The Increasing Fragility of Countries With Divided Populations
The past 25 years have led to dramatic political changes around the world, one of which has been the increasing fragility of countries that have diverse ethnic, religious or linguistic populations. First, the fall of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the collapse of three highly diverse countries (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) and the division of many others (Georgia, Azerbaijan and others). Two decades later, the Arab Spring ushered in a collapse of a number of highly divided countries in the Middle East and North Africa whose borders were drawn by European colonial powers with little regard to the make-up of the populations within those borders.
Today, rising security threats and a slumping global economy are leading to higher levels of nationalism and populism in many areas of the world. These threats are particularly acute in countries with diverse populations and could lead to the collapse of more diverse countries in the coming years.
Today, there are a number of factors that are threatening the unity of countries with highly diverse populations. First and foremost is the impact that the information revolution has had on the ability of central governments to control the flow of news and information within their borders. With modern communication technology and the pervasiveness of social media, central governments are struggling to maintain control of the availability of news and information to their populations, while groups aiming to subvert these governments are finding it much easier to disseminate information and communicate with one another outside of the government’s control.
Another factor is the changing nature of the global economy. This includes the fact that economic growth in many areas of the world is lower than it has been in previous decades, leading to lower levels of poverty reduction. Furthermore, job creation levels in many areas of the world are being threatened by technological changes and slower economic growth, leaving younger males (the most dangerous segment of most societies) frustrated and angry. Finally, the destructive and disruptive power of the individual, or of relatively small organizations, is greater than ever, enabling even small groups to cause upheaval and unrest, particularly in highly divided countries.
The wave of collapsing states began in Central and East Europe in the wake of the fall of Communism and spread to the Middle East and North Africa as the Arab Spring destabilized much of that region. Today, nearly all states with major ethnic, religious, linguistic and even political divisions face the threat of internal unrest prompted by these divisions. The most vulnerable of these countries are those that were formed by former colonial powers that often arbitrarily drew borders encompassing a wide range of different groups of people that were usually only held together by a strong (and often ruthless) central government or dictator.
Of these, the most vulnerable countries to internal unrest are those where minority groups live in areas of a country in which they form a large majority. For example, Iraq’s divisions have been exacerbated by the fact that the country is home to three distinct groups, each of which lives in its own territory except for in cities along the borders of these territories, with these mixed cities becoming flashpoints due to their diverse populations. Finally, diverse states that are in political or economic decline also face greater threats to their unity as centralized power weakens, as was evident in the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The threat to global security posed by the collapsing unity of many divided countries around the world should not be underestimated, for we have seen this situation happen before. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Europe was home to a number of multinational, multi-religious and multi-linguistic states that crumbled amid the nationalism that arose from dramatic changes in the flow of news and information as well as the profound economic changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and the region’s soaring population. As a result, long-time empires with diverse populations such as the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian empires all disintegrated when the First World War and a collapse of their economies combined to finish them off. In their place were smaller and weaker states, but all of them also had diverse populations in the wake of the border changes following the First World War, something that directly contributed to the soon thereafter Second World War, when massive population transfers led to more homogenous states being created (with the notable exceptions of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia).
Today, it appears that we are in the midst of such a transformative period in many areas of the world, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, where diverse countries are proving to be nearly impossible to hold together. As such, it is all but inevitable that major border changes are coming to these regions, and other areas of the world containing countries with divided populations are watching this situation with trepidation. Unfortunately, history has taught us that these changes are unlikely to be peaceful.