Belgium: Flanders and Wallonia

I know so little about the politics of Belgium that I was surprised to learn that there is a hot and heavy controversy brewing about the future of the country as a whole.  I do admit that a nation that shares both French and Dutch as it's spoken language seems odd--I had some trouble navigating in Brussels the very first day I was there because the map that I had the street signs solely in Dutch, but on the actual streets it could be either Dutch or French, and if you are not all that conversant in the Romantic and the Germanic languages, it is hard at times to figure out exactly where you were and where you needed to turn to get where you wanted to go.

It goes back to 18th century Europe--empires were not always built on the foundation of one culture and one language.  When those empires started to come apart, it was more often might that determined where national boundaries lay.  After WWI, Woodrow Wilson advocated that nations be built on the basis of commonalities--be that language, culture, religion, whatever it was that might unite a group of people under a common flag.  That strategy failed miserably at the time--in retrospect, the world in general and France in particular should have backed off on their revenge mission given what happened not all that much later in the 20th century, but at the end of the day, Belgium remained one country with a divided language and culture.

So, what is the controversy?  During the industrial revolution, Wallonia was second only to the United Kingdom in industrialization, capitalizing on its extensive deposits of coal and iron--up to the late 20th century, it was the wealthier half of the unhappy marriage.  Since all of the European Union operations, as well as NATO, are centered in Flanders, the fortunes have changed and now they are angling for a seperate state.  So much for a 'neutral' Belgium.