Self-determination: 'The atomisation of human society'

"Self-determination, which has nothing to do with self-government but has become confused with it, is barbarous and reactionary: by sanctioning secession, it invites majorities and minorities to be intransigent and irreconcilable. It is stipulated in the principle of self-determination that they need not be compatriots because they will soon be aliens. There is no end to this atomisation of human society. Within the minorities who have seceded there will tend to appear other minorities who in their turn will wish to secede."

~ Walter Lippmann -- who, a world-war before, had helped draft Woodrow Wilson's 'Fourteen Points'; from his 1944 critique of US War Aims