Spin-off of the What will be the next new state? thread. What independent country do you think will be the next to emerge on the world scene? How would it happen, and what approximate timeline do you envision?
I’m not going to even attempt a poll because there would be far too many I’d miss, but in no particular order here are the first few possibilities that come to mind:
Scotland
Quebec
Catalonia
Flanders
Wallonia
Chechnya
Kurdistan
Scotland or Catalonia are reasonably likely. Quebec, not right now, but if Canada destabalizes again in the future it could become likely.
As for Chechnya, frankly I have an easier time imagining Russia coming in, slaughtering most Chechnyans, and installing an ethnically Russian majority.
Kuristan: same as Chechnya, but with the genocide being a joint effort of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Hating the Kurds is pretty much the only thing those countries can agree about.
Start with this List of Ongoing Armed Conflicts and see which would lend themselves to geographic splits:
Peaceful establishment? Either Scotland or Flanders. I’m kinda surprised that the latter one didn’t happen a few years ago.
Stupid Flanders…
(Since people are having problems with their funny bones lately, that is a Simpsons reference.)
What a Walloon!
(That’s, kind of, a Bugs Bunny reference. :))
My money is against all of the peaceful secession movements. No stable democracy has broken up since World War II. It isn’t worth it.
Better prospects as the next country would be Puntland–if Somalia ever gets organized enough to split up. (Kind of paradoxical.) Or Iraqi Kurdistan. Or maybe the former Western Sahara occupied by Morocco.
Tobago…sarcasm
*It is the dumbest secession grumbling I have ever seen, some supporters eye rollingly refer to themselves as independent already, and treat their own citizens from Trinidad as foreigners with “customs” checkpoints because all the guns and drugs come from nasty Trinidad. It is really dumb.
I’m going with Somaliland. It’s already functioning as a de facto country and unlike other secessionist regions, there’s no functioning official government in place in Somalia that can oppose it.
No doubt by ‘stable’ you mean something more than ‘did not break up’. I can’t think of a long-established democracy splitting without overwhelming outside force, but several countries split shortly after becoming democratic: Malaya, Pakistan, Czechoslovakia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Indonesia spring to mind.
Oh yes, and I too think Somaliland is a good candidate.
Scottish independence is pretty much a given at the moment.
By “stable” I mean democratic over a period of time, like say at least 20 years. To take Czechoslovakia as an example, there was going to be wrenching change anyway in transitioning from totalitarian Communism to capitalist democracy. Breaking in two didn’t add that much headache to what was already there.
The last stable democracy that I can think of, that broke up, was the UK when Ireland seceded.
Central African Republic?
It is not. Look up some polls
http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/should-scotland-be-an-independent-country-1#line
That wasn’t a particularly stable arrangement though 
My guess is Catalonia- the support for secession is higher there than in Scotland, Belgium or Quebec.
Kurdistan may happen; Iraq seems kind of calm at the moment, but I don’t see the newly-empowered Kurds taking much shit from Baghdad these days.
Chechnya isn’t going to happen; the Russians will do what they did last time to keep them part of Russia.
Somaliland would require someone to actually recognise them, I don’t see that happening.
Tibet should be on the list. I’m not sure it’s likely to succeed, but The Tibetan Independence movement gets a good bit of attention.
:smack: Taiwan!
I didn’t think of it because I think of it as an independent country already, but its status is…complicated. I expect a number of scenarios might plausibly lead to Taiwan being given leave to become a fully sovereign nation.
Speaking of things Pacific, is there any interest in the Cook Islands or Niue in becoming fully independent from New Zealand?
Will they have a Good Neighborino policy?