Opinion | The fading age of nation states
Philip Bowring says around the world today, we find political relationships that do not fit neatly into the traditional idea of statehood; Hong Kong and its mainland ties, for one
The idea of the nation state is in trouble. It is also causing trouble. In many parts of the globe, one can now see coming unstuck the concept of the nation state as embodied in the polities which blossomed in Europe in the 19th century and reached their apogee in state creation during the post-1945 decolonisation. There was to be, in principle at least, no arrangement between the nation state, whatever its size, and the empires of old.
But, now, we see states which are so far from being nations that they can be held together only by brute force. We see petty nationalism seeking independence based on a mix of contrived history and imagined insults, egged on by self-aggrandising politicians. Then there are states which need to realise that they can only survive with their current borders if they recognise the minority nations that lie within them.
In short, the world needs to recognise, indeed encourage, different kinds of arrangements that do not fall into the nation-state category, leave issues of language, religion and history aside, and focus on outcomes for the citizens.
It is often forgotten, even in Europe, that Italy and Germany are new creations. Of the major states of Europe, only England, France and Spain have an uninterrupted nation-state identity dating back hundreds of years. Most of the states of Europe were once part of now defunct empires - Habsburg, Ottoman, tsarist Russian, even Swedish.
The Ottoman and Habsburg ones in particular were especially diverse in terms of their ethnic, linguistic and religious composition. One language and one religion were always on top but diversity was tolerated so long as overlordship and some basic rules of behaviour were accepted.
Thus, regions in Iraq and Syria were under the Ottomans, mostly Arabic-speaking but with a complex mix of major religions and minor sects. Yes, the people may have resented the Turkish yoke but having thrown that off, and then the British and French, they are now further than ever from finding an identity as a nation state.
Blame the Americans if you will, or the Europeans who drew the post-1918 boundaries. But no one has yet proposed a better division - unless you either abolish Iraq altogether and divide it between Iran, Syria and a new Kurdish state, or find some very loose federal structure with Arabic as the lingua franca.