It's currency????

Didn't you get the memo, Marty?

Is this the same Belgium that was the worst foreign offender for the Rwandan genocide?  Good riddence.

No, lymon, I think that was France.  After the Belgian soldiers were mutilated and killed on the first day of the genocide, they withdrew their troops and asked other countries to do the same.  Very shameful, horrible.  But France actively aised the government, which was supporting- which was- Hutu Power.  

Bone: you're right.  A friend of mine was on the ground in Congo when the "refugees" started arriving under French arms and well protected in French-managed camps.  Belgium's involvement was not the proximate cause but one of the ultimate causes: they are the ones who introduced identity cards in the early part of the last century, identifying, helpfully, people from various tribes.  The Hutu and the Tutsi do look strikingly different - but still, it helps genocidiers to have people wear their identities on their lapels, so to speak.

BUT ... as to Marty's comment on Europe: "All of over Europe there are fissiparous tendencies. The Union will neither disguise them nor disarm them."  

Oy vey.  Every single study of these "fissiparous tendencies", and almost every polling that is done, confirms the same point: the secessionists all over Europe are succeeding because the EU itself has been such a smashing success.  With the Euro as the continental currency (I liked that, "maybe its currency will still work in both parts of the country" - surely he knows?), there is no economic or fiscal risk in secession - you don't need to worry about a crashing currency if you go your way.  With the EU market as a single market, there is no economic or trade-related rationale to keeping the country together.  With Schengen now encompassing the continent, there is no point in having "national" borders, except to enforce idiosyncratic customs rules, and why not have those imposed regionally rather than through central governments?  And so on.

Fifteen years ago, when I first started teaching EU law, it was becoming clear that the "ever closer Union" of Europe would increase regional secessionist pressures; ten years ago, when I moved to Brussels, it was obvious that the bigger the Union got and the stronger and the more all encompassing it became, the raison d'etre for Belgium as an entity disappeared.  And so does Belgium

That is to say, Marty gets it exactly 180 degrees wrong on the relevance of the EU to Belgium's break-up (and the eventual secession of Scotland and the Basque country).

Stupid Flanders.

So what if Belgium splits, really? It is indicative of nothing but Belgium. As to the state of the EU, well its currency has increased in value from 80 cents to 1.62.  At this rate America is more likely to become the abstraction, a country noted only for its huge military.

icarusr-  great points on the EU.  It is amazing how when someone moves from opinion to analysis, instead of letting the facts shape you opinion.  That is to say, it isn't amazing, but drearily predictable, as Marty does it all the time.  

I will take some issue with the striking differences between Hutu and Tutsi in terms of looks.  There are broad differences, but a lot of shading together.  They aren't really different tribes- it is more of an old class thing which the Belgians, sick with race science, calcified into a tribal system.   But you are right about the identity cards.  I was in Rwanda in 2002, and through some connections was led to a building where they were laying the remains of a just-excavated mass grave.  The people wanted me to go into the room- I felt like a voyeur, and didn't want to, but my guides, whose parents were among the dead, insisted.  I think that the more people who saw it the less it was a story, and the more real it was.  Anyway, on the ground amongst the bodies were the identity cards.   One couldn't stop thinking how those cards were their death warrant, and even though the Belgians weren't the genocidaires, be furious at their idiot science leading the way to this slaughter.  

You miss two larger points.

Belgium has American Nuclear Missles as part of an agreement under out Nuclear Umbrella.  Read it from Wikipedia here:  

en.wikipedia.org/.../Nuclear_nations

If Belgium breaks up who get the Nukes?  The Lazy & Arrogant Froncophones or the Cranky Flemish.  Probably working overtime at Foggy Bottom.

And what will happen to all that great beer?  If this interrupts the flow of Budwieser or Stella Artois the Street could get ugly.

CRS9TNR -

From the Wikipedia article you link to:

-- U.S. nuclear weapons based in Europe are in the sole possession and under constant and complete custody and control of the United States.

Damn right, Mackenzie!

Sorry.  It's just the spirit of the forum.

Yeah,

But more importantly they own the beer.

The Nukes are retained under American custody, however in the event that they are used they'll be flown out on Belgian planes by Belgian pilots, effectively ceding them to Belgium. The manner in which the US and its NATO allies interpreted the NPT was that if a nuclear war broke out the treaty had failed and thus was null and void. Until such a time we maintain custody, but in many ways we've given them the weapons in all but name. If the weapons remained after a split they'd probably stick with Flanders, since that's where they're based now, but obviously the agreement by which they stay there would have to be renegotiated.

At any rate, all of the U.S. tactical nukes that remain in Europe will likely be gone within a decade anyway.

I hope the American nukes are gone from Europe. Let the Europeans deal with their own security. Whether thy face Islamist Arabs or Nazi Germans or Communist Russians, let them be on their own.

I hope the American nukes are gone from Europe. Let the Europeans deal with their own security. Whether thy face Islamist Arabs or Nazi Germans or Communist Russians, let them be on their own.

Hmmm... So Belgium is splitting along linguistic lines after all these years of being a single state.

So for those (Tony Judt, Edward Said, ISM-PSM, Christian Peacemakers, etc. etc.) who advocate a single Palestinian-Jewish state of all its citizens living in peace with one another, after all these years of hostility.... How is that supposed to work?

שבת שלום

Hershel Ginsburg

Efrata / Jerusalem

CRS9TNR and gamlin - Geez, the Russians managed to negotiate the denuclearization of Ukraine and Kazakhstan when the old Soviet Union broke up, with the Russian Federation succeeding to the Soviet Union's obligations under the NPT, the INF treaty, and so on.  Surely the US can manage the process as well if Belgium disappears.  The Ukrainians and the Kazakhs had much stronger arguments for their rights, as successors to the Soviet Union, to remain nuclear states.  Here, it's pretty clear the Belgians don't own the weapons.

The bigger issue isn't that Belgium will break up or that nukes will get misplaced. It's that now we'll be dealing with half the world's population wondering where the hell they're going to get their high-quality chocolate fix now. I'm sorry but I'm not about to suffer the harpy-claws of PMS because my lady can't get a proper bar of Belgian chocolate.

Belgium did most of its bloody work in Africa in the nineteenth century, did it not?  Or some proto-Belgian entity ruled by King Leopold, anyway?  At any rate their hands aren't that clean if you go back far enough.

My friend lives in Brussels and is a French speaker, but does not speak Dutch/Flemish.  And she tells me that this is nothing to worry about, that periodically they see this issue come up in Belgium, and there is talk about splitting the country, and then everybody gets nostalgic and forgets about it.  She with and her ex-husband have been involved in Israeli and European Union politics, and up until her divorced last year, she moved in diplomatic circles throughout Europe.

By the way, my friend is an unusual mix of of Puerto Rican, African American, French from New York, is Jewish with dual Israeli US citizenship, and has a bit of Tainos Indian thrown in on her Puerto Rican side, or so she says. But I don't know if anybody can really claim genuine Tainos heritage because they were all wiped out.  I imagined that a genetic remnant exists within the population of a number of Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico, but as of yet I don't think there's any genetic test that can tell you one way or another, though perhaps in future there will be.

Her ex-husband's family comes from a long line of secular Belgian Jews, with some Moroccan Jews thrown in, who pretended to be Catholic during World War II, Some within the family never return to Judaism, which creates some interesting drama around the dinner table at times.

I'm convinced -- Belgium drops to #2 on the Rwanda scale.  

cspencef,

The answer to your question is yes. Belgium did most of its bloody work in Africa in the nineteenth century and also into the twentieth century, too. They were the most barbaric colonist and aside from Rwanda, did quite a bloody number in the old Congo where they named the capital Leopoldville after their king. You  don't have to go back far to find their blood-dirty hands.

Scrubby: the principal difference between Belgium and other colonial powers was that the Congo was considered Leopold's personal fiefdom, rather than a colony administered for and by the state.  In many respects, of course, this made no difference - a million people still got killed in Algeria, the same number as in the Congo - but it did make the colonial administration far more brutal than any other anywhere in the world (until, of course, Japan got into the colonial game ...).  And while the Brits left *something* behind most places they colonised, the Belgians raped and impoverished and brutalised the Congo river basin and left it bleeding.

The Belgian Flemish speakers could join with people in the Catholic Dutch south to form a new small country unfied by language and religion.  However, I have not heard of a separatist movement in the Nederlands.  This all goes back to the confusions of the separation of Belgium from the Nederlands in the early 19th century.  Is religion more important than language?

Oxhead: other than language and religion, the Catholic Dutch and the Flemish have nothing in common - culturally, they are distinct as could be within a European context.  Not to mention that there is no separatism movement in the Netherlands.  Flanders is enormously wealthy and can easily go it alone, as long as it is safely ensconsed within the EU.  In any event, if the Flemish manage to secede, it will be to go their own way, not to dilute their vote by adding in the Catholic Dutch, who are far more liberal socially than the Flemish, in a pointless exercise.  The Waloon and the German-speaking community will be left to drift, the former probably the most unwanted real estate in Europe.