Given the relative infrequency of this phenomenon, our metaphorical scales may be stacked against secession. The purpose of this chapter and Chapter 4 is to examine the main barriers to secession: first, the benefits of membership, and then, the costs of secession. The benefits of membership for a distinct community accrue from the services and advantages provided by the state. This chapter dissects these benefits into their constituent security, economic, and social factors. Critical to the argument, investigation of specific cases in which secession was a viable alternative and yet not chosen reveals that communities sometimes calculate that they can ill afford to forfeit the benefits associated with participation in a larger and more powerful state. In effect, this calculation provides a powerful restraint on secession attempts.

Security benefits

Security benefits of membership manifest themselves in the state's maintenance of internal order so as to protect citizens from violence at each other's hands and in its guarantee of defense from the aggression of foreign powers. With a few exceptions, before the middle of the twentieth century, force was deemed an acceptable means to settle political or economic disputes between states. One needs only to remember von Clausewitz's famous dictum in Vom Kriege: “War is a continuation of policy by other means.” As long as they could do so without suffering heavy repercussions, states regularly intervened in the affairs of neighboring countries in order to extend their own power and influence.