You think infighting is a good idea? To waste time and energy constantly debating whether Creationism is real or not, or whether women should have equal rights?

Cultural diversity isn't a problem. People in different regions can maintain their own, separate cultures and be happy on their own, instead of having to constantly fight with other people in neighboring regions about whose culture is better and should be dominant. What you're advocating is not cultural diversity at all, but either cultural imperialism or a morass where no one is happy because no one gets to actually have their own distinct culture.

Sounds like they need to start their own, competing union.... Maybe some other EU countries will abandon the EU and join their union instead, since this new union wouldn't be all about supporting existing powerful players.

What's the alternative? Invade with guns blazing? That didn't work so well for Iraq; it led directly to ISIL. It hasn't worked out well for Afghanistan either. We already tried deposing an Iraqi government we didn't like and setting up a friendly government, and it got us here. How is doing the exact same thing going to work this time?

As for DeBeers, that didn't work because we (western nations) haven't actually done anything to DeBeers to stop the diamond trade. There's a DeBeers store not far from me in Manhattan NYC, even though they should be banned since they violate lots of anti-trust statutes. If we aren't actually going to hold corporations accountable to our laws, then we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.

If we would get off our asses and build SkyTran so we didn't need cars, we wouldn't be very worried about oil, but we're too stupid and shortsighted to free ourselves from our oil dependency, so as far as I'm concerned, we deserve whatever happens to us as a result.

So what? North Korea has been around quite a bit longer than I have, and doesn't show any signs that it'll disappear anytime soon. It's been happily subjugating people since the 1950s, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. You don't need a proper civil government that runs smoothly to have a successful country.

Not the same. We only armed the locals after invading and destroying their infrastructure and military, disbanding the army, and then trying to create a puppet government that didn't have any popular support, and didn't have a competent army because all the experienced people were sent packing after we defeated Saddam. Of course they dropped everything and ran: they didn't have anything to fight for or believe in.

The Kurds aren't like this at all: they're well organized and motivated, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

Sounds like a good idea: Israel is in sore need of allies in the region, so maybe if they became allies of the Kurds it could work to their mutual benefit.

I see, this makes perfect sense now. IMO, it'd be better if all these break-away regions broke away and became new countries. That's why they're in the EU, after all: the union facilitates free trade and a strong shared currency (in theory at least), so things would be better if all these regions broke away and then joined the EU as new member states, instead of their people constantly being angry that they're in an involuntary union with some other country they don't like so much.

BTW, which regions in Italy want to break away? I hadn't heard about that, though I'm familiar with Catalan and the Basque region wanting to break away from Spain.

Of course China would be against any self-determination; they're all about forcing people into a single union under an authoritarian government which only benefits one group.

So what's the problem with that?

To me, it feels more like North Dakota splitting from South Dakota while staying within the US, which a lot of people would consider mostly a non-issue.

Huh? It's nothing like that at all. North Dakota and South Dakota are already split, and have been for a very long time. They're entirely separate states with no more relationship with each other than they have with Minnesota or Montana. They just happen to share part of their name.

Perhaps you meant "it feels more like Upstate New York splitting from NYC while staying within the US." (Which would actually be a great idea IMO.) We've actually done this before, sorta: during the Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia and formed a new state so it could remain in the Union. We've also had many other states form by seceding from other states: Tennessee, for instance, used to be part of North Carolina, and Kentucky used to be part of Virginia. At one time early on, the 13 Colonies annexed everything to their west, all the way to the Mississippi River, drawing borders at the north and south mostly along latitude lines (or rivers, in the case of the Ohio river); later, these territories broke away and formed new states.

Yes, just remove "Scotland, " from the name.

Of course, Scotland can never secede from Great Britain, unless they dig a big canal on the border and turn their country into a separate island.

There's nothing silly about such debates.

I'd like to see the US and Canada both break apart and reform into new, smaller nations. I think, for the residents in many of the new nations, life would be better than the current state. I think perhaps 6 new nations would be a good number; one nation would include the pacific northwest areas of NorCal, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and maybe Yukon and Alaska. The American southeast would be a single nation, and maybe the southwest too. The US New England states plus the Canadian Maritime provinces would be a single nation. With these regions separated from each other, we wouldn't have all the infighting we have now between clashing cultures (e.g. highly religious values in the Bible Belt versus socially liberal values in the northeast and northwest).

Americans might look on with bemusement; I can understand that. I guess it's a bit like Florida choosing to break away from the US, having a pro-Florida political party endlessly demonizing "them" (the rest of the US) as causing pretty much every economic and political woe Florida has going for it.

As an American, I'd be happy to see Florida secede from the US. We'd be better off without them. Let them deal with their own problems.

Am I missing something? Why would an independent Scotland be spurned by the EU? I thought this issue was about them separating from the UK; they should be able to then join the EU as a full member, and switch to the Euro currency if they wish (since right now they're still on the GBP just like the rest of the UK). An independent Scotland should in theory be a good thing for the EU, as a confederation works better with its members smaller and more equal to each other, rather than having a mix of small and large/powerful members, as the powerful members will be seen as bullies by the smaller members. An independent Scotland will reduce the size/power of the UK in the EU and add a new member that's on par with countries like Denmark, and maybe get more people on board with the Euro.

Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.

They won't destroy the population, they'll just subjugate it. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Stalin killed millions of people in his great purge during and after WWII, but it's not like the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed due to lack of people. And the Soviet Union lasted for many decades.

What works in dealing with these things is to wall them off and ignore them, and arming neighboring regions to create a buffer zone.