Will nation-states disappear?

 

The crisis of the 1930s, which led to World War II and culminated in the Cold War, ended with the economic collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Capitalism endured and could not be overcome as the Marxist socialist project intended. Some, like Fukuyama, believed that history would end with the definitive triumph of liberal democracies based on this economic system. But it only took a few decades to witness the emergence of a new development of capitalism, driven by a new industrial revolution supported by the internet, powerful new computers and smartphones, artificial intelligence, and so on, which generated the new ideology of globalization. Just as socialist ideology saw capitalism as an obstacle to progress that had to be destroyed and overcome, the new progressive ideology of globalization sees the nation-state as a brake and an obstacle to its development, which must be eliminated and replaced by other forms of political administration.

The destruction or overcoming of nation-states is sought through the creation of supranational groupings, as is the case with the European Union. But in the case of the USA or China, which are large continental nation-states, they could only be overcome by creating a Global State, as some propose, with a global government, police force, and courts. The problem is that a Global State would cease to be a state in the strict sense, if we consider that a state is not a separate entity that can exist without confronting an external environment of other states or pre-state societies that threaten its borders. A Global State could only exist if extraterrestrial beings appeared on our earthly horizon, threatening our existence, and against whom we Earthlings united in a single state. But such a hypothesis belongs to the realm of historical fiction. Therefore, such a Global State is utopian and, strictly speaking, impossible.

What would happen if the current nation-states were destroyed is that their inhabitants would remain organized into regional power blocs, due to the natural persistence of tribal ties observed, for example, in the so-called ethnic nationalities resurging in Europe as a result of the weakening of national sovereignties transferred to Brussels. But such “micro-nations” or “fractional states,” which would spring up like mushrooms in the so-called “Europe of the peoples” through secessionist processes, like those of the Corsicans, Basques, Catalans, Bretons, etc., are not truly states in the sense of the political nationalism that emerged from the French Revolution, but rather a kind of return to pre-state racial and cultural tribal structures. Therefore, rather than progress, what would occur here would be a historical regression.

The philosopher Herbert Spencer prophesied, back in the 19th century, that the triumph of socialism would be unstoppable, but that wherever it occurred, instead of creating a more advanced industrial society, it would lead to a resurgence of the militaristic societies that existed before the industrial age. This happened with the growing Soviet militarism of the Cold War. We could say today that the triumph of globalist ideologies, which seek to overcome the political structures of modern nation-states, where it is already taking place, will, rather than lead to a more progressive and advanced society, unleash a return to earlier tribal societies, or even to the city-states of ancient times, before the emergence of modern nation-states.

This is the direction taken by the massive irregular immigration promoted in recent decades by supranational governments, such as those of the European Union or the USA, based on the idea that all cultures are equal and can be tolerated and coexist in harmony. The traditional tolerance of Western democracy is invoked to justify this, forgetting that its very proponents, such as Spinoza (“These men usurp all authority, declare themselves immediately chosen by God, proclaim their decrees divine and those emanating from the government merely human, in order to subject them to divine decrees, that is, to their own decrees. Who is unaware of how contrary this excess is to the good of the State?”, Theological-Political Treatise, end of Chapter XX), or John Locke, already placed limits, for example, on religious tolerance when it could endanger the very laws of the democratic state. Religions like Islam, which does not accept the Western separation of Church and State, seem difficult to reconcile with modern Western states, generating veritable medieval ghettos, with neighborhoods where Sharia law prevails over Western laws and customs. Will the nation-state withstand such changes?

Manuel F. Lorenzo