We Were Never Post-National
The False Promise of the Universal Homogenous State
In his 1989 “The End of History?” essay, Francis Fukuyama postulated that the Cold War’s end signaled “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” But in 2024, the war between Russia and Ukraine, a great power rivalry pitting the United States against China, and the rise of populism globally suggest another conclusion. Namely, that nationalism, whether in liberal democratic, illiberal democratic, or authoritarian form, is the end-point of humanity’s ideological evolution instead. Nations are not converging into what Fukuyama called, in Alexandre Kojève’s phrase, a “universal homogenous state” based on liberal principles and free markets. Instead, they are reacting against universalism and homogeneity, though these reactions take on different political forms: some democratic, others not. Nevertheless, these varying expressions of discontent usually share the same nationalist core, which has ironically proven more “universal” than Western liberal democracy.
The collapse of the Soviet Union sounded the death knell for communism as a serious alternative to liberal democracy. But Europe’s post-communist states have not universally embraced the ideology of the Cold War’s victors. Russia has turned authoritarian and eastward, while Ukraine has attempted to turn liberal democratic and westward. However, the warring parties do share an ideology in common, even though it divides instead of unites them: nationalism. So too with Hungary, a self-declared “illiberal democracy” sympathetic with Russia, and the pro-Ukraine, liberal democratic Baltic states. Even nominally communist China is fundamentally nationalist in orientation. Fukuyama discounted nationalism as a competitor to liberal democracy since it does “not offer anything like comprehensive agenda for socio-economic organization” and is thus compatible with liberalism. But nationalism’s very compatibility with other ideologies gives it greater reach and appeal than liberalism.
Fukuyama has said that “the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States,” since “the EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics through the establishment of a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a posthistorical world.” But even Western Europe is rejecting its supposed relegation to post-history. Britain, of course, officially left the EU in 2020. Meanwhile, in the EU’s historic core, countries like France, Italy, and the Netherlands have seen the rise of nationalist parties skeptical of attempts to “transcend sovereignty,” even if they don’t advocate leaving the Union entirely. The resurgence of populist nationalism in Western Europe and elsewhere is, in large part, a reaction to mass immigration. Thus while Fukuyama is correct that nationalism and liberal democracy are compatible, nationalism and a post-national universal homogenous state—insofar as it signals a globalist orientation and open borders—are not.
The Appeal of Nationalism
The deepest source of nationalism’s enduring appeal is human nature. Humans, of course, are not “naturally” nationalistic, but we are naturally groupish. As Jonathan Haidt writes, “We evolved to live in groups. Our minds were designed not only to help us win the competition within our groups, but also to help us unite with those in our group to win competitions across groups.”1 Nationalism allows us to scale our groupishness beyond the local level (eg, of tribe or clan), and thus absorb smaller groups and compete with those that have also scaled up. Benedict Anderson famously calls nations “imagined communities,” but also notes that “all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even those) are imagined.”2 From the perspective of cultural evolution, nationalism has proven more “fit” than alternative imagined communities centered on dynasty (eg, premodern empires), class (eg, the Soviet Union), or race3 (eg, Nazi Germany). As Anderson observes, the tendency of Marxist movements to become nationalist (and never the reverse) and the continued emergence of “sub-nationalisms” within existing nations are signs that “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.”4
Specific nationalities may be relatively “new” historically. Still, they achieve legitimacy only if, as Hans Kohn writes, they “are created out of ethnographic and political elements when nationalism breathes life into the form built by preceding centuries.”5 These elements usually include some combination of common ancestry, language, territory, political organization, customs, and religion, all of which are deeply rooted in history, even if they were not always conceived in nationalistic terms. For example, Zionism emerged in the 19th century, but succeeded because the essential elements of Jewish nationalism (eg, shared ancestry, religion, customs, sacred language, and territorial origin) had already long existed. Indeed, Judaism was a nationality before it was ever conceived in solely religious terms.6 Attempts to forge new, rival imagined communities to compete with the nation’s primacy have floundered because of the very fact of their newness and artificiality. Thus the workers of the world failed to unite during World War I, as they instead supported their countries’ war efforts.7 Similarly, Stalin relied on nationalist, not class-based, sentiment to rally the Soviets during World War II (tellingly termed the “Great Patriotic War”).
Religion is often a constituent element of nationalism. (Or, from a religious perspective, nationalism is often a constituent element of religion.) Enemies of one are frequently enemies of the other. For pagans, to be a member of a people meant the worship of your people’s gods. Even today, ostensibly universalist Christianity is tied to national identity, as with Catholic Poland and Orthodox Armenia.8 So, too, with Buddhism, which is constitutionally enshrined in countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka. Hinduism and India, like Judaism and Israel, are closely connected, as both identities predate the notion of a religion separate from peoplehood. (Though there are certainly secular Indian and Israeli nationalists.) The greatest religious challenge to nationalism has come from Islam, which lacks Christianity’s “render unto Caesar” tradition of legitimizing secular power.9 The Islamic State was a sordid demonstration of a purely religious, anti-nationalist polity.10 Less radically (relatively speaking), the Taliban and the Islamic Republic of Iran assume national borders but abdicate loyalty to their peoples in favor of divine edict.
Post–Post-Nationalism
Globally, the greatest challenge to nationalism comes not from religion but from post-nationalism. Post-nationalism is the ideology (or, perhaps, post-ideology) that welcomes the transition from a world of nation-states to a universal homogenous state. Countries would still exist in a universal homogenous state, but as lines on a map, not as enclosed borders containing culturally distinct populations. Internationalist institutions like the United Nations were developed to prevent wars and encourage cooperation between nation-states. Instead, post-nationalism seeks to transcend (or undermine) the nation-states that internationalism presupposes. While post-nationalism is usually an implicit project, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau embraced the label when he first took office in 2015: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.”11 In 2024, Trudeau is on track to badly lose his next election, as Canadians react to an immigration surge that has raised housing costs, increased youth unemployment, and strained the healthcare system.
Nationalism is compatible with sustainable immigration rates, but only if there is a “core identity” for newcomers to adopt. The contrasting post-nationalist view is reflected in novelist Yann Martel’s boast that Canada is “the greatest hotel on earth.” In a hotel, we are all guests (or “settlers,” in Canadian post-national parlance), so no one has to adapt to the people who came earlier. The problem for post-nationalism is that the people who came earlier can vote, which is why it’s ultimately proven to be a losing electoral proposition. Nationalism endures because it draws on humanity’s natural groupishness, which necessarily implies a contrasting us and them (so no universalism).12 It thus allows us to transcend our selfishness by evoking our rootedness in a specific history and community (so no homogeneity). That history and community can certainly embody values, but Trudeaupian platitudes like “be there for each other” cannot evoke what Abraham Lincoln called “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone.” Soldiers do not fight and die to defend a hotel with a flag.
Post-nationalists associate nationalism with its darkest expressions of war, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. But nationalism can also assume the healthy forms of economic competitiveness, social integration, and popular sovereignty (not to mention defense against a neighbor’s aggression). The likeliest alternative to nationalism is not a universal homogenous state that defies humanity’s groupish nature. Instead, it’s a nominal country torn asunder into rival tribes, like Lebanon, and made a satrapy of a more cohesive power (in Lebanon’s case, Iran). The combination of mass immigration and a post-national elite risks exporting the Lebanese model globally.13 Yet there are also signs that we are entering a new, post–post-nationalist age. In the US, there is an emerging bipartisan consensus on an industrial policy to counter China. Former president Donald Trump, of course, embraces the nationalist label. But the Democrats, too, have emphasized “liberal patriotism” to appeal to rural and working-class voters. After all, nationalism is not a partisan cause; it is a cause, rather, that can unite rival parties for a greater good. The end of history is not the dissolution of nationhood into universal homogeneity, but a world of enlightened nationalisms that compete yet co-exist.14
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012), p. 283.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), p. 6.
Anderson, p. 149: “The dreams of racism actually have their origin in ideologies of class, rather than in those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to 'blue' or 'white' blood and 'breeding' among aristocracies.”
Anderson, p. 3.
Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (1944), p. 16.
Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (1992), pp. 15, 22: “Far into the Roman period, nations kept their ethnic consciousness of what we would call today self-definition and self-identity, even though most of the time they were under the rule of one kingdom or another. . . . The Jews are indeed an outstanding example, inasmuch as for a certain period they (being an indigenous population) actualized their political nationalism, that is, they created a Jewish state.”
See also Hillel Halkin: “What was invented at the outset of modernity was not Jewish peoplehood, which--as all the evidence that has come down to us amply bears out--had been taken for granted throughout history by Jews and gentiles alike. It was Jewish non-peoplehood, whose first important formulator was the eighteenth-century French count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre.”
Of course, the proximate trigger for World War I was the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. The war ultimately led to the dissolution of the increasingly anachronistic, multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Kohn, p. 107: “The provinces of the Church, especially the archdioceses, followed frequently the old divisions of the Roman Empire and became important centripetal forces in educating the inhabitants to a common consciousness.” Consider also how, after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s Orthodox church severed its allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate (which was preceded by another split in 2019).
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002), pp. 106–107: “In some Arab countries, defenders of what has by now become the old-style secular nationalism accuse the Islamic fundamentalists of dividing the Arab nation and setting Muslim against Christian. The fundamentalists reply that it is the nationalists who are divisive, by setting Turk against Persian against Arab within the larger community of Islam, and that theirs is the greater and more heinous offense.”
The Islamic State’s first leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, promised to “trample the idol of nationalism, destroy the idol of democracy, and uncover its deviant nature” (emphasis mine).
Trudeau’s message actually runs counter to the very basis of Canadian sovereignty, which was born from the recognition of founding peoples (English, French, and Indigenous). As George Grant writes (Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism [1965], pp. 5, 22): “To be a Canadian was to build, along with the French, a more ordered and stable society than the liberal experiment in the United States. . . . One distinction between Canada and the United States has been the belief that Canada was predicated on the rights of nations as well as on the rights of individuals.”
That said, nationalism can be conceived as embodying a greater, universal cause. As Kohn writes (p. 47), “Israel’s nationhood, its selection by God, was recognized and proclaimed, not as an end in itself, but as the means to a greater universal end. Nationalism became relativized, subservient to a goal embracing the whole of mankind.” This “instrumental” vision of nationhood influenced, for example, French and American ideals of a national “mission” to the benefit of all humanity.
Figuratively, insofar as ethnic diversity is associated with reduced social trust, and literally, insofar as immigration spreads pro-Hezbollah sentiment from the Middle East to Western college campuses.
See also Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift sword against nation and they will no longer study warfare.” In the messianic era, nations will no longer go to war with each other, but they will continue to exist.
Seems like the “ideal nationalist states” are the economic and geopolitical power brokers and success or luck stories which can manage to silo themselves from the impact of the common crises in the world, or at least some of them. Geographic landforms have as much of a role here as anything else—both in strategic locational proximity and size. New Zealand, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland (kinda, bad example in some ways), are all places which do not need to stress over their borders—they are self evident. They also have natural domestic abundance which is a reliable foundation for creating wealth. Unsurprisingly the elite wealthy of the world, the post-nationalists all end up spending time in such places trying to become citizens or get tax breaks and own property.
Coincidentally these societies will have what we’d consider healthy nationalist views, but it’s because they have enough distance to exist as a society in their own bubble without most of the population realizing this is the case. It’s like when you meet New Yorkers or Londoners or Tokyoites who simply don’t pay attention to anything going on outside their cities and are condescending to people outside their bubbles often even without realizing it.
States like Israel or Estonia or Taiwan have prominent nationalism because it’s the only way to not be genocided by their large, violent, insecure, despotic neighboring states and entities. You didn’t mention the Korean peninsula, but it feels like the most pertinent of all places for this discussion, and for seeing what nationalism means in this century.
I don’t think societies and countries that are at the center of land masses and modern diverse continental populations can really do “healthy nationalism”. Even if people can find common national values, it’s just too wide an umbrella in such places to feel like an identity that is stable. Nationalism at this scale naturally becomes a military salute—which is why the anti-nationalism people think nationalism is equivalent to fascism or inevitably creates it. They are wrong of course, but they unknowingly represent the real problem, which is that such states cannot rely on such things for self esteem or identity or morale of its society.
Fukuyama (and Bush et al) certainly "bought the rip" when it comes to the success of liberalism, yet still we must remember how great the current status of liberalism is compared to what anyone thought possible before the cold war ended. Not only is most of Eastern Europe still under democratic governance, Latin America large democratized right at the same time. As did several Asian nations,