I feel the whole assumption there is some list of features that grant a group of people the right to self-determination is kind of a category mistake. Sometimes it will make the world better to let a group of people form a seperate country sometimes it won't. The difference between Ukraine and the confederacy is as simple as: the world was better off not letting the confederacy self-determine and worse if Russia stops Ukraine from doing so. It even plausibly depends on who the occupier is and how they treat them (if the Basque region was in China not Spain no question it would be better to allow self-determination...as of now unclear to me as it imposes costs on both sides).
It's like asking who is truly (has the right to be) the parent (ie has custody) of this child. I mean we've picked a legal answer but imagine trying to insist that there is a true morally correct parent of any child if we had yet to formulate custody laws. Sure, in most cases the rules we've adopted into law track certain traditional factors (the biological parents) that any decent custody system but in the other cases (eg, adoption, divorce, orphans abused children) we choose our laws based on overall pragmatic considerations.
I mean imagine goi g to a country whose laws and traditions favor giving aunt's and uncle's priority when a child is orphaned and insist "no no, the *true* parent of that child is his grandmother.". Some ppl really do have such feelings about their traditions but (assuming you don't believe the religious justifications) it seems like they are just confused. You can argue that one system for assigning custody is is better system than the other but the idea that there is some kind of simply morally correct rule is crazy.
I mean, if you were in a small community marooned on a far away planet and the question came up who gets to be the parent of some orphaned child you'd just pick whoever would be the best for the child not look to some kind of universal right to parent status that certain ppl have vis-a-vis their genetic or social ties.
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And yes, this can make it quite hard to coordinate norms around these areas. I mean, it would be great if we could work in a preference against dictatorial states into the UN's notion of a people but that will never get sufficient agreement.
But, in the long run, I think it won't matter because we'll all converge on a level of freedom and wealth sufficient to make the question much less important.
I feel the whole assumption there is some list of features that grant a group of people the right to self-determination is kind of a category mistake. Sometimes it will make the world better to let a group of people form a seperate country sometimes it won't. The difference between Ukraine and the confederacy is as simple as: the world was better off not letting the confederacy self-determine and worse if Russia stops Ukraine from doing so. It even plausibly depends on who the occupier is and how they treat them (if the Basque region was in China not Spain no question it would be better to allow self-determination...as of now unclear to me as it imposes costs on both sides).
It's like asking who is truly (has the right to be) the parent (ie has custody) of this child. I mean we've picked a legal answer but imagine trying to insist that there is a true morally correct parent of any child if we had yet to formulate custody laws. Sure, in most cases the rules we've adopted into law track certain traditional factors (the biological parents) that any decent custody system but in the other cases (eg, adoption, divorce, orphans abused children) we choose our laws based on overall pragmatic considerations.
I mean imagine goi g to a country whose laws and traditions favor giving aunt's and uncle's priority when a child is orphaned and insist "no no, the *true* parent of that child is his grandmother.". Some ppl really do have such feelings about their traditions but (assuming you don't believe the religious justifications) it seems like they are just confused. You can argue that one system for assigning custody is is better system than the other but the idea that there is some kind of simply morally correct rule is crazy.
I mean, if you were in a small community marooned on a far away planet and the question came up who gets to be the parent of some orphaned child you'd just pick whoever would be the best for the child not look to some kind of universal right to parent status that certain ppl have vis-a-vis their genetic or social ties.
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And yes, this can make it quite hard to coordinate norms around these areas. I mean, it would be great if we could work in a preference against dictatorial states into the UN's notion of a people but that will never get sufficient agreement.
But, in the long run, I think it won't matter because we'll all converge on a level of freedom and wealth sufficient to make the question much less important.
The independence of the Confederacy was not decided by "the world" but instead by Americans.