The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 states have problems in dealing with their ethnic and reli- gious diversity once it has become politicized. The exam- ple of Canada, still struggling to find a solution to the problem of Quebec, is a sobering reminder that democ- racy and federalism are no panaceas. A New Approach Furthermore, the distance that separates Africa’s big states as they are now from the ideal democratic, federal, decentralized state is enormous, and the international community has neither the tools nor the political will to help them across the chasm. The old formulas — terri- torial integrity, federalism, decentralization, and democ- racy — thus ring quite hollow. It is time to consider a dif- ferent approach to big African states: • Limit commitment to territorial integrity to defend- ing states against outside aggression. The international system needs to protect countries from being attacked, but it should not try to offer a guarantee of survival to countries threatened by internal factions. Rather than declaring commitment to the territorial integrity of a state, the international community should put all political forces in a country on notice that the survival of their state is in their hands. • Be clear about what constitutes external aggression. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was a clear case of external aggression. When the neighbors of the DRC, including tiny countries that could never attack the Congo giant if it were a functioning state, send troops into a territory nobody controls, the international community needs to worry about state disintegration, not about external aggression. • Do not advocate partition as a solution to the prob- lem of big states or try to decide where the lines of parti- tion should be, but accept partition if it happens. Africa does not need another Berlin Conference and more lines drawn on maps. Nor does it need the stubborn interna- tional determination to keep states alive that were dys- functional at independence and are even more so 40 years later.