How Spain Can Avoid Its Own Crimea - Bloomberg View
What do Crimea and Catalonia have in common? Photographer: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images
There's an important and counterintuitive lesson for all nations
in the fate of the Crimean peninsula: If you want to keep a territory
from seceding, set its people free.
As Spain's efforts to
quash a Catalan sovereignty movement demonstrate, nations typically do
not tolerate breakaway regions under any circumstances. This was
certainly the case with Ukraine, which held tightly onto Crimea after
breaking away from the Soviet Union. Is that wise?
