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Middle East: More Fundamental Problems
...The modern nation-state came into being in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s as kings consolidated and centralized power that had been held by medieval fiefdoms run by dukes, earls and the like. The great theorist of the nation-state was Thomas Hobbes, who in Leviathan attempted to prove that the powerful centralized nation-state was the most feasible way to prevent the violent "war of all against all" that would ensue without that power being held by somebody (Hobbes' preference was a monarch)....

...Most political observers act as if the modern nation-state is a universal concept, the necessary structure to fix whatever ails a society in any part of the world. I think a case can be made that the modern nation-state is not only a culture-specific institution – with roots in Western Europe that don't necessarily transplant well elsewhere – but a time-specific institution as well. In fact, there's pretty good evidence that Western Europe is in the twilight of the era of the nation-state – the Staterdaemmerung? The powers of the European states are being replaced by large bureaucracies in Brussels as the European Union – a distinctly non-democratic and perhaps even markedly anti-democratic institution – becomes the real power in the continent.

Simultaneously, of course, we are seeing increasingly active local secession movements, some of which will establish imitations of modern states, like Slovakia when it removed itself from Czechoslovakia, and some of which simply seek more local autonomy without being too picky about how that autonomy will be exercised. Perhaps paradoxically, in the age of the Internet and instant communications, in which any part of the world can be in contact with and trade with any other part fairly conveniently, globalization will make increasing localization increasingly feasible.

Whether the nation-state was really the best way to deal with the problems and opportunities that presented themselves in the Europe of the 1600s – more discussion, please – it seems fairly clear to me that it wasn't appropriate for other parts of the world, especially those that had strongly-established tribal or familial forms of governance. I made the case a few months ago that Somalia is actually better off without a nation-state of the kind the UN and the "international community" spent so many years trying to impose....

...If the nation-state is in eclipse, why do we want to work so hard to foist one on Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries? Why not let systems evolve based on local traditions, customs and current needs rather than having them imposed by wise international bureaucrats who become international bureaucrats mainly so they will get out of the hair and leave alone the countries in which they happened to be born?