Clear dangers in break-ups

IF EVER an argument were needed to prove the simple common sense of preserving long and successful, peaceful unions of people, it now appears every day in our newspapers and on our TV screens.

Clear dangers 
in break-ups

IF EVER an argument were needed to prove the simple common sense of preserving long and successful, peaceful unions of people, it now appears every day in our newspapers and on our TV screens. The Balkan bloodbath of the 1990s followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The break-up 
of the USSR has led to the present crisis in Ukraine. 
Splitting Korea in two caused more problems than it solved. The list is endless and millions have died.

Breaking up and separating often centuries-old and peaceful unions of people are not the panacea for all the ills that 
the glib nationalists who push for them promise they will be. Much the contrary.

Of course tyrannical and forced dictatorships and 
subjugations of people must and should be opposed. But 
it should be remembered 
that many of those who fought for the French and Russian revolutions later viewed with horror what replaced the previous regimes.

Perhaps what is needed now is a 2014 version of Orwell’s Animal Farm to point out the importance of being careful about what you wish for.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh