Summary Of Juan Enriquez's Too Many Flags

In the current state of world’s affairs, there are many battles being fought over regional and territorial rights for land. The desires for separatism and secessionism often come about as results of ethic and linguistic divisions among the people. However, to analyze territorial and regional autonomies and the issues that arise, it is necessary to define and understand the historical contexts and frameworks upon which the individual states were built, and particularity their political and economic allies. By exploring the concept of globalization in the contemporary political and economic arenas, it is inevitable to see the formation of political alliances that play crucial roles in determining the fate of smaller states. These political alliances
As Enriquez argues, people begin to question the legitimacy of existing countries or governments when they desire to establish their independent territorial states. The assertion of group's ethnic, religious, linguistic, regional and national identities further signifies the need for regional autonomies because of the existing division among the larger population where the group resides (Enriquez 1999). State’s successes in establishing territorial and regional autonomies do not solely depend on having educated population, strong regional economies, or advanced technologies. However, an interesting point arises in the discussion, if a state’s success does not depend on strong political, economic, or cultural factors, then what does it depend on? Thus, in the modern era, these “successes” depend on the political alliances. For example, since the United States supports Iraqi opposition groups, the Kurdish north, and Shiite south has no chances of establishing their independent nations. As a result, religious and cultural differences among the population are not perceived as real struggles for independence because of economic and diplomatic “outward invasion”(Enriquez 2009:46) led by the