The nation state–a concept produced in 1648 by the powdered heads who gathered at Westphalia to end the thirty years war–has been under attack for some time. The most recent whacks came as the world has collectively tried to make sense of the Syrian conflict. Fareed Zakaria, for instance, has argued that the conflict is a result of the colonial-era borders that were artificially propped up against the wishes of competing religious and/or ethnic groups. What we are witnessing in Syria is a very bloody process by which a society re-balances itself–and possibly its boundaries–toward majority rule.
But wait… Really? Should national borders in the 21st century be defined by homogeneous (or even “dominant”) collections of people based on their culture, language and religion? In response to Zakaria’s argument, Nick Danforth shot back: “at best, creating more countries would have just meant more borders to fight over, while fewer large countries would have turned regular wars into civil ones.” Parag Khanna points out the most vibrant countries on earth are “deeply diverse empires, not culturally defined civilizations…. Continental-scale empires like the United States, China and Brazil combine large populations with the financial resources and ambition to reshape foreign structures to suit their economic and strategic goals.” The promise of the European Union is precisely to overcome such boundaries in order to present a viable economic entity. Its very existence is an acknowledgement that Europe’s 15th century understanding of national borders no longer fits the world.
So, what could possibly replace the nation state? There’s the rub. Europe’s “hybrid” model isn’t going so well at the moment. It turns out it is very difficult to take existing nation states and blend them into a cohesive whole. And, quite to the contrary of the notion of pushing countries toward “continental scale” alliances as implied by Khanna, some have lately suggested that we will emergence of independent “city-states” (and their various spheres of influence) could become a new basis for world organization.
So…not so fast. Still, it seems at least plausible that a new–perhaps more complex–system for organizing the worlds populations is emerging. I don’t expect that we will see the death of national boundaries any time soon. But bit by bit, it is not far fetched to think that our current system of national borders could one day come to occupy a status similar to Paris’s cathedrals: historically significant, physically maintained, but mainly nostalgic vestiges of little day-to-day consequence.
(Embedded below, a very interesting 2011 Ted talk by Parag Khanna on the topic).
This post is by Sean Safford, Director of the Master of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, Associate Professor at Sciences Po and a researcher with the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations.