Countries that should unite and those who (maybe) shouldn't

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No, we shall call it the Terran Alliance.

1) A vast majority of French speaking Belgians want Belgium to stay as it is. The ones wanting attachment to France are a very tiny minority.

2) The Dutch speaking ones are divided but attachment to Netherlands is not a very popular idea. Most are either for a united Belgium or a separate Flemish republic. (I was born in this part of the nation and oppose Flemish independency ; people are divided on that issue on the Dutch speaking side but a slight majority still opposes to split Belgium)

3) Both sides would want Brussels ; unless Brussels becomes a city state under EU control there is no easy solution for this issue. The fact that the city is surrounded by Flemish soil but majority French speaking itself further complicates the issue. If you attach it to the French speaking part of Belgium it'd be like an enclave surrounded by Flemish territory. I doubt this is a good idea.

4) the German speaking minority feels Belgian and does not want to be "returned" to Germany. And for that matter, most Belgians are not in favor of a split, even though especially in Flanders opinions are divided. But there is still no majority in favor of a split.

Bangladesh split from Pakistan about 40 years ago in a very heavy conflict, re-uniting them won't be appreciated by Bangladesh. India is in a near state of war with Pakistan, uniting those would be impossible.

UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would be a nation with 4 areas shattered over 4 different continents, that could never work because the distance would make it impossible to control it. I doubt those other nations would want it because they basically liberated themselves from the UK before.

Northern Ireland still has a small majority of people in favor of a union with the UK, the Good Friday agreement arranges Ireland to be united once the majority of people in NI prefers it. This is not the case as yet. Also, the Irish government isn't too keen on getting Northern Ireland and have to pay the expenses of keeping safety under control up there, now the bill goes to London and the Irish government aren't unhappy with that.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland could be a linguistic union maybe, but Switzerland is a neutral nation by law and would probably never want to be united with any other nation. They even have rejected EU membership each time it was discussed.

Tensions between Ukraine and Russia are very high, so uniting them is creating a war zone. Belarus has considered uniting with Russia, but in the end chose to just be very befriended nations who still remained independent each. If you want the USSR to re-unite, you'd need to leave out the nations that have no strong ties to Russia and move on with those that are closely related to Russia (eg Armenia, Transnistria, Belarus, etc)

Czech Rep and Slowakia decided to break up, why would the re-unite now? And Poland is very very different linguistically and in terms of mentality.

Uniting Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia is like creating a war zone in the middle of Europe. Tensions are extremely high between those, this is why the Yugoslavian war was such a bloodbath. Nobody would want this reunification (by the way, you forgot Montenegro, Macedonia and Slovenia -- also part of former Yugoslavia)

Uniting the Nordic countries: not a good idea since they already have close ties but probably don't want to go any closer. In the past, wars between them occured. Iceland is not Scandinavia and neither is Finland. Greenland is still a Danish colony, but wants independence, so being connected to even more nations won't work very well.


quote="jk1"]I don't think India and Pakistan would be a good idea.

Australia and the UK are too far geographically, plus I'd rather get rid of the royal thing from Australia. Canada is too far, too.

Italy, Spain and Portugal - which language would they use?

A part of Switzerland can go to Germany, another to France and the other to Italy. But then Switzerland is such a good country as it is. So probably it should stay as it is.

I think some Latin American countries are better off without others. I hear Costa Rica is a pretty good place. It probably wouldn't need the trouble that other countries might bring in to it.

Algeria and Tunisia?

Hong Kong and Taiwan?

I think most countries are as they are for a reason. So uniting and separating would not be as simple as one might think. But it's kind of fun to think about it.[/quote]

Italy, Spain and Portugal have not that much in common except their warm weather and location by the same sea. But they are not siblings or so. No reason to consider uniting them.

Uniting Latin America would never work. Some countries have a very different functioning than others (Cuba for example), some are highly corrupt and will scare off the more well organised countries (eg Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay ... would not like to be in the same boat with corrupt nations and nations with high crime rates ... speaking the same language is not enough)

The maghreb nations aren't exactly best friends, so uniting Tunisia with Algeria would be asking for problems.

Hong Kong is not a country, it is a special administrative region of China and thus Chinese posession. Why would china give it away so shortly after finally getting Hong Kong and Macau back? Taiwan and China also are far from good friends as both claim the sovereignity of the entire Chinese territories.

It bares repeating: Bangladesh is a muslim, not a Hindu country.

Uniting the Indian subcontinent is comparable to trying unite all of europe.

India is whole civilization unto itsself(like europe). The subcontinent is about the size of all of europe sans european Russia. Has a comparable amount of linguistic, ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to all of Europe. None of the many native languages of India even has a word for "India" as a concept because (unlike China, but but LIKE Europe) India has no tradition of political unity in its 4000 year history (except for brief unity under occasional Napoleon-like conquerors).

When the whole subcontinent was part of the British Empire it was groomed by Gandhi for independence as one unit, but Mohamed Ali Jinnah pressured for seperate Hindu and muslim states. Both the Northwest, and the north east were majority muslim, and minority Hindu. So when the whole subcontinent won independence in 1947 they accomidated Muslims by making those two regions seperate from Hindu India. But they also made the two regions one with EACH OTHER as the one new country of Pakistan (they were not contiguous regions, were almost a thousand miles apart, and had different languages, and cultures, and never functioned very well as a unit). Not surprisingly they finnally came apart. But Pakistan did not allow 'East Pakistan' to become Bangladesh without a fight- and bloody atriocious one at that. The 1972 war was so herrendous that it prompted the ex-Beatles to stage a famous benifit concert for the civilian victims.

The modern state of India by itsself is already the equivalent of the European Union- with many languages and ethnic and relgious groups. Its a miracle that it actually functions somewhat better than the EU at unity, and stays together as well as it does. I wouldnt ask India to take in more countries.

Pakistan is far more unstable than India, and its ethnic diversity contributes to that instablity. And it has secessionist pressure from ethnic groups within itsself.

Bangladesh, having broken away from Pakistan, is probably the only subcontinent nation to be the equivalent of a typical European nation state ( like France, or Germany, or Poland)- a state built around one main ethnic group ( Muslim Bengali speakers). Even little Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has an on-again-off-again civil war between its two main ethnic groups (kinda like Ulster).

And- as others have said, since 1947 India and Pakistan have fought wars with each other over Kashmir, and other issues.

Would it be really bad if Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, Yemen, Oman and the UAE became one nation? That would be one controlling and domineering force in the world. If they simply put aside their religious differences, they probably could unite some where in the future.

There's also been talks for years of a United States of Africa. I don't see that happening anytime soon because of the enormous languages, cultures and disparities within the continent, but I never say never.