The Daily Clarity

Is the concept of a nation state still relevant?

Countries developed so as to create functional units for economic co-operation and security. It allowed the creation of (quite often arbitrary) borders, that in some cases separated warring tribes, and in other imperialist  created countries  contained tribes at war.  For example, India and Pakistan were divided so as to create religious homelands, South Africa summoned into magical existence despite the conflicting tribal territorial issues.

Some countries were created through organic co-operation, others shaped by war and/or colonization. Even today there are peoples attempting to forge countries. For example, the US is attempting to create nationalistic psychology  in Iraq, a factional community of Shiite, Sunni, Kurds, Turkmen, Jews and Christians. Countries are created as a concept, some have grown strong in their history, others have fissured under pressure such as the Soviet Union. Countries are an artificial convenience, they exist only as long as the members desire it. The concept of country is an ideal,  but may in some ways have ended their efficient life.

Countries, in today’s age, are  not  big enough individually, with very few exceptions,  to deal with the global issues  that confront their populations – security, environment, the global economy, resource allocation and on. These issues need collectives such as the UN, the Arab League of Nations, G20,  the EU, NATO and on to make any meaningful impact, as the issues are larger than any individual country’s borders.Making head-roads on these issues requires co-operation and collectivism of many nations.  Countries had to combine their efforts, resources and intellects to make any meaningful progress on the major issues of the day.

On the other hand, countries grow to big for individuals to hold uniform opinions or attitudes. Past tribal structures, from which nation states evolved,  were predicated on often dictatorial, albeit benign, leadership. Tribes required co-operation and obedience to a mutual social contract for the survival and protection of the tribe and its members. This no longer applies at a country level. The commonality of a tribal psyche is lost in a multi-cultural, modern, urban nation. Take the US as an example, with massive political divides, racial challenges, social services access  inequality, violence and on. Countries have become too big to guarantee  individual benefit or automatic allegiance, yet too small to deal with the critical global  issues.

The concept of countries function most strongly as collectives either by geographical considerations or at times of security crisis. Australia functions as a unit, even though it has a highly mixed ethnic pool, due to its geographic isolation. it has no meaningful land borders to contest. It is an essence a big island dealing with its own self-contained civil matters. Israel, on the other hand, functions as a country as it is in a constant state of perceived siege. The Iron Wall conception of Israel creates a feeling of inter-reliance that fosters the nationalism required for th concept of a country to be valid.

Also, over time the concept of country changes. In Europe,  the EU has created the ability for its citizens to move and work anywhere. These causes demographic shifts as workers and their families move and settle in different locations that fit their individual family needs. This breaks down the nationalistic concept over time. Country evolves into a concept of intellectual convenience.

I am reminded of a press report from years ago where a Polish farmer was interviewed. Due to border changes over the years,  his farm  had sometimes been part of Poland, then a border adjustment made him part of Russia, and then another change put him back in Poland again. In all this time he had not moved, but the border moved around him, and expected him to grasp a nominal nationalism. The interviewer asked him how he felt about being Polish again. He smiled and said he was happy, as the Russian winters seemed so much worse. The farmer understood how ludicrous the concept of country was.  He was a farmer wed to his piece of soil, not the nominal country membership which changed around him

What does this mean for the future? Will the EU parliament one day be the governing body in region,  and the individual country governments  fade away? Does such evolution of the country concept  make a mockery of the US trying to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants in an effort to halt what is an unavoidable long-term demographic and ethnic drift pattern?

What does it mean now to term oneself  as a citizen of the world? Take my own life, and a sample of one is never right or wrong, I was born in one country, naturalized as an adult by another, and am now a long-term resident and married to a national in yet another. This is a an experience that is becoming more common and will continue to do so  in our increasingly global and mobile world. I feel sympathy for the Polish farmer, to whom the concept of country was immaterial. We need good governance and if the unit required to effectively make that happen is bigger than the concept of a country, then maybe we just have to be ready to forgo xenophobia, swallow the nationalism,  and at least consider what the future model of government might look like.