Though McMaken’s admits in the Preface that the book is not theoretical, he repeatedly works against his stated ideas:
“But in spite of many efforts by separatists worldwide, there have been few changes to the lines on the maps.” [p39] But the 4-fold increase in states since the UN’s founding has demanded considerable “changes to the lines on the maps.”
His argument (Ch8) is odd, since cohesion by mutable political ideology instead of culturally, by shared values, defeats his own communitarian premise. For nuclear deterrence, Ch13 oddly favors proximity to superpowers & nuclear proliferation among smaller (seceded) nations, which must have considerable centralization to maintain such weapons. The postscript proclaims “the EU remains remarkably decentralized by American standards” [p188], ignoring that EU hostility to Brexit hardly favors secession.
The book reflects its origin in being cobbled together from ad hoc articles: It lacks logical follow-through, and has very thin endnotes.