Spain: how much of state violence will be used? "To move forward we need to understand: why are regions, states and peoples beginning to re-pose the question of national self-determination now? For Spain and Italy it is clear: the mixture of austerity, corruption and political sclerosis at the centre has limited the reality of regional democracy. It has pushed autonomous regions such as Catalonia towards independence and places such as Lombardy and Veneto towards seeking fiscal autonomy from an essentially dysfunctional central state." The big picture Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland ... Why they fight for self-determination now?
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51