The End of Nation-States: The Domestic Perspective, Part 1 of 3

    

            Nation-states blossomed on the world political landscape mostly between the 17th and 20th centuries. Kings and emperors were deposed and replaced by representative governments with executive officers selected, in theory, by a democratic process. Nations took shape as a means of defining territorial boundaries, regulating internal affairs including economies, laws, taxation, and so forth. They also assumed responsibility for international relations. For the most part, but not universally, nation-states act autonomously creating the geopolitical mosaic landscape of the modern world. I propose here that nation-states have outlived their usefulness to humanity and we need to begin working to make them history.  

        This controversial condemnation of our country-system of organization runs against nationalist ideas, the perversion of patriotic fervor, and concepts of America First [or substitute your favorite country]. But, while still necessary, it is clear that nation-states are now a detrimental force to our continued sociopolitical evolution and that we must adapt and change to the new realities. It is time to direct our evolution away from what is ever-more-clearly a threat to the human condition and the future of most life on earth. If you have the patience to bear with me for the rest of this post and the following parts, I will highlight the philosophical and practical arguments against the nation-state, albeit at a coarse level. We can break the arguments down into two areas of political control and function related to domestic and international policy.

The Domestic Monopoly of Force 

       Max Weber's 1919 seminal essay, Politics as a Vocation, looked at the nature of political leadership and the need to balance the 'Ethic of Moral Conviction' with an 'Ethic of Responsibility.' He also presented a defining characteristic of the power of a nation:

I state only the purely conceptual aspect for our consideration: the modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination. It has been successful in seeking to monopolize the legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination within a territory.

This highlights the first issue that I want to bring up in my critique of nation-states, the domestic agenda. 

        Your country has the right to arrest you, control your finances, regulate your personal relations, determine your access to resources such as education, healthcare, and travel, and even define your character as part of your national identity. In most countries, they also have the right to kill you.  None of this is innately evil, wrong, or unnecessary, but it can become so with a single switch of a leader or the rise of a malignant ideology.  At the extreme, this power of the state over your rights and life is frightening and it is one of the driving forces of gun rights advocates who see their ownership of firearms as a check against the abuse of the domestic authority of the state.  However, the only thing that really protects you is the law backed up by a state that truly respects it, and a legislative system that passes laws that secures individual rights while working for the common good. Enforcement of those laws likewise requires a legal system that diligently protects those rights, regardless of ethnicity, gender, and wealth, through the rational and humane enforcement of those laws.  If that system breaks down, as it has at some point for most countries, then the citizen becomes vulnerable. 

        The USA, long admired in the world for our justice system, carries scars and festering wounds of a history of abuse based on race, gender, wealth, and legislative fiat. The massacre of Black Americans in the Greenwood District of Tulsa Oklahoma, Civil Rights violations, Women's Reproductive Rights, Union Wars, lynchings, the Veterans' Bonus Army march on Washington, and the list goes on and grows on. From the individual enforcement officer to the highest levels of government, there has been plenty of abuse. Overall, we retain faith that the American system is correctable. Movements like #BLM and #MeToo redress injustices so that abusive law enforcement officers and the Rich and Powerful have at least a possibility of being held accountable.  In some other national systems there is no chance for change, and those who call for it themselves become criminals.

During the course of my career, I have had the eye-opening experience of working in North Korea where I witnessed a cowed population that lives in fear of their government. And, I have had the opportunity to work in Russia where, with the invasion of Ukraine, new laws were put in place that ran a shiver down the spine of teachers, professors, and journalists leading to imprisonment and a mass exodus from the country. I have also the great advantage in life of being an American, but even here it seems for every step forward on the justice front we find new forces that seek to strip away rights and undermine democratic principles.

        All of this begs the question of whether, as stated in the US Declaration of Independence, we hold true to the Enlightenment ideal that, as people, we are endowed with certain Unalienable Rights. From a Western Religious point of view, the origin of the concept of universal protection can be seen in Genesis. 

 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds. I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. God, Genesis 9-13

According to Biblical mythology, God gave the earth the rainbow as a promise to honor the rights of living things for the future. The next great universal promise did not appear until the years after WWII when the USSR, the USA, the UK, and most other nation-states of the world gave us the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The preamble opens with this secular recognition that parallels the divine proclamation of Genesis in the promise of a covenant between nations and people:

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

         Yet, since then, the systemic violation of that freedom and peace continues around the globe, and the United Nations assembly of international leaders and scholars who drafted and ratified the Declaration did not have a means of enforcing it. Worse, they and their decedents are still failing to enforce this humanist imperative. Given the mosaic of states in the world it is apparent that through the desire of Machiavellian leaders or the inept corruptibility of governments, we can never expect a binding and enforceable standard of human rights to appear as long as a Doctrine of National Interest is in place. This doctrine grants states, as capricious and malicious as they may be, the power to supersede any of those presumed Unalienable Rights of individuals within their territory.   

        While there is a near-universal acknowledgment of humanity being endowed with fundamental protections granted by, depending on your perspective, Divine Providence or Secular Humanism, there is also near-universal violation of those rights. If we want to put our money where our mouth is then we need to work harder to create a world that respects the fundamental rights of humans by creating a global system that enshrines and enforces these rights. We cannot do it while nation-states hold near absolute power over those within their borders, yet paradoxically, we depend on our nation to defend our rights from foreign intervention.

In the following parts of this opinionated piece, I will address the need for nation-states as a means for managing international relations, economic integrity, and military defense. After that, I will summarize steps that need to be taken to move us closer to a united planet that universally promotes the general welfare and guards our rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.