The twentieth century has been the century of nation states. The history of
the nation state began with the Glorious Revolution of 1689, the Bill of
Rights, the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and French
Revolution of 1789. The West thus entered the modern period and the western
world was divided by borders between nation states. In a single century or
so, the system spread worldwide. Italy was integrated in 1870 and German
empire was born in 1871. Competition among nations grew rapidly with more
and more modern destructive weapons, eventually exploding into two world
wars. The West became exhausted irrespective of victory or loss, giving
birth to two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR. Both of these nation
states were, and are, endowed with vast land, population, natural resources
and nuclear capability. In the meantime, numerous new nations states were
born in the third word as they moved from colonial status to independence,
following either the U.S. or USSR model. The world of the nation states
reached its peak.
States existed in the ancient world. The nation state system has existed
for over two centuries, culminating on the ultimate level represented by
the U.S. and USSR, thus making the twentieth century the century of
nation states. The Cold War era was in a way a stable era where no one
challenged the superpowers, who had divided the world into their respective
spheres of influence. Does the end of the Cold War bring us back to the era
of hot wars? I don't think so. The format of the nation state is based
on a national economy partitioned by national borders and governed by a
central government empowered to mobilize citizens and ready to protect the
national interest with military power, if necessary. This is where the
nation state system disintegrated. And, this is why the U.S.
misinterpreted the breakup of the former Soviet Union as a victory, more
specifically, a U.S. victory. |
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