The Future of Sovereign Nation-States

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the last 30 years or so, a consensus has emerged among our political elites, in Europe and North America, regarding the proper character of the state. They increasingly have come to regard as illegitimate states that are founded on the basis of ethnic or religious nationhood, as opposed to the civic-territorial or multicultural model.

They have come to define nationalism itself as a variant of racist intolerance, indeed a political pathology that leads inexorably to the narrowest of so-called 'tribalism'. The older paradigm of nationhood, one grounded in an exclusionary ethno-nationalism, has been largely discredited, perhaps due to the excesses of fascism and ultra-nationalism before the Second World War. In its stead has arisen the paradigm of a state with a universalist vision based on international human rights ideology.

This ideal state should preferably not be linked to any ethnic group per se but should adhere to a civic and political, rather than ethnic, concept of nationhood: the United States or Australia are examples. And even if it remains, historically and still predominantly, the homeland of one ethnic group it should live up to the same standards, the way Holland or Sweden do.

The traditional definition of a nation, to quote the political scientist Walker Connor, "is a group of people whose members believe they are ancestrally related. It is the largest group to share such a myth of common descent; it is, in a sentient sense, the fully extended family."

This sense of kinship, of separate origin and evolution, whether historically accurate or fictive, is, he writes, "the glue of the national bond."

While objective criteria such as common language, religion, territory, and the like, help define an ethno-national community, its essence is a psychological bond that joins it and "differentiates it, in the subconscious conviction of its members, from all non-members in a most vital way." And it also, Connor indicates, accounts for the emotional depth - call it irrationality - which it inspires, "the fanatical sacrifices which have been made in its name."

Even more important for ethnic survival, and perhaps long-range success, argues the British theorist Anthony Smith, is the need to cultivate the myth of ethnic election. Even in those instances where political independence was lost (as in the case of the Armenians and Jews), the moral community and the sense of divine mission, "the passionate attachments to sacred lands and centres, and the abiding imprint of sacred languages and scriptures proved to be an enduring legacy for many peoples." It nurtured their hopes for political restoration to the ancestral homeland.

Studies of nationalism by Conor Cruise O'Brien and Donald Akenson, Irish and Canadian scholars, respectively, have also emphasized the religiously based nature of national identity among peoples such as the Afrikaaners, Ulster Protestants and Jews.

Their complex foundation myths and territorial claims involve covenants with God, "promised lands" for "chosen peoples," which served as crucibles of national evolution. Arabs, Japanese, Russians, Poles, Serbs, and many other peoples have also asserted a special relationship with a transcendental deity.

But modern western political theory has become increasingly critical of the classical nation-state, especially of the notion that each self-defined group is entitled, as part of its patrimony and place in the world, a particular space it can call its own homeland.

Rationalist intellectuals are, needless to say, even more skeptical of theologically-based claims to particular territories. Antipathy to such notions gained ground over the past two centuries; today, the proponents of multicultural secularism are opposed as a matter of principle to homogenous ethnically-based statehood.

Europe's dominant paradigm now is post-nationalist as opposed to the retrograde nation-state. In their version of the ideal polity, the nation is the territory, not the people.

Are these modern leaders really nostalgic for such failed testaments to multi-nationalism as the old Austro-Hungarian, tsarist Russian, and Ottoman Turkish empires?

Albania Has Come a Long Way This Decade

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Paul Theroux’s The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean, published in 1995, is a wonderful glimpse into the political cultures of the peoples who inhabit its shores.

However, the small Balkan country of Albania, which had only a few years earlier emerged from almost five decades of ultra-Communist isolation, shocked him.

Desperate and ravaged Albania seemed worse than most third world countries. There was poverty and paranoia everywhere.

Albania was still recovering from the legacy of Enver Hoxha, the ruthless dictator who had ruled for 40 years, until his death in 1985.

Under Hoxha, Albania’s only friend, half a world away, was Maoist China, and even it abandoned Albania in the 1970s. Albania had been officially declared an atheist state, cut off from neighbouring Greece and Yugoslavia – both considered enemies. Hundreds of mosques and churches were destroyed. Hoxha had banned private automobiles because he didn’t want people leaving the country.

Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who tried to preserve the Communist system while introducing gradual reforms in order to revive the economy. But as the rest of eastern Europe threw off Communist rule, Albania followed.

In March 1992 a decisive electoral victory was won by the anti-Communist opposition, and Alia resigned as president.

The years that followed were, as Theroux observed, even worse. By 1997 the country was in the throes of outright rebellion, following the collapse of the economy in the wake of pyramid schemes and widespread corruption.

The severe social unrest led to more than 1,500 deaths and the widespread destruction of property. Most Albanians lost what little savings they had and thousands emigrated.

A UN Multinational Protection Force, led by Italy, was sent to help restore law and order. But putting the country back on its feet would take time.

For the past decade, Albania has made it a point to integrate into the wider European economic, military and political space.

In 1998, Albania’s three million citizens ratified a new constitution, guaranteeing the rule of law and the protection of fundamental human rights and religious freedom. Today, the government is headed by Prime Minister Sali Berisha, whose Democratic Party won the most seats in the legislative elections in 2005 and 2009.

Albania is now a member of NATO, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the World Trade Organization. It formally applied for membership in the European Union in 2009.

Free market reforms, under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have opened the country to foreign investment, especially in the development of energy and transportation infrastructure. Reforms in tax collection, property law, and business administration are also progressing.

With help from EU funds, the government is taking steps to improve the national road and rail network, a long-standing barrier to sustained economic growth. Even tourism now accounts for an increasing share of the economy.

Although Albania's economy continues to grow, the country does still remain one of the poorest in Europe.

Will Israel Turn to Russia?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Is it too far-fetched to imagine an Israeli-Russian alliance some day?

If one were to take seriously political scientist Samuel Huntington’s famous “clash of civilizations” theory of international relations -- that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the 21st century -- then clearly, given how Israel is surrounded by a mostly hostile Islamic world, its “natural” allies would be those countries whose national interests also collide with the Muslim world.

One of these might be Russia.

Mainly Orthodox Christian in religion, Russia lies north of the Islamic civilization in the Caucasus and central Asia. It has already retreated from the five Muslim states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia has fought two bloody wars to maintain control of Chechnya. Terrorism remains a constant there and in neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia.

Since the 1960s, Israel’s main ally has been the United States. But geopolitically the U.S. is far away from the Middle East and has fewer fundamental disputes with the Muslim world.

Israel can’t depend forever on an America that wouldn’t suffer politically, and indeed might gain, by abandoning it -- whereas Russia, even if it didn’t really care about Israel, is in the same political boat with it.

So it is interesting to observe that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Israel toward the end of June. (President Barack Obama has yet to visit Israel.)

Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s civil war, and the Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt’s presidential election were topics of discussion.

Zvi Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to Russia, told the BBC that President Putin fears the events of the Arab Spring “might inspire similar developments in Russia’s soft belly -- the Caucasus.”

Russia is also interested in helping Israel develop its natural gas fields in the Mediterranean and in tapping into an emerging alliance being developed between Israel, Greece and the Greek Cypriots to offset tensions with Turkey.

Putin told his hosts that the two countries have deep economic and cultural relations bolstered by the more than one million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union who live in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has several Russian speakers, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Putin said that he felt he was “among friends,” adding that the ties between Israel and Russia were ones of “deep friendship, not something that will pass, and that will endure in the future.”

Putin attended the inauguration in Netanya of a new monument commemorating Red Army soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. For the Russian soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps, Israeli President Shimon Peres told Putin, “the Jewish people owe a historical ‘thank you’ to the Russians.”

Is it possible we might be witnessing the beginnings of an informal entente?