[FRIAM] Biden's recent proposal.

[Raymond Parks]

Owen Densmore wrote:
> Joseph Biden and others are coming up with a hybrid solution for 
> Iraq, patterned after that used in Bosnia.  Its an interesting idea: 
> unity through autonomy.
>    http://www.joebiden.com/news?id=0024
> 
> I wonder if any geo-political modeling has been done for cases like 
> this.  It would be interesting to see if unity emerges though 
> separate autonomous states.

   Aside from the Bosnia precedent that Biden cites, there is the Swiss 
and US precedent.  Both Switzerland and the United States of America 
were formed from federations of separate autonomous states.

   At first thought, Germany might be considered a counter-example.  For 
centuries, the German people existed in a multitude of separate 
political entities of a variety of forms (feudal, oligarchic, 
theocratic) that had an ostensible federal government, the Holy Roman 
Empire.  That collection never gelled as Bosnia, the US, and Switzerland 
did.  I suspect that there may be a threshold for power sharing from the 
autonomous states with the federal government that never was reached in 
the HRE.  Instead, Bismarck caused that threshold to be reached with the 
various states of Germany in the late 1800s, when modern Germany was 
formed from the autonomous states.

   So, the idea of unity emerging from separate autonomous states 
carries with it a threshold of power sharing.  I'm not sure if that 
threshold is the amount of power or rather the type of power.  In the 
case of the US, Switzerland, and Bismarck's Germany, the key point seems 
to be surrender by the autonomous states of the power to conduct 
external relations (i.e. diplomacy) and the surrender of rights of legal 
arbitration between the separate autonomous states (i.e. interstate 
commerce).

-- 
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department            Mobile:505-238-9359
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288