The political analyst Simon Partridge responds to Christopher Hitchens’ piece in the Atlantic magazine, with an attack on the basic tenets of the political ideology underpinning ethno-nationalisms. Read on.
“Partition” is not some Deus Ex Machina which descends on unsuspecting states. It is usually a direct product of the romantic national-ism which emanated chiefly from the German reaction to the irredentist, militant secular republicanism of the French revolution which at one point threatened to over-run the whole of Europe. It could have entered Great Britain via Ireland. As it turned out, Irish nationalism was (and is) an unstable amalgam of the secular and romantic-religious. Once it got a hold through the deranged and destructive genius of Pearse (1916) a partition of the existing non-nationalist Union state in Ireland was inevitable. (Home Rule could have retained Ireland within the mulit-national (now multi-ethnic) UK and an evolving British Empire/Commonwealth.
The more profound question which lurks unaddressed and unanswered in Hitchen’s piece is whether the political ideology of ethno(-religious) national-ism is compatible with the tenets of a pluralist, liberal democracy? I believe it is not since it privileges the rights of the group over that of the individual voter, and demands an unviable state for every so-called ethnicity, creating endless aggrieved minorities who apply the same logic ad infinitum (as any “united” Ireland would quickly discover). This is indeed a regression to tribalism disguised as modernism (the early Irish state was a pretty good example – a tradition embodied and continued by the “ourselves aloners”). In a more globalised and mobile world, all states in future will have to be some form of pluralist, multi-cultural union.
The British Empire – which certainly had its faults – in the end fell prey to a mixture of secular (often quasi-marxist) or romantic nationalism demanding “self-determination” as an “inalienable” right but which ended up on the whole installing an Occidentalised political elite only to be challenged by a more romantic model based crudely on ethnicity, often led by a less Occidentalised Armed Forces faction (but still called something like the laughable Democratic Republic of the Congo, ruled by tribal warlords selling diamonds/oil to gangster capitalists). At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Cs there was serious thought given to how to turn the British Empire into a sort of world-wide Federation, which has only come down to us in the very dilute form of the largely impotent Commonwealth.
It now seems to fall to the Americans, with an assisting role from the Brits, to take up the burden and see whether they can tame the regressive beast of tribalism (which may itself have been encouraged in places by the disruptive side effects of unrestrained globalism). It was, after all, largely the US and the Brits which brought some order to former Yugoslavia (though the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister today is an ominous sign).
If “Empire” plays on Hitchen’s still active post-colonial guilt, perhaps “Protectorate” would be a more acceptable term. That is what happened in both Germany and Japan after WWII while both states were explicitly reconstructed along liberal democratic lines – one as a federal republic and the other as a constitutional monarchy. It seems to me that something similar is going to have to happen to save the people of Iraq from the tyrannous rule of S Hussein – who I believe received the support of 98% in a recent poll, another exercise in mock-democracy so beloved by modern dictators!
One thing we can be sure of, contra Hitchens, is that whatever burden the US and its allies are taking up it will not be “quickly forgotten” or put down. Pluralist state-building is going to be the name of the game. And as post-nationalist Ireland amply demonstrates, that is no quick or easy task.
Vicious, unrestrained, hate-filled inter-tribal conflict is a luxury that can no longer be afforded in a world where any banana republic (or wealthy terrorist network) can lay its hands on WMD. If the UN and the EU cannot be effective (and the track record is pathetic) then the US and its allies will have no other choice but to apply some control. Perhaps the US disposes of enough power to impose a reasoned, plural will (some of the federal, multi-cultural blueprints for Iraq look encouraging) where the demoralised and WWII-drained Brits could not.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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