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Last week, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev just left the 8,649,496-square-mile Soviet Union, which is disintegrating. Not only are there strong independence movements in the Baltic states and Georgia, but Boris Yeltsen, just elected president of the Russian republic, said all 15 component republics ought to be independent.
Gorbachev stopped in Canada, whose 3,851,790 square miles are also running a risk of turning into several nations; the accord that holds French-speaking Quebec is in jeopardy there, as well as in the English-speaking provinces.
The premier's next stop was the U.S., 3,618,770 square miles. Nobody has yet suggested that our country is about to fall apart, but there may be a trend -- one of those major historical forces that delight readers of Oswald Spengler, wherein the time of the huge polyglot nation has come and gone.
What are big countries good for now? They used to be the only ones that had the wherewithal for nuclear bombs, but just about any country can build them these days. Holding some megatonnage doesn't make a nation any more secure; the reverse is more likely true. Where would you feel safer: Switzerland or Pakistan?
But of course there are conventional military forces. Our national might does not come even close to halting drug smuggling or illegal immigration, but we're supposed to believe that all the money we spend would stop an invasion. Fortunately we've never had to find out, since our two neighbors, Canada and Mexico, have never tried to invade the U.S., despite several occasions when our armies invaded their territories.
Big countries might have been a necessity in the days when railroads dominated transportation and rapid communication meant telegraph wires. But you can put a jet port and a satellite link just about anywhere; you don't need the resources of a big country in order to participate in commerce with the rest of the world.
Big countries handled a lot of those connections through their foreign ministries. But that must not work real well, or Colorado wouldn't need its own foreign trade offices.
Once there may have been an economic benefit in belonging to a big country. Now we get our share of the national debt; for every dollar that Colorado sends to Washington, only about 84 cents comes back.
Or the big nation offered some cultural benefits. But who bothers to nurture an indigenous culture when there's television? And what happens when it dawns on people that life could be more than trying to emulate the Cleavers or the Thirtysomething crew?
No matter where you look, there don't seem to be many purposes for big countries. The challenges before humankind seem to be global, like acid rain and the greenhouse effect, or else extremely local, wherein the solutions decreed in Washington or Moscow just won't work in Salida and Denver or Budapest and Vladivostok.
The current summit conference might end up being just as important as a meeting between two dinosaurs, late in the Jurassic. They don't know any better, but they don't matter any more.
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