What makes a nation? Is it geography, like in Switzerland, which despite it being ethnically diverse between Italians, French and Germans, is united due to its culture based on its  geography being surrounded by the Alps, and it’s shared value to defend it. Or is it a similar culture, language and ethnicity, like in nations like Albania, Japan or Italy, which are some of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world, with around 98% of Albania’s population being Albanian, 97% of Japan being Japanese and 91% of Italy being Italians. Or maybe it is something completely different, like in America, which is one of the few nations in the world that, rather than being united on ethnicity, as there is no single largest ethnicity in America, but is instead united on preserving ideas of freedom and democracy, which is something that is successful in the United States, as to this day, America has the oldest constitution in the world, and has never collapsed into complete anarchy. However, America’s case appears to be the exception rather than the rule, as unifying around ideas rather than shared heritage usually doesn’t in other nations, such as Yugoslavia, which, after the collapse of communism and the death of Tito, had lost its sense of unity, as they were unified around communism, and immediately divided into ethnic and sectarian lines as the Yugoslav state collapsed into civil war. However, no matter what it might be, a state has to be unified if it wants to exist and not collapse into anarchy and chaos. 

For example, Japan is one of the  most unified countries in the world, as  I said before, as they are unified ethnically, culturally, and linguistically, partially due to centuries of isolationism, and is one of the most united and interlinked countries in the world. A way to show this is through Japan’s economic miracle in the 1960s after World War 2, where they became famous for making goods, like cars. A reason for this is because Japan was interconnected and united enough that they could use the “Just in time” strategy for car production, where different parts of the car are made in factories across the country, and are then shipped to the main factory to assemble the pieces together to ship to the rest of the world. This could work in Japan because they were well unified, and have a supply chain in an interconnected nation, which is important for national stability. 

On the other hand, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is anything but unified. It was drawn up in the Berlin Conference to be given to the Belgians, and was hastily drawn up  because nobody could agree who should get it. However, the attendees of the Berlin conference didn’t draw it in a way that was useful for the people in the Congo. There is no single ethnic majority, with the largest ethnicity, the Luba-Kasai being only 8% of the population, and around 250 others existing in one country. Meanwhile, there are around 242 spoken languages in the DRC, with only 12 million people, around a tenth of the country, speaking French, the most common language. Immediately after it declared independence in 1960, various parts of the country tried to secede, and the nation erupted into civil war, the first of several times. Meanwhile, even after independence, the government did nothing to unify the country  in some way. To this day, in the Kivu and Katanga regions, the government in Kinshasa exerts no control, letting insurgents to reign free, to the point of insurgents capturing cities with over a million people and the government doing nothing about it, because there are no roads connecting that part of the country to the capital. There are many other problems with the Congo, but this is one of the main reasons, which is why the Congo will never have an economic miracle for a long time, let alone be a superpower, because their government is incompetent, unstable and corrupt, their population is only focused on surviving rather than building, and there is nothing to unite around, as the divisions is too great, with no single major ethnicity, language or even national identity as Congolese. This is why the most diverse nations usually fail, something I will talk about another time.

Here is another example. France is not French, it has several different ethnic groups and languages, like Brittany, a peninsula populated by a mostly Celtic population, closer to that of Wales and Ireland than French. Originally, France had their national unity based on a king, saying “We are French because we have a king, and we need to obey the king because he has divine right from god to rule.” However, after the French Revolution, France’s since of national unity came from “We are French because we speak French”, because, although it was the national language, before, most French  speakers were in urban centers like Paris or Marsille while areas outside spoke other languages, like in the south, where most people spoke Occitan. However, after the French Revolution, more people spoke French, to the point where nearly everyone in France speaks French, gaining a new sense of national identity and unity. 

The thing we can get from all these examples is that it is critical for a nation to be unified if it wants to succeed in preventing dis-unity and anarchy, or in advancing in the global stage. And just as importantly, in order to achieve internal integration, one needs to be interconnected enough with the rest of country through infrastructure, trade and administration, so you can enforce the laws throughout the nation. 

However, that is not something that is going for a lot of nations…