unpatriotic.
</p>
<p> Austrian and German nationalists would continuously enhance
their popular support by demanding strict restrictions on
immigration from Eastern Europe, including the closing of
borders to refugees. As yet, nobody is taking seriously the
radical tone of groups advocating self-determination for ethnic
Germans in the Czech region of Bohemia, but those who are
politically insignificant today could turn influential. The
economic and political demands of the Bavarian government,
representing the interests of the Bohemian Germans, would grow
louder and louder. The Czech government would finally ask for
mediation by the German federal government, but the successor
state of Czechoslovakia would be unable to withstand the growing
pressure from their stronger neighbors.
</p>
<p> The first successful revision of the Slovak borders would
set a precedent for Central Europe and then, perhaps, for other
parts of the world. Ethnic Hungarians living in Transylvania,
Ukraine, and Vojvodina, in the former Yugoslavia, would then
demand a similar solution to their problems. In the Baltics,
the problem of ethnic Germans would arise. Russia could agree
to give its ethnic Germans autonomous rights with special
economic status; then it might be willing to pass the region
along the Volga where they are settled over to Germany in return
for increased economic cooperation. Still-unstable Poland would
be isolated once again between Russia and Germany. And so the
dreams of the last two years would fade away.
</p>
<p> Democratic elections alone do not create democracy. In Europe
during the 20th century, democracy was never able to protect
itself against dictatorship or stop conflicts before they caused
human deaths. For this reason, democracy and the democrats have
had to pay an unbearably high price. Who remembers today that
all modern dictatorships were born in this part of the world?
</p>
<p> The importance of Czechoslovakia has always been that it
rose above the notion of an ethnically pure state, creating in
citizens a loyalty to a multi-national, democratic state--an
idea that is not very Central European. Democracy was placed
above the language of a nationality. Now it may turn out that
this was nothing more than a senseless historical experiment, a
useless adventure in democracy.
</p>
<p> If European democracy cannot quickly get its act together, it
will have to observe helplessly as nationalism gains power
everywhere. The key role will be played by Germany--as always
in the history of Central Europe. The Germans--despite their
membership in the European Community and their acknowledgement
of their complicity in promoting two world wars--have not
been protected from the infection of nationalism.
</p>
<p> The British and the French are also reluctant to remember
that their complacency toward Adolph Hitler was as instrumental
in starting the war as was Nazism itself. The sin of passive
democracy is that it does not stop dictatorships until they
begin to attack and kill. Just months after British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich saying that he
had brought back solid peace for the British, war broke out.
</p>
<p> Seven years later, with 40 million people dead, democracy
conquered Nazism. But while democracy was victorious, it was
worn-out and struck another complacent deal--this time with
the communist superpower. It was willing to sacrifice the
rights of self-determination in those countries that ended up
in the so-called communist camp. Forty-four years later, after
a number of local wars and more millions dead, communism died.
But can we say that democracy has won?
</p>
<p> The defeat of communism in Europe and the collapse of the
Soviet Union do not yet signal the ultimate victory of
democracy, and the new anti-democratic tendencies might pit
democracy in much more danger that it was in during the cold
war. "To have or not to have democracy in Central Europe, that
is the question," ponders a present-day Hamlet. At this moment,
the democratically elected politicians of Czechoslovakia are
splitting up their homeland. In their neighborhoods, the
blindness of the deaf does not sense that anti-democracy is
coming soon.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>