7/29/2019 Michael Lind

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Michael LindNational Good

Contrary to those who have predicted the imminent demise of the nation-state, nationalism is alive and well.Indeed, it is the most powerful political force in the world today. Pg 1

For all the talk about the "Balkanisation" of the world, there are no signs that the nation-state is about to be replaced bysomething smaller. Pg. 2

The nation-state, then, is not in danger of extinction. But the multinational state is. For the past 200 years, the mostsignificant trend in world history has been the replacement of a few large multinational empires by a growing number ofmostly-small ethnically-homogeneous nation-states. The idea of the nation-state has spread across the world like acomputer virus, erasing all rival forms of political organisation. This is a radical break with the past. For most of history,the two main political forms were the multinational empire and the city-state. The nation-state is an invention of the 18th and19th centuries. It was made possible, although not inevitable, by communications technologies such as printing andthe telegraph, which created mass reading publics with a sense of common identity, and by infrastructure technologies suchas the steam engine, which permitted the political and commercial integration of large national territories. Pg. 2

The answer is that the nation-state has prevailed because of psychological economies of scale. The ethnic nation can bebroadly defined to include all people with a common language or culture, or limited narrowly to people sharing a commondescent. But whether it is defined broadly, as in multiracial Brazil, Mexico or the US, or narrowly, as in monoracial Japan orSweden, the ethnic nation is the largest community with which ordinary human beings can have an emotional attachment.

Pg. 3

Nations and nationalism, then, will be the primary actors in world politics for generations, perhaps centuries, to come. Pg. 3

We Americans are fond of claiming that the US, unlike the wicked blood-and-soil nations of the old world, is a "universalnation" which is "founded on an idea." But this is propaganda which dates back only to the mid-20th century. From the timeof the founding fathers until the worldwide discrediting of racism by the Holocaust, the US was a white-supremacist country.Only "free white persons" could become naturalised citizens in the US between the 1790s and the 1940s. pg. 3

The claim that nationalism is intolerant is a half-truth. Every kind of political community, no matter how tolerant, tends toreact harshly to threats to its legitimating principle. Pg. 4

The fact that nationalism is exclusive by definition does not mean that it is inherently vicious. It is true that atrocities likeethnic cleansing and genocide have been committed in the name of nationalism. But it is also the case that ethnic cleansingand genocide have been committed by internationalists in the name of cosmopolitan ideologies. Pg. 4

Imperial nationalism is bad because it is imperial, not because it is nationalist. Pg. 4

The cause of the first world war was Germany's ambition to become the dominant world power by becoming the dominantEuropean power--an ambition which threatened the interests of Russia, France, Britain, and the US--empires all. Pg. 5

Critics of nationalism often assume that national sentiment is somehow incompatible with democracy. In fact, therelationship tends to be the other way around. Almost all stable democracies are nation-states, while multinational statestend to be dictatorships. Pg. 5

At what point would there be too many countries? Between 1945 and today, the number of UN member states increased

from 51 to 188. The addition of a dozen or two dozen more nation-states would not create chaos. At any given time, there

are only a few great military and economic powers, and it is on theirrelations among themselves, not the number of smallstates, that international order depends. Pg. 6

Most nation-states are relatively small, but this need not be a handicap. A small nation-state can take advantage ofcommercial economies of scale by joining the global market or a trading bloc like the EU or Asean; and it can takeadvantage of military economies of scale by joining a military alliance like Nato. Because of its political sovereignty, a nation-state, even a small, weak, nation-state, can negotiate the nature of its relations with its trading partners and its military allies.This is something no ethnic minority in a multinational state can ever do. Pg. 6

Whether the chattering classes like it or not, a century from now there will be more nation-states in the world, and fewermultinational states. Pg. 7

A case can be made that, on the whole, the good which has come with replacing multinational dynastic empires anddictatorships with nation-states which at least have a chance to become stable liberal democracies, has outweighed the bad

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which often accompanies the break-up of non-national states. In any event, the future seems clear. The 19th century was acentury of nationalism. The 20th century was also a century of nationalism. In all likelihood, the 21 st century willbe a century of nationalism as well.