What is Belgium Anyway?

A New York Times article of April 8 carries the following headline: "After Attacks, Many Argue Against a United Belgium."

The terrorist attacks in Belgium on March 22 against the airport and the metro, following the massacre in Paris last November 13, have caused widespread concern as to whether the small Belgian state (pop. 11 million) is capable of handling the threat posed by ISIS, with its sophisticated propaganda apparatus and its seemingly unlimited ability to attract new recruits.

Although the French suffered 130 dead in the November attacks, it is the Belgian state that is being criticized for its inability to operate against ISIS. France, in contrast to Belgium, has a tradition of a centralized government and has the most heavily policed state in Western Europe. Among its innovations are a institutionalized riot police (euphemistically known as the Republican Security Companies); a political reporting police, now merged with the internal security agency, the former DST; a judiciary police that is the criminal investigation division of the national police; and a gendarmerie that polices the countryside.

Belgium on the other hand is a highly divisive entity whose main ethnic groups — the Flemish and Walloons — are roughly separated from each other, respectively north and south, and speak two languages — Dutch and French — that could hardly be more different from one another.

In the First World War, in which the small Belgian Army fought heroically, casualties sometimes occurred when the Flemish enlisted men could not understand the French spoken by their officers. In the Second World War, the successor Belgian King surrendered the Army to the Germans, and among the Flemish population there was a strong but abortive pro-German movement.

The Flemish, long the underclass, are now 60 percent of the population and inhabit a land that looks not unlike the neat Dutch countryside and is in sharp contrast to the washed out former industrial powerhouse that was Wallonia.

Created as a state only in 1830, largely at the instigation of the British, who wanted it as a buffer against possible further French imperialism, it could be argued that the country could have been divided along linguistic lines, between France and the Netherlands. In Flanders, there is a strong but possibly not decisive opinion in favor of independence. In Wallonia, there is little desire for an independent Wallonia by itself, but, due to the prolonged institutional crisis, there has been a sharp rise in favor of attachment to France if Belgium should break up: 49 percent, according to  one  poll. Reaction in Paris has been mixed. One French blogger ("Captans") had this to say: "I adore the Belgians. They're charming people, they're faithful friends, and they're humorous and uncomplicated. Everything that the French have lost…Seriously, Messieurs, try to save Belgium if there is still time."

Statements and views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.