[jerf]

Then the EU apparently wrote into its constitutional cornerstone something that was not possible to manifest in the real world, and as a result it is breaking up, at least a little now and possibly still more in the future. Again, at least it is doing so without bloodshed.

The EU has no ontological right to exist. It is not an immutable fact of the universe. It is not rationally or logically valid to reason from "The EU requires this attribute for it to exist as I envision it" to "This attribute must be attainable at a reasonable price." or any variant on that.

I take a historical view on these things. Things are always changing. There exists no polity in history that only grew and never shrank, excepting only those polities that are new enough to not have shrunk yet.

I'm actually sort of becoming something of a secessionist. Not pro-Brexit or pro-Calexit or pro-any-particular-secession, but just generally in favor of the idea that since polities are inevitably going to shrink at some point in the future, it is preferable to make sure that such processes are as easy and as bloodless as possible. People shouldn't need to die by the thousands or millions for something so predictable. I am coming to believe it is a mistake to ever think that one can "permanently" bind a smaller polity into a larger one. And I believe the US has the much greater problem here! The US has no established mechanism for leaving (though a Constitutional amendment could make it possible), and a big ol' Civil War that says it's not possible in the bloodiest possible way. To the extent that we are having similar issues arise in the US, we have no peaceful mechanism for dealing with it.

[barrkel]

The EU is well short of breaking up; that's "fog in channel, continent cut off" territory. It's the UK that's breaking up, and I think you know it.

The north of my island, Ireland, is a particularly interesting question, independent of Scotland, pardon the pun. Certain breeds of criminals get very fat on smuggling.

[jerf]

The EU is breaking up a little now. It's concrete now. It is no longer correct to claim it is not breaking up to a non-zero extent. And there are other countries that are at least making noise about leaving that I would consider feasible candidates over the next 5-10 years.

The UK is definitely facing a lot of stress and I'd place the odds of something breaking away, and that part possibly even rejoining the EU (though that remains to be seen; in the amount of time it will take to accomplish that the calculations of cost/benefit for joining the EU may shift substantially) in the next 5-10 years as quite high.

As someone who just identified as "a bit of a secessionist", I haven't got much motivation for sugarcoating these things, nor even necessarily considering "denying the possibility of secession" as a form of sugarcoating. I'm not sure what the "and I think you know it" bit is for.

I also consider the US a good candidate for some separation. Relatedly, though this isn't "secession" in the same sense, I wouldn't be surprised the Middle East has some country lines that look very different in 20 years. If the world gets into a secessionist mood, Catalan may finally peel away, Quebec separatism could heat up again, and if one listens to the little whispers coming out of China I wouldn't consider it out of the question it ends up cracked into a few pieces. The world has been awfully stagnant politically for a long time, even before we consider the radical technical and social shifts occurring at a rate never before seen in history; I find it implausible that all these changes won't eventually result in some sort of manifestation on the globe. I would not be surprised we're coming up on one of the "punctuations" in a punctuated equilibrium; my interest (to the extent that it matters, which is virtually nil) is not in preventing that from happening, but making sure it happens with as little dying as possible.