Coming Anarchy offers a hypothetical map of how Europe may look in ten years:
Even if only a few of these microstates were to be born, it could have serious consequences regionally, transatlantically and globally. In Europe, it would suddenly create a host of rich and poor states, which their previous host states balanced out. Northern Germany will get poorer and the two southern states stay very rich for example. Over time, the lack of wealth transfer from southern to northern Germany, or from northern to southern Italy will likely create less developed and poorer states within Europe no longer able to stay afloat. As an Italian friend once joked, without the north, southern Italy would turn into a Catholic Pakistan. As reader DJ noted, now more than ever, regions of today’s states are trying to maximize the economic benefits of globalization while minimizing the social costs, leading to richer regions breaking from poorer ones.
So what will independence look like? It won’t have the same meaning that we think of today. At the local level, these newly minted states will enjoy previously unparalleled independence, flexibility and likely prosperity. However, at the same time, they will be subservient to the European Union on international matters such as defense, some foreign policy, trade agreements, transportation and environmental issues. Also and perhaps most importantly, a credible Europe wide defense would have to exist to make the creation of new states viable.
As I have noted in prior posts here, here, and here, the nation-state is dying a slow death as the two forces of globalization and localization pull it in opposite directions. The intertwining of all countries’ economies necessitates that all nation-states work with each other, and another result is that all governments can fall victim to forces beyond their control as well. The Internet is also creating an infinite number of niche markets and communities within societies worldwide through the mass-segmentation of the cultural market. Mass immigration — Latin Americans into the United States as well as Arabs and eastern Europeans into western Europe are two prominent examples — is changing the ethnic characters of nation-states as well. France is becoming less “French,” and the United States is becoming less “white” and Protestant.
As one example, the United States — a country that was never entirely a nation since its population has always been comprised of people from various ethnic groups — is slowing being ripped apart on religious, ethnic, and political lines. People who are conservative and Christian get their news from Fox News and other right-wing outlets; liberals and others watch MSNBC and read The New York Times. Two collective groups of people are creating entirely different mindsets and worldviews based on the specific media each group consumes. Texans denigrate Bostonians as intellectual, liberal elitists; Bostonians view Texans as gun-touting, evolution-denying extremists. Is such a cultural situation tenable? If Coming Anarchy is correct about Europe, then the United States might follow in the continent’s footsteps.
Update: A commenter, Jeff, asks a question that I should have answered earlier: “Clearly, you think this half-millennium old system is about to die, but what do you THINK about that?”
Well, I have several thoughts. The first is the present international order of large, complex nation-states is giving way to a globalized world consisting of hundreds of small, ethnic republics or regions. Think of the planet as becoming a gigantic, patchwork quilt.
On an idealistic level, this is something beneficial. People have a subconscious desire to live among those similar to them (cities, for example, self-segregate themselves into ethnic neighborhoods), and they want the right to choose to do so. Russia is a perfect example. The country is comprised of dozens of ethnic peoples essentially held together by force — first by the czars, and then by the communist dictatorship. When Russia breaks apart — and its demographic decline is a accurate precursor — the people in the resulting republics will be much happier, and life will be more free. The same holds true for the Basques in France and Spain as well as other peoples elsewhere. Liberal nation-states always champion the freedom of democracy enjoyed by their citizens — as long as some do not want to use that right to demand a country of their own.
So, in the end, such a devolution will be beneficial. But the path there is fraught with danger and instability. Nation-states, like people and corporations, are individual entities writ large that place a primary emphasis on self-preservation. The United States had a civil war when several states wanted to secede. Russia uses force to keep a death-grip on Chechnya while the far-flung eastern part is increasingly under the influence of China. The United Kingdom does not want Scotland or Wales to become independent from England even though no one can explain what it means to be “British” any longer. Modern-day Iran consists of several peoples who were united by the sword of the ancient Persian empire. Israelis, after more than sixty years of independence, are intensely divided and cannot reconcile their three competing desires to be a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a state in all of so-called Greater Israel. (I would not be entirely surprised if the the county ends up dividing itself into a secular and religious republics in forthcoming decades — though this would eerily resemble biblical history repeating itself.) All of these countries are facing crises of identity, and many may not survive as they currently exist.
A globalized order consisting of a patchwork quilt of ethnic enclaves may lead to greater peace and prosperity — why, after all, would Wales go to war with England to conquer territory that was not Welsh — but the path to that end will be very unstable as complex nation-states fight a doomed battle to save themselves.