Potential challenges facing national unity in various countries

This video is brought to you by Imprint. These are the Balkans. They are known for being a somewhat unstable region, even at certain points in history being referred to as Europe's powder keg. The reason why is precisely because of that instability which has often led to existing countries breaking up into several smaller parts, often at conflict with one another. The breakup of Yugoslavia is an example of that, with Serbia then having conflicts with Bosnia or Kosovo for instance. Because of this, the term Balkanize became popular, meaning in general a division of a region or country into smaller and potentially mutually hostile states or groups. In this video I thought it could be interesting to speculate about some countries that could and it's important to stress that I'm not saying they will or should, but could Balkanize, explaining which they are, why that could be the case and which parts would result from those breakups. First Pakistan. One of the main issues Pakistan faces is Balochistan, part of its southern region, which is home to the Balochi ethnic group. The region also stretches into Iran and Afghanistan, in fact the Iranian side has led to small border clashes and tensions between them and Pakistan. The issue with them is essentially that they are their own ethnic group, with a culture and practices that in many cases differ from the rest of Pakistan. That plus the fact that upon the breakup of the British Raj, they demanded independence which the British were supposed to give them. For whatever reason, they ended up a part of Pakistan and their local leaders have contested it ever since. If Balochistan were to succeed in breaking away and finally reaching that desired independence, it's likely that the other ethnic groups of Pakistan could follow their example. The Pashtun might want to break away too or perhaps join Afghanistan where they are a majority. The Sindhi and Punjabi in yellow and brown on this map could want to break away as well. In these cases, I don't think a union with the bordering country of India would be an option, even though India has its own Punjab region as well, the religious differences still exist. If these four ethnic groups broke away from a united Pakistan, there would effectively be a balkanization of the country. Then in Libya, Africa. Ever since the Arab Spring and the removal of Gaddafi from power, the situation in Libya has been very unstable. Different groups wanted to take over, several disputed democratic election results and chaos ensued. An internal conflict began lasting from 2014 to 2020 and despite a recent ceasefire the crisis continues and the country is effectively divided. This map illustrates the situation well. The western part of the country in green is mostly under the control of the National Salvation Government slash General National Congress although some other areas in light green are controlled by the Government of National Accord and its allies. The eastern part of the country, in red, is controlled by the Tobruk-led government and the Libyan National Army. In the south, on both sides, some areas are controlled by Tuareg forces in yellow lines and local forces in blue lines. Libya has three traditional regions, Tripolitana, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. The control lines don't respect these but they're reasonably close and so it's not unlikely that we could see a balkanization of the country into these three regions or four control areas. At a less conflictuous scale, Spain is also an example. I saw a poll the other day about the favorability of monarchies in Europe and while pretty much all countries in Northern Europe have pretty high opinions of their royal regime, the same can't be said about Spain. More and more the Spanish crown, which is by some seen as the glue for a united Spain, is put under scrutiny and criticized due to its scandals. And like we know and have repeatedly spoken about, Spain isn't a single nation but a a union of many local cultures and different identities. Granted, only Catalonia has explicitly tried to declare independence, unsuccessfully, but other strong movements exist in the Basque country, for instance. Some minor groups in Galicia want independence too, and even smaller ones in Andalusia. But if Catalonia falls out of the union, it's not at all impossible that others will follow, leading to a balkanization of the peninsula. And what about Belgium? Calling it a balkanization might be a stretch, but a division? Definitely. definitely. Time and time again we discuss this too. Belgium is a somewhat fragile union of the Dutch speaking Flanders in the north and the French speaking Wallonia in the south, with some German regions in the border as well, plus Brussels which is so multicultural due to being the capital of the European Union. Political instability is a feature of Belgium, sometimes they go months without a fully operational government due to that. The possibility of a breakup is lower due to the existence of the EU, but it's not impossible that the two states would break up, leaving Brussels as a EU sovereign city-state and those small German speaking provinces joining Germany. In the Middle East, Yemen. Only in 1990 did a modern unified Yemen come to exist. Prior to that, there was North Yemen and South Yemen, successor states of the Kingdom of Yemen which actually stretched a bit into Saudi Arabia, the Federation of South Arabia and the British Protectorate of South Arabia. Other smaller Sultanates and Protectorates existed in the area prior to those. A key difference that in some way matches the prior divisions is the religious one, between Shia Muslims in the north and west and Sunni Muslims in the east and south. Since 2014 an internal conflict began which essentially puts these two regions against each other and once again de facto divides Yemen into north and south or east and west I guess it depends how you want to look at it. In red on this map is the Republic of Yemen, recognized by the United Nations. In yellow, orange and blue are specific military forces that hold regional control but in alliance with the official presidential leadership council. In green is the supreme political council which is controlled by the Houthi movement. The division of the country effectively already exists, it's only a question of whether or not it is made official or if it is reverted. Another non-hostile example would be the United Kingdom, again one that has been mentioned quite often in similar videos. The UK breaking up is like this ever-present threat that honestly never seems to materialize. Scotland had a chance to leave but didn't and independence movements in Northern Ireland and Wales are pretty small, but yet they exist. Scotland voted to stay in the UK before they left the EU and this might have changed local opinions, although it's important to say they haven't been visible in recent polls. The independence movement in Wales has slowly been growing in support and the Catholic population of Northern Ireland has been growing too which, paired with its special status after Brexit, more than ever paves the way to a reunification with the Republic of Ireland. I would say the loss of Northern Ireland is the most likely in the short-medium term, even an inevitability I would go as far to say. Whether a full breakup and balkanization will follow is uncertain, if I had to guess, I would say it's unlikely. We also can't rule out Russia. With all the instability the country has recently caused and went under, this left many discussing its potential breakup. Russia is definitely a gathering of many very different regions with specific cultural groups that are immensely different from each other. After all, how else could the biggest country in the world be? However, the process of Russification and population displacements, followed first by the Russian Empire and continued by the Soviet Union, which despite being absolutely awful, was successful, has led to the majority of the population across the entirety of Russia being Russians. So essentially there's no reason for a breakup because there is effectively a hegemonic nation across the territory. Only in the case of a complete chaos and breakdown of the state would a breakup of the territory be possible but for the sake of regional control rather than regional independence. And back in the Middle East, Iraq. The breaking away of Kurdistan from Iraq seems to be quite likely at some point in the future, However, that also seems to be the only ethnic group that is different from the rest of Iraq. There is a religious divide too though between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The three largest demographic groups in Iraq are in fact these, Shia, Sunni and Kurds. It's estimated that 75-80% of the inhabitants are Arab and 15-20% are Kurdish. Other ethnic minorities only make up to 5% of the population. The Shias are more located in the east of the country while the Sunni are in the west. In addition, the difficulties that the government have in establishing control in regions other than the capital might contribute to a potential breakup of the country. If the Kurds leave, it could trigger a split between the rest of the territory as well. And one final example for this video could be China. If we look at an ethnolinguistic map of China, we can tell that there is also not a unified nationality within it. You have Turkic people in the northwest, Tibetans in the southwest, Mongolians in the north, some Thai, Burman and Miao Yao in the south and even some Koreans and Tungusic in the northeast. The rest of the country is mostly populated by the Han ethnic group. While the Han region is without a doubt the most populous and while this is the group that is in control, in addition to being the overwhelming majority of the population, it's not certain that China's territorial integrity is guaranteed. We can also look back to the Five Nations flag of the old Republic of China which illustrates this internal diversity as well. Uyghurs might be able to regain independence as well as the Tibetans. Perhaps the Mongolians within Northern China will want to rejoin with Mongolia proper and maybe even Southern China could want to break away. A balkanized China reduced to the Han majority area wouldn't be too different in population or economic power but it would look far smaller on a map and lose a great deal of its geopolitical and military importance. So, those are some countries that could, although some certainly won't, at least in the near future, balkanize. Because again, I'm not saying they will and even less saying that they should. But some do have some logic to the threat of breaking up, like Spain, Belgium, the UK, Pakistan or Iraq, where different national identities exist within the territories, although the scale, conflict and probability differs immensely between them. Others are even more unlikely but open to the possibility due to their gigantic size like China or Russia, while some others result from long-lasting conflicts such as Yemen. What do you think? Is there a real possibility of any of these countries breaking up or balkanizing? And what other countries didn't I mention? Let me know in the comments. Subscribe if you want to catch future videos and I will see you next time for more general knowledge. 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