Belgium is an artificial nation that has long since outlived any rationale that it may once have had. That makes the weekend’s election “victory” (a word that has to be treated with some care within the context of Belgian politics) by the separatist New Flemish Alliance something to celebrate. The NVA won around 30 percent of the votes in Flanders, partly by taking a softer tack on Flemish independence than the hardline Vlaams Belang, the traditional flagbearers of the Flemish cause. The NVA veer somewhat closer to the political center than do the VB, and favor a final withering away of the Belgian “state” (a corrupt, thoroughly undemocratic pastiche of a country that is, in many ways, the perfect host for the EU) rather than the less-than-velvet divorce of the VB’s more excited fantasies. Any celebrations of the NVA’s result will, therefore, have to be muted. Withering away can take quite a while, even that of a state as rotten as Belgium.