A disgusting vat of filth that no self-respecting intelligent person would wade into.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I said nine out of ten I think in the past seventy five years. I think I definitely showed that.

Then you confused me by pointing to the creation of Bulgaria as support, since that was longer ago.

You picked the country with the most border changes and most of them happening a long time ago, and Bulgaria ended up with 90% Bulgarians.

I picked the country I knew a little about. (Ever play Diplomacy? Bulgaria has an Aegean coast in that game.) You seem to have decided I was cherry-picking. Not so. BTW, Bulgaria's population appears to be 84% Bulgarian.

Nothing in Geopolitics is absolute. . . . You could go on all day with exceptions, but the question is how significant they are. A Frenchman living in Russia is an exception, but in no way significant. The borders all over Europe almost conform to ethnolinguistic borders. And most of the places where they don't: Belgium, Eastern Ukrain, Crimea, Kosovo the Basques, there are problems. Were the linguistic distinctions are minor the problems are still there: Scotland, Ireland, and Catalonia. So where the political borders are aligned with ethnolinguistic borders (most of the borders) there is no trouble, but in most of the places they are not aligned there is trouble. Seems like a pretty overwhelming force to me.

I agree with much of this. But perhaps we're interested in different parts of this. It's one thing to say that borders currently reflect linguistic and ethnic differences to a great degree. It's another to say that borders are going to keep changing to align with linguistic and ethnic differences. Borders moved a lot in Europe up through the end of World War II, and then haven't changed much since then, with a few exceptions. Bulgaria's borders kept changing in its first 60 years of independence, and then have stayed pretty much the same since then.

Now you could suggest that the shift to industrialization somehow caused borders to change a lot for a while. Or you could say that borders change all the time, but that the Cold War put a lid on things. Those two theories point in different directions for the future. And I'm sure there are other theories -- I just made those up now. My point: Distinguishing the exceptions from the trends is how you sort out between the theories.

Have you noticed that the current political map of europe conforms more closely to ethnolinguistic lines than the political map of europe fifty years ago.

Can you link to the maps?

2050 will most certianly be more aligned than 2000. In fact Montenegros split from Serbia has accomplished this. If you don't count that all it will take is Belgium breaking up, Scotland leaving, Ireland recombining, Catalan breaking off, crimea moving to Russia, Moldova and Romania combining etc.

If those things happen. But they haven't happened yet.

You know that no political lines will move to make themselves conform less to ethnolinguistic lines.

You're ignoring the EU, but in Europe you are probably correct. OTOH, I'm not sure about this outside Europe. The conversation started with a discussion of Afghanistan and Central Asia, and I'm still not understanding how you see this strong force translating into specific events that will change borders in those places.