*A wonderful & useful piece of history for the fear mongers.* For the uninformed, nations split b'cos of linguistic, cultural, etc. divergence leading in time to culturally-defined communities that are sufficiently distinct from one another to be classed as different nations. It is not always all about war! In 1776, the USA split from the UK In 1830 Belgium seprataed from the Netherlands In 1965, Singapore split off from Malaysia in 2002, East Timor got split off from Indonesia In 1921, Ireland split off from the United Kingdom, & (possibly in the future) there will be secession of Scotland. In 1944, Iceland split from Denmark with remarkable ease. In 1905 Norway split from Denmark. In 1905, Norway & Sweden also peacefully split ways. One got the car. the other got the kids. In 1947, the British India Dominion was partitioned into India n Pakistan . In 1971, Bangladesh secceeded from Pakistan. In 1992-93, the two parts of Czechoslovakia agreed to each go their own way. Thus were born the Czech Republic & Slovakia after what's been named the “Velvet Divorce”., About the same time, another kind of separation occurred, of course, in Yugoslavia. This one led to a bloodshed. in 1965, Singapore split from Malaysia for a variety of reasons, including religious (Malaysia is majority Muslim, Singapore isn't), ethnic/racial (Singapore has a very large majority Chinese population) and concerns over the Malaysian Bumiputra policy, which was (and is) basically a form of "Affirmative Action" for Muslim Malaysians - who make up the majority population in Peninsular Malaysia. Ethiopia & Eritrea Sudan & South Sudan are now separate countries USSR is now broken down into several countries. Nigeria is also towing the same path to separation! *IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT WAR!*