Democracia, auto-determinação e Guerra

"Let us put the problem another way: minarchist or democratic theory says that the state should have a monopoly of force in its territorial area. Let us agree for the sake of argument. But then the big unasked, and unanswered, question arises: what should be the territorial area? To paraphrase a favorite gambit of Ayn Rand's, the near-universal response is: Blankout! (...)

The minarchist argument against anarcho-capitalist libertarians is that there must be a single, overriding government agency with a monopoly force to settle disputes by coercion. OK, but in that case and by the very same logic shouldn't nation-states be replaced by a one-world monopoly government? Shouldn't unitary world government replace what has been properly termed our existing "international anarchy"? (...)

Just Boundaries and National Self-determination

What, then, is the answer? What national boundaries can be considered as just? In the first place, it must be recognized that there are no just national boundaries per se; that real justice can only be founded on the property rights of individuals. If fifty people decided voluntarily to set up an organization for common services or self-defense of their persons and properties in a certain geographical area, then the boundaries of that association, based on the just property rights of the members, will also be just.

National boundaries are only just insofar as they are based on voluntary consent and the property rights of their members or citizens. Just national boundaries are, then, at best derivative and not primary. (...) Only by boldly asserting the right of secession can the concept of national self-determination be anything more than a sham and a hoax.(...)

Referring back to political theory, since the nation-state has a monopoly of force in its territorial area, the one thing it must not do is ever try to exercise its force beyond its area, where it has no monopoly, because then a relatively peaceful "international anarchy" (where each state confines its power to its own geographical boundary) is replaced by an international Hobbesian chaos of war of all (governments) against all. In short, given the existence of nation-states, they should never exercise their power beyond their territorial area (a foreign policy of "isolationism"), and maintain the right of secession of groups or entities within their territorial area.

The right of secession, if fearlessly upheld, implies also the right of one or more villages to secede even from its own ethnic nation, or, even, as Ludwig von Mises affirmed in his Nation, State, and Economy, the right of secession by each individual." The Nationalities Question Murray N. Rothbard"