The Cold War has been over for a decade now, and the leaders responsible for German's reunification, including George Bush, Hemlut Kohl, and Mikhail Gorbachev, recently met in Berlin for commemorative activities. Too bad all the champagne of the "new world order" and the new Germany has gone flat.
This year's Nobel Prize for Literature went to the internatinally acclaimed German novelist Guenter Grass, who is an outstanding fiction writer as well as an insightful essayist.
Grass has been a long-standing critic of German reunification, predicting the ill effects of the union on both Germany and all of Europe.
Many of his predictions about the ill effects of reunification have not materialized, but an invisible wall still separates the East and West, despite the fact that the actual wall is gone.
German reunification was the democratic decision of residents in both countries, but the fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of a strange combination of forces. Ironically, however, the fall did not herald a global trend of unification of nations.
Instead, it was the prelude to separatism.
More than 20 new nations declared their independence in the decade following the wall's disappearance.
The Soviet empire disintegrated into 15 independent states, Yugoslavia broke up into five states and Czechoslovakia split in two states.
This trend can still be seen among nations formed by the use of external forces, as shown by East Timor's independence from Indonesia and the strong separatist movement in Aceh province.
This Balkanization does not contradict the globalization that has re-worked societies around the globe into an increasing homogeneity, including a technology-based economy, the Internet and a culture of consumption.
The Chinese saying "to be near, even across a vast crevasse" (
Disadvantaged and dissident groups may also be able to employ this new weapon in their interests, as the Falun Gong has demonstrated in China.
Economic development will also strengthen a communal consciousness, leading to break-away and separatist movements.
New movements for autonomy and independence continue to appear, from Scotland to the Kurds to the East Turkestan independence movement among the Uighur people in China.
Even countries like Spain, Belgium and Italy still have internal autonomous movements to deal with.
The overall international political trend is clearly towards separatism. Political unification is attempting to swim against the world tide.
It is difficult to see how China can escape the fate of other empires.
It is destined to taste the bitter fruit of national dissolution in the next century.
Antonio Chiang is the publisher of the Taipei Times.
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