Western Civilization: The Nation-State Part Four; Is the Westphalian Model Still Relevant or Sustainable?

There are several things happening in modern times to undermine the principle of territorial sovereignty and secular rule set down in the Peace of Westphalia, pulling the system in different directions:

• Globalism, or the tendency for cultures to become homogeneous across national borders, including global commerce and interlocking economic systems
• The rise and increasing influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including multinational corporations
• Nationalistic Self-Determination, or the tendency of non-state ethnic or national groups to desire their own states, or at the least, autonomy within an existing state
• The breakup of several multi-ethnic states (USSR, Yugoslavia)
• The growth of Pan-Islamic movements (some terroristic) as well as other "liberation" movements in other countries

Some of these things are pushing us in one direction: greater centralization, i.e. "One World Government", others are pushing in the opposite direction, i.e. greater Balkanization. 

Globalism is linked with the expansion of multinational corporations, whereby many of the truly powerful groups and individuals have a greater incentive to support their own diverse interests than the interests of their native country. Relocating to a country that has more favorable tax laws, or outsourcing labor to a region with lower average wages may benefit the corporation but hurt the country that is losing the jobs and tax revenue. This, in combination with the international influence of organization like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the G-20, G-7, G-8 etc, various United Nations agencies, as well as regional trade treaties (NAFTA, TPP) and security alliances (NATO) combine to incentive large groups of people to be more concerned about the big picture, the global picture over against the local, national one. This is reducing internal national sovereignty to a great degree, but it is too soon to say how far this will go. There is a lot of resistance by politicians, at least in their rhetoric, to ceding any sovereignty at all, but who they accept money from tells a different story.

The other direction involves the fragmentation of existing nations. The USSR and Yugoslavia broke up two decades ago, both into internal "republics" that were set up along ethnic lines. Since then there have been separatist movements not only in the newly independent republics but in the remainder of Russia; Yugoslavia endured civil war as Serbia primarily, but to a lesser extent Croatia, attempted to incorporate their ethnic cohorts from other republics under their umbrella, savaging Bosnia and Herzogovina in the process. Kosovo went next. Scotland had a vote for independence last year (failed) and Catalonia in Spain  is working on doing the same thing. The Kurds are agitating for their own state, Tibet is perpetually talking about independence and Native American tribes think the U.S. government actually gave them meaningful sovereignty. Pan-Islamic notions are a hybrid of local autonomy movements and ambitions of world conquest. At once they're trying to separate from the local "legitimate" governments while at the same time trying to set up their own uber-government.

Something is going to change. Likely, in my opinion, is a fragmentation of the world into micro-states representing the myriad ethnicities, each "people", each "nation" getting their own borders and territory, getting to use its own language and flag, but the real power flowing to the regional umbrella groups like the European Union or even to a world government descended from the U.N. - possibly within hegemonies dominated by China, Russia and the United States in an interim state.

Is this a good thing? What is likely to happen? Fragmentation, consolidation, domination by corporations or regional behemoths? Religious ascendancy? Starting with religious jihad: I believe that eventually the recent movement of fundamentalist, extremist Islamist groups will eventually, sooner or later, collapse under its own weight and its own lack of the ability compromise. Even now the different factions are battling among themselves. Fragmentation is likely or at least the appearance of it. There may be a self-determination trend right now, but many of these small nations could hardly survive on their own. Many believe that Scotland could never survive as an independent entity, and the former Soviet Republics in the Caucasus are barely self-sufficient and are themselves plagued by separatists movements of their own. I envision many of these small nations being in the same legal no-man's land as the Native American Nations in the United States: they are technically sovereign nations, but for all practical purposes they are part of the United States and dependent on it for all but the smallest symbolic gestures of independence. Worldwide consolidation, as much as I think it a bad thing, will probably eventually come to pass. One of the benefits of there being a multitude of nations with a variety of legal systems is that there is always somewhere else to go when things get too hot or the government intrusion becomes too much. There's always another place for refugees to run to. We have enough problems keeping our own country "free", what greater challenge would there be if we were all under one national umbrella - the world?

Perhaps there needs to be some tweaking and adjustments of borders in the former colonial areas. But internal sovereignty, without external interference, territorial integrity and religious neutrality is the soil in which our Western values will continue to grow. In short, the Westphalian system, despite its drawbacks and misapplications, is probably the best system available to maintain Western cultural values.

Western Civilization: The Nation-State Part Three; Exporting the Westphalian Model

The European powers, back in 1648, decided that they needed to tweak the system. Little did they know that in about two and a half centuries there would be monarchs in name only and the Westphalian system would sweep all the ruling monarchs out of power. Over the intervening centuries the European nations, who had begun colonizing less developed parts of the world, also brought with them the Westphalian system. In most cases, the colonies were considered property of the state, not the property of the monarch. In some instances nations attempted to claim whole continents simply by proclaiming it to be so. A notable example is how Spain and Portugal split the New World between them with the Pope's blessing. Colonialism was not only conducted by the European powers - the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire could be construed as colonizing adjacent territories, but we are mainly focusing on Western civilization.

Starting well before the Peace of Westphalia, the European powers began colonizing portions of North & South America, Africa and parts of Asia. They imposed borders without any regard for pre-existing tribal, religious or "national" affinities, based entirely on their own economic and political needs, and of course what they could reasonably control. Colonial empires weren't fully dismembered until the middle of the twentieth century, after World War II, although the process had started way back in the late 1700's with the United States, but the borders that they drew became enshrined for the most part in international law, causing many, many problems down the road. While the borders that were drawn in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia followed "nations", i.e. ethnic/cultural/language groups in the main (there were exceptions of course - a few multi-national empires still existed: the Russian Empire [which became the USSR in the early 1900's], the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire) the borders in former colonial lands cut across natural divisions. Sometimes nationhood was conferred upon the territory of a favored local monarch or warlord (Kuwait was separated from the rest of Iraq), sometimes dissimilar ethnic groups were thrown together (all over Africa)and other times they were separated by new borders (the Kurds in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran). Some families got to supply rulers to several former colonies (the Hashemite family in Jordon, Iraq and Syria even though they originated in the Arabian Peninsula - which was awarded to the Al-Saud family).

To use the Middle East as an example of what is applicable elsewhere, after the Europeans left their former colonies, in general kings, dictators or military juntas took over. After the United States and its allies deposed Iraq's Saddam Hussein it was evident how fabricated the borders were. The Kurds set up an autonomous zone in the north, threatening the status quo in neighboring Turkey. The Sunnis and Shi'ites, freed from Saddam, remembered just how much they disliked each other, followed by the horror of the so-called Islamic State, which controlled territory spanning the Iraq-Syria border. Countries like Somalia have devolved into chaos with no functioning government.

In summary: what a mess!

Next: is this system the best way to organize nations, maintain international relations and if not, what is the alternative/

Western Civilization: The Nation-State Part Two; The Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia was series of treaties agreed to in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War as well as other related conflicts in Europe. The Thirty Years War started out as a war of religion among the various Germanic states as the Holy Roman Empire attempted to enforce religious uniformity throughout the empire.

The Holy Roman Empire, derided by Voltaire as "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire" was a collection of duchies, principalities, kingdoms, Catholic dioceses, independent cities which had its beginnings in AD 800 when Charlemagne, King of the Franks, was crowned as "Emperor of the Romans" by the Pope. The territory controlled by Charlemagne's successors waxed with conquest and waned with losses in war. The custom at the time was also to divide a man's property equally among his heirs. This applied to kings as well. Charlemagne had three sons and they each inherited a portion of his "empire". The sons and their heirs fought among themselves, causing the size of the empire to change depending on the ambition and ability of the various sons and grandsons. Eventually the successors of Charlemagne began claiming that they had inherited the supreme ruling power from the long defunct Western Roman Empire. While an empire in name, in practice it was a loose confederation of sovereign monarchies.

The Catholic Emperor put down a rebellion by Protestant monarchs which spurred Sweden and Denmark to come in on the side of the Protestants. Spain, which was ruled by a member of the Hapsburg family came in on the side of their Hapsburg cousins, the rulers of Austria (part of the Empire) as a pretext for putting down a rebellion in the Netherlands, then ruled by Spain. France, a Catholic kingdom, came in on the side of the Protestants, fearful of being encircled by the two Hapsburg kingdoms, diluting the religious reasons for the conflict.

You can do your own reading on the convoluted alliances and crisscrossing and shifting loyalties, as well as the strategies of the combatants, but suffice it say that Europe was one big, bloody mess by 1648. The conflicting allegiances engendered by the primacy of dynastic ambitions laid bare the truth that the political system pre-war was a confusing mess!

What we know as The Peace of Westphalia was a series, or a grouping of, treaties among the various combatants to end the war(s). But, when viewed in retrospect, it had much more far-reaching consequences. The arrangements laid out in the Westphalia treaties laid the foundation of the modern nation-state. Fixed territorial boundaries were set, irrespective of dynasties and succession crises. The relationship of subjects to rulers changed as well, with the primary allegiance to be to the laws and edicts of the state, not to any other religious or secular authority. Equality between states was another principle arising out of The Peace of Westphalia. There was no hierarchy of empire, kingdom, duchy on down.Of course this was merely a theory at first, but it was the foundation upon which later systems were built. The principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of another state was also set. While these treaties did not do away with changing borders due to war, nor with the influence of royal families or religion, it established a norm whereby deviation from it became something which caused international upheaval, rather than the ever-fluid changes which were everyday occurrences previously.

This is the framework upon which our modern system of nations, with borders and internally sovereign governments is built upon. It is the system which, during the age of colonisation, European powers imposed upon the areas of the world which they conquered.

Western Civilization: The Nation-State Part One; Precursors

In modern times we take for granted that the world is (and should be) divided into entities variously called "countries", "nations" or "states" (not to be confused with the subdivisions called states in the United States and Australia). Occasionally we see the borders of a country change, like recently when Russia annexed part of Ukraine, and previously, when the old Soviet Union broke up into its constituent "republics" and Yugoslavia followed suit a few years later. But these are looked upon as anomalies; the default position is that national borders are inviolable and, while adjustments do take place, it is usually frowned upon in international circles. But has this always been the case? Where did this notion start and under what conditions? First let's look at how people were organized before the advent of the nation-state.

Early organization of people into "a people" likely started out as family and clan groupings, sometimes with a designated leader, sometimes not. Nomadic groups would have had no concept of a fixed homeland, still less, borders. Eventually as agriculture and domestication of animals became the norm some idea of land that collectively belonged to a group formed. But this didn't necessarily indicate any concept of nationhood. A group's land was where they lived and they used any limits or borders would be fluid based on changing needs, population, food abundance or scarcity. At some point a warrior culture took hold, possibly as an outgrowth of a hunter/protector class. The biggest, baddest warrior, either as a result of his own battle prowess or his ability to command the loyalty of other warriors, set himself up as the chief. As chief, he would have authority over others, would be their "ruler".

As time went by, some chiefs extended their authority over other tribes, eventually being considered "kings" or "high-kings" over large geographic areas or of ethnic or cultural groups. Most of these kingdoms were considered the property of the king's family and were passed down (either wholly or in pieces) to the king's heirs. Sometimes a kingdom's ruling dynasty lost their kingdom due to war or just dying out, but the idea that the kingdom was the personal property of the king did not change. The extent of a kingdom did not translate into "borders" the way it does in a modern nation. If a king could not control a part of his kingdom, it was usually taken over by a rival or neighboring kingdom. During the age of feudalism, a kingdom remained intact only for as long as his subordinate nobles (dukes, counts, earls etc.) remained loyal. You see a lot of shifting loyalties in the early days of the English and French monarchies, especially after the Norman Conquest, where dukes and counts in France wavered in their loyalty between the English and French kings. As the 1600's opened, Europe was a bewildering patchwork of kingdoms, duchies and principalities. Some concept of "borders" were beginning to take hold, as well as some nascent ethnic nationalism, but the idea of the kingdom as the property of the king was still dominant. There were exceptions, non-monarchical areas ruled by councils of some sort, or even religious leaders, but they were the minority. In addition to the dominance of kingdoms, there was the phenomenon of empires.

In simple terms, empires were generally multi-ethnic or multi-national entities made up from formerly separate kingdoms joined to together by one ruler. Frequently the entities that made up the empire kept their own laws, customs and language, but all answered to the same central authority.

Many of the wars during this period were wars of succession, when there was a dispute regarding who the legal heir to a throne was. various royal families vied for control of different parts of Europe, with a reigning monarch often having no real ties to the "country" that he ruled over.

This began to change with The Peace of Westphalia.

Western Culture

Immediately after the terrorist attacks in Paris the other day I became involved in a discussion, one in which a tangent involved Western, i.e. European and American, culture and how it was under attack. The Paris killings were presented as an example of this. There were also discussions of how to properly respond to terrorism, mainly in military terms, but I would like to  ruminate a bit on Western culture, what it is, what's good about it, what's bad about it and what can be done to maintain it (or whether we should just let it die).

Let's start by listing a few things that define Western culture - some of these things might overlap with other cultures, and some might be in name only, but let's start:

• Importance of the nation-state as opposed to the ethnic or tribal state (Westphalian sovereignty)
• Importance of individual liberty as opposed to that of the group
• Christianity as the religion of the majority within a secular state
• Rule of law
• Liberal democracy as a form of governance (liberal not as defined by American political dichotomy, but as in an open society)
• Roots in Greek & Roman philosophy, Judeo-Christian ethics, and Renaissance/Enlightenment Humanism
• Independent Judiciary
• Capitalism as the primary economic system
• Exceptionalism
• Use of science to understand the world and to create new terchnologies

I'm sure that there are more, and there might be some disagreement over some of the entries, but this is a start. Some of these relate to the way a Western state is governed and some to the mindset of the people within the Western nations. There are also aspects of Western Civilization/Culture that at one time were dominant, but have since faded away. One example is the idea that Europeans were superior to all other "races". The Age of Exploration and its attendant colonialism was based on the idea that there were "lesser races" and it was right and natural that the Europeans would dominate them. This led to slavery, in its extreme manifestation and European colonialism in its more common form. What's left of this can be seen in the exceptionalism mindset of some peoples: Americans and Russians in particular. 

I'll be devoting posts to one item [maybe more than one post] and will likely be adding items as I go along.