Dominique Moisi: Old rivalries may form new wave of splintered nations

Now a new wave of identity fragmentation, spanning Africa and perhaps Europe, may be approaching. Next month, a referendum on independence is scheduled to be held in South Sudan. If it does actually take place, there is little doubt that it will lead to the creation of a new state within the African continent, a first since the breakup of Ethiopia in 1993. Somalia, Ivory Coast and even Nigeria may also give birth to new states.

For decades, Africa's boundaries have been denounced as the artificial and arbitrary work of ignorant and cynical colonial officers, which has contributed to a long train of tribal rivalries, if not ethnic cleansings. But no-one, especially not the pan-African organisations, wishes to redefine borders. The more fragile and unstable the balance, the more imperative it is to maintain the status quo.

So, is a new Pandora's box about to be opened in Africa, freeing demons that should be contained? Or is it the artificial status quo itself that has caused organised violence to explode with fateful regularity?

The brutal behaviour of the Sudanese regime based in Khartoum has made the country's evolution towards partition both inevitable and legitimate. The main question now is whether partition will be held up as a model and a precedent elsewhere in Africa.

In Ivory Coast, for example, former president Laurent Gbagbo takes inspiration from Zimbabwe's autocratic president Robert Mugabe, clinging to power after his clear defeat in the last presidential elections. As a result, the country's division on a partly ethnic and religious basis along north-south lines is no longer unthinkable; on the contrary, it is increasingly likely.

This trend towards fragmentation is not only an African phenomenon. In Europe, it affects Belgium, a country that seems resigned to live with absolute political paralysis as the price of its survival. But entropy in Belgium has sent tremors into Spain, where last November's elections to Catalonia's regional parliament turned out a left-wing alliance that had dominated for seven years in favour of a pro-sovereignty coalition.

The economic crisis affects all parts of Spain. But, like supporters of the Northern League in Italy, a significant number of Catalans are starting to compare their supposedly serious, hard-working character and relative success with the "laziness" of the Spaniards.Why should they work for "them"?

Of course, Europe is not Africa, where violence and despair are the engines of fragmentation. In Europe today, if there is violence, it is only economic in nature. But, as the economic crisis persists - and perhaps even worsens - we may witness further explosions of populism and nationalism that could translate into a new wave of fragmentation.

The European Union, in the midst of a profound identity crisis, does not need new states, but rather new ideas and a new narrative - a qualitative, not quantitative, change.

The American sociologist Daniel Bell once said the state was too big for the small problems and too small for the big ones. But in a global age, "the nation" becomes a more powerful form of identity protection, just as "the state," following the crisis of western financial capitalism, nowadays appears stronger than a "market" destabilised by its excesses.

At the same time, the quest for identity that is causing some states to fragment is pushing others to envision neo-imperial vistas. Each reflects the same logic. The imperial nature of identity in Russia, for example, is deeply ingrained. And Turkey, encouraged by the power vacuum that exists all around it, as well as by the obstinate resistance of most EU members to admit the Turks to their "Christian club", is starting to think in neo-Ottoman terms.

In the future, ours may be an era worthy of careful study, a moment when the world was in the midst of a difficult process of re-composition.

• Dominique Moisi is the author of The Geopolitics of Emotion.