"Domains under heaven..."

Many Poles in Scotland were anxious about the results of the Scottish Independence Referendum last night.  Their relatives in Poland focused their attention on the victory of the Polish volleyball team over the Russians. Many of them, however, in private conversations and on Facebook expressed their empathy with the Scottish nationalists seeing in their struggle for independence from the arrogant hegemon in the South a reflection of their own historical efforts against Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary in the 19^th century.

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.", as Blaie Pascal maintained, and the brutal truth is that although our hearts intuitively understand and sympathize with the sentiment for Scotland’s history, tradition, kilts, bagpipe music, Braveheart, Jacobites etc. etc., in politics emotions very often result in disaster rather than success. 

“Domains under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, tends to divide. This has been so since antiquity.” (Luo Guanzhong, Romance of Three Kingdoms). The Chinese have been aware of that for several centuries whereas in Europe we tend to believe that things may be firm and stable for ever. We all realize that everything changes but whenever the changes come we seem surprise. The historic shift we all are facing at the moment is the military activity of President Putin of Russia who aims at reconstructing the Soviet superpower. 

History teaches us that united and integrated powers are stronger than those dispersed and while one region experiences fragmentation another one, where someone decided to unite their neighbours, gains an advantage over those atomized. Well, ancient Greek city-states did manage to defend themselves from the Persian invasion but I don’t think we should tempt fate. 

Autonomy, self-government with its own budget not robbed by any “centre”, regional decision-making process referring to the local issues, yes, these values are dear to me, but the distribution of powers in the present day world does not allow us to feel safe. 

Not only external threats are the matter of importance. Actually the balance of power within the European Union matters considerably too! Without the UK the united Europe stands a good chance of becoming one big German colony, which could turn against the interest of smaller countries. On the other hand, we cannot be sure whether Britain is going to stay in the EU. The British may soon face this dilemma! 

What we should all do is to demand respect for our local interests, our ethnic and cultural identity etc, but for sure it is much better for us all to stick together instead of being divided by national grudge or pride. Internal mutual hostility within the EU may serve only those who build their power on unity resulting from quite undemocratic measures. We should reform the EU and the British should reform their country, but it’s better together.