Talk of Kosovo's becoming an independent nation and Serbia's reaction to it makes me wonder once again why countries fight so hard to keep parts of themselves from seceding. I'm obviously overlooking something, but no country ever lets it happen without a fight.

Since the Albanians and Serbs hate each other, why do the Serbs want to hang on to the Albanians? What sane individual would try to force an unwilling person to stay in a relationship? Many would try to persuade, of course, but only the criminally insane would use force to hold on.

We ourselves seceded from England and had to win the Revolutionary War to be independent. Yet when the southern states tried to secede, the northern states fought them, defeated them and forced them to stay in the United States. Why? The closest I could come in a quick search was in Wikipedia's American Civil War overview. It says Abraham Lincoln said in his inaugural speech that "the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" and that "it was a binding contract." It called any secession "legally void." Big deal! This was worth 620,000 deaths? (The North didn't fight the South to set the slaves free—Lincoln didn't sign the Emancipation Proclamation until more than a year after the war began.)

The Associated Press had an article the other day that gives a good rundown of other secessionist movements throughout the world. One group it didn't mention was the Kurds. Why can't Turkey and Iraq just let them have their own country? What would it hurt?

I know I'm oversimplifying, and I haven't taken the time to research each situation, but is money the usual motive for hanging on to dissatisfied portions of a country? Or is it ego? Nothing else comes to mind.