Catalans and Kurds Discover the Hard Truth About Secession<br />Ms. Coggins called it "a beautiful, peaceful movement"<br />but "utterly befuddling from an international relations perspective." The Catalans have little international support and face heavy opposition, as do Iraq’s Kurds, setting both on a collision course with world powers and the painful contradictions of secession politics.<br />For all the high-minded window dressing that often attaches to secession rules, in the end, they "have more<br />to do with what the powerful want," said Bridget L. Coggins, a political scientist who studies secession.<br />This helps get around the fact that there is no legal right, under international or often domestic law, for secession.<br />But the vote has instead galvanized Washington and Baghdad in opposition, illustrating what the scholars Erica Chenoweth and Tanisha M. Fazal have called "the secessionists’ dilemma" —<br />that the unstated rules for secession often fail or even backfire.<br />Opinio Juris wrote that As it is generally understood, there is no right to secede under international law,
