Replacing the Nation-State

Gary North - March 12, 2019

Remnant Review

The nation-state is going to become far less powerful in a generation than it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this. The main one is economic.

The statistically inevitable bankruptcy of the government-funded national retirement programs and the medical programs will force a major shrinking of their budgets. This will undermine their legitimacy. This is argued in the concluding sections of two insightful books published two decades ago: Martin van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (HarperCollins, 2000). The latter is a tour de force, a monumental intellectual project by a master historian. He was 93 when it was published -- astounding.

Recently, my friend Doug Casey wrote an article on this. He relies more on science fiction than formal scholarship, he says. But this raises a problem: like scholars, science fiction authors are not agreed on their scenarios. Nevertheless, their scenarios, being literary, are more fun to read than fat historical books. I speak as a man who has read a lot of fat historical books and has written one (1,000 pages).

SCIENCE FICTION AND THE FUTURE

I begin with Casey's opening words.

Science fiction has always offered both a more accurate and more timely look at the future than any think tank. For one thing, a good book is the product of a genius, not a committee of suits trying to reach a consensus. And a format of fiction allows one to speculate in ways that a “serious person” can’t do in nonfiction.

Every educated person should have read the classics by Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C Clarke, among others.

I agree. My taste in reading as a child (1950-51, ages 8 and 9) was shaped initially by Dimension X. These were radio dramas based on the authors of the golden age of science fiction: Asimov, Heinlein, and especially Bradbury. In junior high school and high school, I read their books, plus books and short stories by Sturgeon and Sheckley. But I stopped reading fiction when I went to college. I never went back. That was a high price to pay.

Add Neal Stephenson to that list. I’ve been a fan of Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age since it was published in 1995. I strongly recommend you read the book.

I have not read this book. But I have ordered it.

There are many themes in Diamond Age, which refers to a near-term future (I’ll guess around 2050) when nanotechnology has transformed much of life. Although not nearly as radically as I believe will actually be the case. (See my essays on the future here and here.)

But one theme in the book is quite a breakthrough, and spot-on. It posits the creation of “phyles” as the major form of social and political organization. The word comes from the same root as phylum, from the Greek, meaning “tribe” or “clan”. But I think it’s also a pun on the word “filial”, with its connotations of family.

The book posits, I believe correctly, that in the near future most nation states will have broken down. Many will have ceased to exist. It’s quite logical, because they’re a dysfunctional way for people to organize. And it’s happening right before our eyes. None of the countries in the Mid-East, Africa, or Central Asia have any coherence. They’re just the result of some ruler’s military prowess, or some politicians drawing lines on a distant map. Nation states themselves have really only been around since the 17th century. Before that, people weren’t loyal to a country; they were loyal to a chief, a king or an emperor.

Following van Creveld, I would date the origin of the modern state as having taken place in the late 15th century, accelerating in the 16th. I see Henry VIII as a supreme example of this transition. Henry VII, his father, made the transition at Bosworth Field, beginning in 1485. But he was a cautious, fiscally conservative king, unlike his profligate son.

Overall, I agree with Casey's point regarding people's loyalties prior to the modern nation-state. What I have difficulty believing is that this can be reversed. I don't think history runs backwards. I don't think we're going to be loyal to chieftains ever again. I don't think kings are coming back. Of all the questions that bedevil today's future predictors, it is the question of political legitimacy. Legitimacy is a subtle thing, yet understanding it is mandatory for explaining civil governments and other forms of governments. I don't see any alternative to elected representatives in the near future. The world has bought into democracy -- lock, stock, and barrel. (This phrase refers to guns. When we talk about civil government, we should begin our talk with a discussion of badges and guns.)

Loyalty to a country can make some sense, on at least a primitive atavistic level, as long as the inhabitants of the “country” share a common language, religion, ethnicity, and customs. But it makes no sense when they have little in common. So it’s natural, and salubrious, for the various religious, ethnic, racial, cultural or economic groups within a country that’s become too big, too “diverse”, and too “inclusive”, to want to get out. Everyone recognizes—even if they don’t say it—that a national government is just a vehicle for theft, benefitting the group that controls it.

Casey is a libertarian. His libertarian analysis would apply just as well to local civil governments. Local governments are smaller, but in those regions in which 80% of the population lives, they encompass wide variations in commitments and loyalties. ZIP Codes make a huge difference, as Charles Murray discusses in his superb book, Coming Apart (2012). He doesn't discuss racially segregated ZIP Codes, which would make his discussion even more complex. He discusses only white ZIP codes.

As the world becomes more educated, the average man becomes more acutely aware of that fact. And as jet travel and the Internet become universal, people start to realize they might have almost nothing in common with their so-called “countrymen”. And a lot more in common with people who may be on the other side of the globe, many of whom will feel the same way about their own countrymen.

I can tell you that I have much more in common with friends in the Congo or China than I do with my fellow Americans living down the road from me in a trailer park. I have nothing in common with them. These people not only aren’t my friends, they’re liabilities. And may turn into active enemies under the right circumstances. I’d rather associate with people with whom I share common values and interests, not just the same government ID.

I lived in a trailer park all through graduate school. I was not on close terms with any of my neighbors. But I am not on close terms of any of my neighbors today, either. We have all become couch potatoes. We have turned inward within the four walls of our homes, but we have turned outward through the Internet. I think most of us think and act nationally more than we think and act locally. This habit will be extremely difficult to change. The cost of local political organization keeps rising. Local newspapers are disappearing. News from digital communications has not replaced the newspapers. It is cheaper for us to follow national news than local political news. This economic law is still in force: when the price falls, more is demanded.

I return to an ancient political slogan: "You can't beat something with nothing." But there is another political slogan: "All politics is local." I think both of these are true. The problem today is this: local politics has been marginalized because of federal spending. The big challenge for local politics is to get more money out of the federal pipeline. Every community wants to get above-average funding. That is going to change as a result of the great default, when national governments run out of money to fund promised old-age retirement pension benefits and national healthcare services.

In any event, almost all the world’s nation-states are terminally burdened with debt, taxes, regulations and, increasingly, strife between groups fighting for either a teat on the milk cow, or political power. The nation state is a dinosaur; it no longer makes sense in a world with today’s technology and demographics.

This explains what we've seen in the last generation: the breakup of states. The USSR into 15 components. Yugoslavia into six. Czechoslovakia into two. Sudan into two. This is just the opening round. Most European countries have secessionist movements. Russia should eventually break up into a dozen new states. China into at least a half-dozen. Brazil into at least two. Bolivia into at least two. Etc. Etc.

This process will continue. We don't need to read science fiction in order to understand this. What we need from science fiction is imagination with respect to what is going to replace this process, other than traditional democratic politics.

Casey continues.

MILITARY VIOLENCE AND TERROR

In fact, the primary reason that’s given for the very existence of the nation state is to defend its inhabitants. But, with the changing nature of warfare, that’s one of the things it’s least able to do. Can it defend against a nuclear attack? No. At best it can just threaten to counterattack.

In fact, a country with a big military stationed all over the world, not only can’t defend its citizens, but actually draws in attacks by making enemies among the natives in far off places. In the past, it didn’t matter—the natives were immobile and powerless. Today they can go anywhere, and access a wide variety of weapons.

In fact, governments are so united against “terrorism” because it’s not just a very effective tactic against the nation state—it really can only be used against the nation state. Governments couldn’t care less about the few hundreds of people that might be killed in a terror attack. They care because it threatens their existence.

In today’s world, nation states are no longer the big risk to other nation states. Rather, it’s groups like ISIS and al Qaeda that are a much bigger threat. They can’t be destroyed by dropping a nuke on their cities; they don’t have cities. They can be everywhere and anywhere. But they can easily attack the cities of their enemy. And those are just well-known Islamic threats. There will likely be many others of many varieties, on templates as different as the Red Army Faction, Aum Shinrikyo, or FARC.

This analysis is consistent with van Creveld's. He is a military historian.

The safest way to avoid attack in the age of cheap and easily available atomic, biological and chemical weapons is to be dispersed. At least not to be part of a geographic nation state. From a military point of view a nation is about as viable as cavalry before WW1 or battleships during WW2.

We are not becoming more dispersed. We are becoming more concentrated. Most people live in large cities. There is a constant movement from the countryside to large cities. China is the classic example in world history. But it has been going on steadily since at least 1800 in the West.

He continues.

BENEFITS

Not being part of a nation state ameliorates a lot of problems for a person, but it’s not a total solution. What Diamond Age posits, and I think is going to happen, is that people will form phyles, joining in an alliance according to what’s most important to them. Or the way they “self identify”, to use a currently fashionable term. Jews famously stick together relative to the goyim. That’s one reason at least part of Israel (likely excluding the Hasidim and Palestinians) will survive as a nation. One reason Mormons are so successful is that also they favor each other, like the Jews. Muslims (although rarely economically successful, for other cultural reasons) definitely do the same. Birds of a feather (all the outraged hysteria about racism notwithstanding) do, in fact, tend to flock together.

I agree with this. Here is the question I ask: "How will local groups restore the local political legitimacy that they have surrendered steadily since the end of World War II?" Here is a general principle: power flows to those who take responsibility. In a time of national government bankruptcy, state and local governments will gain greater legitimacy. But state governments are in trouble fiscally. Local civil governments and local voluntary associations will begin to pick up the shattered pieces of the bankrupt national welfare state.

So here’s my prediction of what’s going to happen over the next couple of generations. Many nation states will simply collapse or disappear. Incidentally, I don’t think the US will be a survivor. The country used to share a common culture, albeit with quaint regional variations. That’s no longer the case. The election of Trump has crystalized long simmering, and growing antagonisms. It’s not that Americans just have a political difference of opinion. It now boils down to mutual cultural hatred, and on a visceral level. It’s only been exacerbated by the push for “multiculturalism”, always a stupid and destructive concept, from the usual suspects.

The breakdown economically will hit harder at the national level than locally. This will not be enough to destroy the historic legitimacy possessed by national governments, but it is going to seriously erode it. Every national government is going to have to share legitimacy with state and local governments. As the funding available to all levels of civil government shrink, other institutions are going to begin to replace the lost loyalty that has been transferred to national governments since the end of World War II. This loyalty is not going to go to the toothless and feckless United Nations. It is going to go in the opposite direction. It is going to decentralize, not centralize.

The technology of decentralization is much more powerful than the technology of centralization. This premise is now being tested in China. The rise of social credit monitoring by the central government through computerization is challenging the process of decentralization. I think this is Custer's last stand for centralized political power. But the Chinese government is making a powerful stand against the "savages" who are armed with smartphones.

Casey has in mind the USA.

Take California, the Left Coast, for instance. Even now some of them are talking about divorcing themselves from hated Flyover Country. But even California makes no sense as a political entity. What does the Mexican population have in common with Silicon Valley? Nothing. What do the hippies in Humboldt County have in common with the Los Angelenos? Nothing. What do farmers in the Central Valley have in common with anybody else in the state? Nothing.

Incidentally, we can break down Canada and Mexico the same way. Much smaller entities within these (and all other) countries would be much more viable. But still anachronistic. And suboptimal.

I don't see this today. Something like it will come, region by region, but in informal ways. Today, when we talk about political allegiance, local political allegiances in the United States and Canada are still focused on the national government. The high water of secession in Canada peaked two decades ago in Québec. That trend has faded. There is nothing comparable to this in the USA.

So what will happen? Everywhere people will reorganize for mutual support, defense, insurance, companionship, and everything else. But it won’t have much to do with politics as we now know it. They’ll form Phyles.

An outrageous concept, I know. Now you see why radical ideas are best presented in the form of novels.

America is going to move toward political decentralization, but there will not be formal political secession. Rather, it will be operational secession. The deep state is not as consistent nor as necessary to the national government as the Communist Party is in China. I don't think Congress is united philosophically on anything except the maintenance of the Congressional pension system.

In contrast, the Communist rulers of China are still united. They want to retain power in the central government. Theirs is a much more brittle system than the West's: brittle economically, brittle politically, and most of all, brittle ideologically. The Communist Party's leaders are holding on for dear life to a dead ideology. Marxism will not sustain the central government's efforts to create the equivalent of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The inevitable economic crisis that is going to shake the credit system in China is going to undermine the legitimacy that has been transferred by the Chinese people to the Communist national government. The Communists have bet the farm on central bank mercantilism, and they are going to lose that bet.

FLAGS AND ALLEGIANCE

I agree entirely with Casey with respect to economic self-interest. It is important to follow the money. When vast quantities of money cease to come from Washington, political loyalties will shift.

Economic self-interest regionally is going to replace today's level of self-interest nationally. But this does not necessarily imply that all loyalties to the national flag will be replaced by loyalties to state flags, let alone the nonexistent regional flags. Flags are important as symbols. When Gorbachev lowered the Communist flag and raised the Russian flag on December 25, 1991, that was an enormously important symbolic shift.

I don't think anything like this is going to take place in the United States and Canada.

The Soviet Union was a military empire based on a common ideology: Marxism. The United States has never been that centralized domestically. There has never been a common world-and-life in view to unify Americans that was anything like as consistent and comprehensive as Marxism was. The old rule proved binding in the USSR: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I don't think the United States is going to fall in the way the Soviet Union fell. I don't think anybody is going to lower the national flag anywhere inside the national borders. We just aren't going to salute it as enthusiastically as we have in the past.

Over the past half century, Americans have saluted it less and less. The Vietnam War ended that practice. The widespread opposition to the war undermined political legitimacy at the national level. It forced Lyndon Johnson to cease running for President in 1968. This process of reduced emotional allegiance is going to continue. It is not something new. Fourth of July parades are a thing of the past. I am not predicting a radical shift in the future. I am predicting the continuation of an existing trend.

We should follow the money. We should also follow the confessions. What do people believe in? Political confessions are manifested in flags. I doubt seriously that state flags are going to replace the Stars & Stripes. I don't think we will see state flags flying on state capital buildings above the Stars & Stripes. If we don't, then the transition that Casey is talking about will still be on hold. I think it is going to stay on hold.

Until there are common regional confessions of faith that replace today's national loyalty and therefore today's national legitimacy, the Stars & Stripes will continue to fly on top. Until there are regional flags that fly higher than state flags and the Stars & Stripes, Casey's scenario will remain in the category of science fiction.

Symbols are important. It is not sufficient to follow the money. It is necessary, but not sufficient. We also have to pay attention to symbols. Flags represent our political allegiances. There are no economic flags. There are no religious flags. For now, there are only political flags. We had better pay attention to this. We had better factor this into our imaginative scenarios of the future.