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There's a strong practical case for military force.
It might be a bit circular in reasoning, but in practice it's the only thing that has ever bounded which groups get their own polity and which don't. Be nice until you can coordinate a sufficiently targeted and violent meanness.
I would say, in the absence of any overarching moral principle here, that any group that can maintain a military campaign against the military force of another group for some extended period of time (think generations, not years) is probably going to be a nation at some point. Groups too small or fractious to form, fuck and fund a military don't get on the board, and groups too weak or psychotic to fight other militaries haven't cleared the hump. To be violent and weak is simply to dig one's own grave.
Ok, but this seems to be a different sort of claim. First, you seem to be talking about who is going to be able to create their own state at some point, rather than what merits deeming a particular group to be a nation. Second, the key point of the right to self-determination is that it is a right, which is a claim that "might makes right" is illegitimate (what is the right to free speech, or the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, if not a claim that govt power to act is not relevant to determining how govt and the individual must interact with one another). And of course, the right to self-determination was quite consciously a repudiation of imperialism, which of course is perfectly justified under your formulation.
Yes, but that is a peripheral issue. We are talking about what groups have the right to self-determination, which is a completely different question from what tactics should be employed in pursuit of that goal.
Yeah, kind of. Having found the intellectual problem unsolvable, I have napkin-mathed the practicalities.
Perhaps definitions are in order? What do you mean by "nation" as distinct from "state"?
Well, the standard distinction (note that I am merely describing the standard usage rather than advocating for it. I think that nationalism (this one, not the vernacular synonym with patriotism) is a pernicious doctrine). This does a decent job re the distinction:
Hence, the Kurds are arguably a nation. But they don't have a state. Ditto the Basques. Ditto the Uygyurs. Ditto the Catalans. Perhaps even the Walloons or the Quebecois.
This seems entirely too broad. Is a street gang a nation? A knitting circle? A hundred remaining members of a defunct native tribe? A thousand? In the context of our discussions this week, there's tens of millions, maybe a hundred million descendants that can look back to the Confederacy and the South more generally as a shared cultural and historic criteria. Are they a nation?
Tabling that for the moment, and assuming we have a solid definition for nationhood on this basis: Do nations have the collective right to own land, control that territory and engage in group violence to acquire/protect it? Is the "nation", however defined, the proper unit and scale of violent action? Is it the state? Individual?
The question as I see it is which level of human organization is recognized as the proper scale for violent conflict.
Yeah, that goes back to our original discussion. I do know that there is usually an assumption that a nation is something that someone is born into, so that leaves out gangs and knitting circles. But where to draw the line is obviously going to be highly contested.
The most important point is that they must see themselves as a distinct nation. I don't think that is the case of the descendants of those who were residents of the Confederacy (in fact, even at the time, as I understand it, those people saw themselves more as Virginians or Texans, rather than Confederastas or Southerners). But, if they do see themselves that way, then they would have a reasonable claim to being a nation.
Well, since nationalism is the belief that every nation has the right to its own state, then those who believe in nationalism would mostly say "yes", since a state by definition controls territory and has the right to engage in violence to protect it. Whether a nation without a state has a right to engage in violence to acquire it is a different question. I would say no, but then as I said I don't believe in nationalism. As I understand it, there is no single answer to that question that is inherent in the idea of nationalism itself.
Well, under international law, I believe that only states can legitimately engage in violent conflict. And under just war theory, war is permissible only if it is engaged in by a "proper authority".
So, like economics and politics, the international order is mostly just feels? But that brings us right back around to my practical point, which is the only way we know how strongly people feel about being a nation is usually when they start killing people over it. So, being a large enough group that feels strongly enough about their "nationhood" to begin organizing militarily is a functional definition of a "nation". If this nascent group can maintain that organization in the long term, they will most likely achieve some territory, become a state and we're back at "might makes right".
No, military organization is not required. See, eg, Gandhi.
4 > we're back at "might makes right
You are conflating what is with what ought to be. Nationalism is a claim about what ought to be (i.e., every nation ought to have its own state). Obviously, nations with more power are more likely to see those oughts come to fruition. But your initial question was an "ought" question. You asked, "Exactly what are the features of a group with the right to claim territory and "self-determination"?" That is an "ought" question.
1: Fair enough, but nations that have achieved states are a selection pressure away from the nations that tried.
2: I'm not denigrating "feels", just using a colloquialism. The level of feeling that produces group violence is an important milestone, but there are perverse incentives to recognizing it as the dividing line between legitimate and illegitimate violence.
3: Do see Gandhi, please. Note the massive ethnic cleansing and the several wars fought with the other side of that partition. You make my point quite precisely, nothing requires that the military organization be used against the previous ruler specifically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
4: I disagree somewhat on your definition of nationalism, because I think the causality can run both ways. Nations may or may not become states, and states may or may not become nations.
Which brings us to the crux of the question of mine you quote. I take it your answer is the state? If so, with some exceptions I agree with you.
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