Paradoxes of Violence and Self-determination

Abstract

Secessionist movements aspiring to statehood often resort to force if their demands are not met peacefully. Indeed a political community’s ability to maintain internal order and external defence by military means is a fundamental attribute of the nation-state. Yet international law limits the use of force to self-defence. Is non-violent secessionism, then, an oxymoron, and violent secessionism illegal? The late twentieth-century witnessed successful cases of non-violent secession—along with nearly successful ones, ones whose success we might now judge to have been short-lived, ones whose commitment to non-violence was short-lived, and ones whose efforts provoked massacres and foreign intervention. This essay reviews examples of each to identify paradoxes that emerge when movements for national self-determination depend on violence for their success. It does so in the context of Just War Theory, and particularly Michael Walzer’s influential formulation.