USA encourages separatists and regime change all the time, often halfway around the world. Just in the last 20 years, we had invasion and occupation of Iraq, re

USA encourages separatists and regime change all the time, often halfway around the world. Just in the last 20 years, we had invasion and occupation of Iraq, refusal to leave despite unanimous vote by Iraqis, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Libya (abandoned it to be a failed state), training rebels in Syria, while fighting a proxy war in Yemen, and so forth. Russia has encouraged and supported the separatists in Transnistria (Moldova), Ossetia (Georgia) etc from what would otherwise be aggression by their host countries. Many people there are grateful to Russia, while many in the host countries are very upset. I haven’t looked at Putin’s latest address, but I expect — like American presidents — it will be full of historical facts but of course miss the point. The International System allows this crap to happen. Sykes-Picot created even worse tinderboxes. The Tamil Tigers, PKK, PLO, Catalonians, Basques and many other separatists have been fighting for their own independence from India, Syria/Turkey/Iraq, Jordan/Egypt, Spain, France and so forth for a very long time. In my opinion all this an be solved by tweaks to the system. We need the UN members to come together to make a new resolution: to use the principle of self-determination to have each region and city to vote every few years which neighboring country it should be part of. This includes police forces, utilities, economic cooperation etc. The results should be continuous like a parliamentary system — so that means 30% country A, 50% country B and 20% their own nascent state. This would defuse most sectarian conflicts. Before you think this is crazy, this is exactly what we have done with RELIGION and we call it “multiculturalism”. Religion was a huge unifying force in Europe in the middle ages, and around the world 2000 years ago. The Crusades were EXACTLY about which religion would dominate a given land. Today, we have multiculturalism and learn to peacefully coexist without fighting religious wars for land. But in the modern intenational system, States have now taken the place of religion as a unifying force in certain locations, regardless of how thigs change. Swiss people will fight to keep the Swiss flag flying excluively in Lugano before they let Lugano be partly Italian too, for instance. Inability to coexist peacefully (eg Albanians and Serbians) has led to decades of sectarian conflict, and the current system relies on the international system top-down “recognizing” some change, such as Kosovo no longer belonging to Serbia, or the “one China policy”. This consensus doesn’t exist in practice. It is far better to agree to allow people on the ground to practice self-determination and MULTI-STATISM.