The Death of the Nation State

The Nation State is in its death throes. And ironically the Trumps of the world are helping it die!

Let me confess right up front. I am a globalist, an internationalist, an advocate for a world without borders. I could hardly not be. Having been fortunate to travel as a child and having a mother, Fay Gale, with a very open world view I was destined to be internationally oriented. As an adult, I have spent more than half my adult life, which spans some four decades, living outside the country of my birth, Australia. My big career break came from building a business across Asia and all its different cultures but particularly in cracking the Chinese market in the early 1990s.

I am an absolute advocate on the total liberalism of the movement of people. We floated out currencies, ditched tariffs, opened up global travel, created the Internet to move ideas globally in seconds and overall these things have made us all better off and the world a lot more peaceful than in the past, albeit there are still many problems. So the next obvious deregulation is migration. Just let people go where they go and let the natural forces find an equilibrium.

So, you get my point. I am not one to be supporting the “draw up the drawbridge” crowd of Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, Frauke Petry and their kind.

I guess therefore I should be depressed in the new reality of a Trump world, the rise of nationalism, the anti-immigrant sentiment bubbling up and the strident attacks on globalism. But not at all. I’m very excited!

The modern nation state arose in the 15th century with the pre-eminence of Venice, a former city state, being one of my favourite examples. The term itself became popular in the 20th century and today the nation state is our most common form of centralized government. It is based on the idea of a discreet land mass ruled by a homogenous group of people with rigid borders and firm control of all that occurs within its borders.

Because of its great successes patriotism is alive and well. But for all the forces of patriotism and those who want to preserve the nation state, it is already terminally ill. Many of the world’s companies are larger than many of the world’s nation states. Even the most fervent American patriot shops at Walmart which is entirely dependent on cheap imports.

The forces of globalism have won and we are transitioning to a much more globally managed world with tighter global institutions. The EU will become a more cohesive and dominant force notwithstanding Brexit, the Greece crisis and a myriad of challenges and other regional groupings will grow stronger.

So, what is going on right now? When a beloved institution dies, people mourn it and fight to save it. It is actually at the end of the useful life of most organizations and organisms that the biggest fight happens. So, at present all the people who fear globalism, while enjoying its benefits, are rising up in patriotic wrath.

The rise in nationalism at present feels unsettling and scary but it’s actually a good thing. The Nation State is dying, we are watching the agony of people fighting the losing battle to save it. It will die and we will have a new better and more global form of governing the planet which means a fairer world, a more peaceful world and a wealthier world in every aspect.