The human drama, whether played out in history books or headlines, is often not just a confusing spectacle but a spectacle about confusion. Here is one optimist's reason for believing unity will prevail over disunity, integration over disintegration.
All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances.
No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. Through the ages, there has been an overall trend toward larger units claiming sovereignty and paradoxically, a gradual diminution of how much true sovereignty any one country actually has. The forerunner of the nation was a prehistoric band clustered around a fire beside a river in a valley. It's members had a language, a set of supernatural beliefs and a repertoire of legends about their ancestors. When they reached the next valley, they massacred and enslaved some weaker band of people they found clustered around some smaller fire and thus became the world's first imperialists.