Eric Kaufmann
For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War
by Stephen Saideman and William Ayres (Columbia University Press, £20.95)
Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall
by Amy Chua (Doubleday, £16.95)
Intolerance towards minorities and belligerence towards other nations are usually regarded as two sides of the same coin. Yet this Nazi-centric interpretation does serious injury to a historical record in which tolerance has often proved the handmaiden of “missionary” imperialism, while xenophobia has constrained expansionist energies. Now, at a time when politicians and academics like to stress the importance of outward-looking, tolerant, “civic” nationhood, it is a distinction eminently worth chewing over.
In many big modern states, like Britain and America, the downplaying of majority ethnic identity has allowed internal “others” to be included, but has also placed more pressure on political elites to define national identity against external “others.” In other words, rather than basing national identity on the particularity of who we are, the game becomes one of evangelising our identity to the world. Other countries, of course, may not be interested in such evangelism, in which case a coercive approach to spreading this identity—be it liberalism, socialism, Christianity or Islam—becomes necessary, increasing the potential for international conflict. Iran, Britain and the US are archetypal “missionary nationalists” of this type, while Estonia, Poland or Wales fall into the opposite ethnonational category. (Some nations can combine both strands to differing degrees.)
Read more »
Arkady Ostrovsky
Click here to discuss this piece at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
“Dear friends! The textbook you are holding in your hands is dedicated to the history of our Motherland… from the end of the Great Patriotic War to our days. We will trace the journey of the Soviet Union from its greatest historical triumph to its tragic disintegration.”
This greeting is addressed to hundreds of thousands of Russian schoolchildren who will in September receive a new history textbook printed by the publishing house Enlightenment and approved by the ministry of education. “The Soviet Union,” the new textbook explains, “was not a democracy, but it was an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society.” Furthermore, over the past 70 years, the USSR, “a gigantic superpower which managed a social revolution and won the most cruel of wars,” effectively put pressure on western countries to give due regard to human rights. In the early part of the 21st century, continues the textbook, the west has been hostile to Russia and pursued a policy of double standards.
Read more »
Marko Attila Hoare
Click here to discuss this piece at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
“Georgia has lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia for good”—one can almost taste the relish in the Guardian’s editorial of 15th August, as it argued against even peaceful, diplomatic measures to punish Russia for attacking Georgia. For a significant strand of left-liberal opinion in the UK, the default position on the Russia-Georgia conflict is that it is payback for earlier western sins in Iraq and Kosovo; that US, not Russian, warmongering is the problem. Yet none of this is true. Russia’s intervention in Georgia and recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s “independence” are not equivalent to western action over Kosovo or Iraq, and we allow them to go unpunished at our peril.
Moscow’s apologists frequently refer to the alleged “Kosovo precedent.” They argue that if Nato can carry out military intervention without UN authorisation against a sovereign state (Serbia), to protect a persecuted ethnic minority (the Kosovar Albanians), then unilaterally recognise the independence of an autonomous entity (Kosovo) which had until then been internationally recognised as belonging to Serbia, then Moscow is justified in acting likewise vis-a-vis Georgia and South Ossetia.
Read more »
Shaun Walker
There are four “breakaway states” in the former Soviet space: entities that were autonomous within their parent Soviet republics, and that when the Union collapsed in the early 1990s demanded their independence.
Some of them—like tiny South Ossetia, which demands independence from Georgia—are inconceivable as “real countries.” But Abkhazia, a strip of beautiful subtropical coastline on the Black sea, which was also part of Georgia during Soviet times, would probably be viable as an independent state.
Abkhazia’s population is around 170,000. About 90,000 of these are ethnic Abkhaz, who speak a throaty language with 64 letters. There is also a sizable Armenian population, and during the 1980s, almost half of the population were ethnic Georgians. But when the Abkhaz demanded independence as the Soviet Union disintegrated, Tbilisi sent the tanks in and war broke out. After the Abkhaz came out on top, most of the Georgians fled.
Read more »
prospect
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
Page 1: Rushanara Ali—Ed Husain
Click here for page 2
Rushanara Ali Think-tanker
Read more »
prospect
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
Page 2: Ian Jack—Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Click here for page 1
Ian Jack Journalist
Read more »
Christine Constable
Jack Straw’s description of the Conservative policy of “English votes for English laws” as “narrow English nationalism” demonstrates his willingness to adopt the tactics of the playground bully, by replacing intellectual debate with name-calling.
Labour’s partial devolution settlement aimed to ensure that only the Scots voted on Scottish matters and only the Welsh on Welsh matters. This was meant to salve years of rancour caused by the fact that neither Scotland or Wales felt they had democratic control over their own affairs. At the time, Labour politicans were adamant that this was not a matter of “narrow nationalism”; it was an essential requirement of a functioning democracy.
England, by contrast, is in democratic meltdown. For England to find herself with a prime minister whom no one in England has elected, and without an executive or parliament, is an affront to democracy. In a post-devolutionary British state, it is absurd to have ministers managing English departments who have not been elected by the people of England—Douglas Alexander, for example, MP for the Scottish constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire South, has total control over English transport, yet has no power on transport issues in Scotland.
Read more »
Tom Gallagher
When the Scottish National party scraped into office in May with just one more seat than Labour, it was assumed that its period running Scotland’s devolved government would be short and inglorious. But under Alex Salmond, in the space of 100 days it has established its mastery over all its rivals, who now fear voting it out of office in case fresh elections confirm the huge lead the SNP has built up in the polls.
The culmination of the SNP’s 100 days was the publication of a white paper proposing a “national conversation” on Scotland’s future to be followed by a referendum on independence in 2010. The opposition parties were caught unprepared. Bold spirits like Michael Forsyth, Margaret Thatcher’s chief adjutant in Scotland in the 1980s, have urged the case for a referendum now. Forsyth thinks, probably correctly, that most Scots would reject the severing of the British link and that Salmond would have to stop grandstanding. But with the tide of opinion on its side, the SNP could get a respectable vote for separation now which would enable it to consult the voters again at the end of their term in office.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives not only officially oppose a referendum, they have refused to engage in the national conversation, which they rightly suspect will be on SNP terms. Nor are they, yet, offering proposals for a new devolution settlement that would revise relations between Edinburgh and London. Giving Holyrood more fiscal autonomy is increasingly seen as the only way of stopping the SNP.
Read more »
Christopher de Bellaigue
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
Turkey’s election of 22nd July was meant to be about secularism, the creed that the republic’s founder, Kemal Atatürk, adopted in the 1920s, and which the ruling AK party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been accused of subverting. It was to defend secularism that Turkey’s generals in May made known their displeasure at plans to raise the pious, affable Abdullah Gül to the presidency, and it was to resolve the stand-off that Erdogan sought a new mandate—a mandate that he has now said he will use to put Gül in the presidential palace.
With its fine economic record, the AKP was never going to lose; to assure itself of a working majority, however, it needed to shed its divisive Islamist colouring and become a party for all Turks. In Turkey’s southeast, those mainly Kurdish provinces that have been the epicentre of a vicious rebellion since 1984, the AKP set itself a harder challenge: to become a party for all Kurds.
Read more »
Maureen Freely
Since its birth in 1923, the republic of Turkey has been engaged in a war of words with the Armenian diaspora, with the latter insisting that what Anatolia’s Armenians suffered in 1915 was genocide. The Turkish state has put a lot of effort into denying that claim, both at home and abroad. Its allies have traditionally agreed not to “make an issue of it.” For 82 years, the Turkish intelligentsia did the same. But in February 2005, the novelist Orhan Pamuk broke the taboo. The hate campaign to which he was then subjected was widely reported, both in Turkey and abroad, as was his prosecution for insulting Turkishness. In the nationalist press in his own country, he was branded a traitor. In the west, he was cast as a lone voice, and that is how most people here continue to see him.
In fact, Pamuk is not alone. I know this because I grew up in Istanbul, and many members of my family still live there. In the late 1960s, I attended an American-owned lycée in Istanbul. Orhan Pamuk, who is my exact contemporary, and whose books I now translate, attended our brother school, which has since merged with my alma mater to become Robert College. Though we can thank these schools for giving us a world-class education, it carried contradictions that continue to mark us all. For example, Turkish nationals at the colleges were required to study certain subjects—history, geography, Turkish literature, and military science—in Turkish, and to study them as the ministry of education decreed. This involved memorisation and discouraged the intellectual inquiry that was so encouraged in the lessons taught by Americans. This meant that my classmates had almost to change personality several times a day.
By mid-afternoon, we would have left our beautiful, secluded campus to return to a city that was ever more virulently anti-American. By the late 1960s, universities had become war zones, with leftist students fighting daily pitched battles with the police. There were also repeated attacks against US personnel, especially those working on its 17 military bases.
Read more »
Post a comment »
