Recently, the Scottish people have voted on independence from the United Kingdom, and the Catalans have demanded a referendum on the independence of Catalonia from Spain. In the Middle East, rebellions against the ruling religious or sectarian groups, not separatist movements, are taking place in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, while in Asia Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka have experienced separatist movements by ethnic minorities and China is painfully dealing with the Uighur separatist movement. On the African continent, no country has completely disintegrated since independence although the separatist movement by the Ibo tribe in Nigeria was aborted and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Angola and Somalia have gone through brutal civil wars. The civil wars in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia were not separatist movements but revolts against dictatorship. It is interesting to note that most of the newly independent states in Africa have not experienced separatist movements, while new states that were formed in Central Asia and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 were created through separatist movements. These include the 14 former autonomous Soviet republics; Slovakia, which separated from Czechoslovakia; and the six countries that separated from the former Yugoslavia. One exception is Ukraine, which is on the verge of disintegration.

All this shows that after the Western empires gave up their colonies, they consolidated their home countries as solid nation-states through nationalism, and turned their colonies into nation-states ― replicas of their own state model. This means that the colonial masters ignored the very basis of identity in their colonies (tribe, language and religion). In other words, they left the task of creating the nation to the colonial peoples.

In the Western sense, “nation-state” refers to a state founded by people who speak the same language, are ethnically similar and share a common way of life. But most newly independent states are founded on tribalism or religion, not the Western criteria for a nation-state. Most of their leaders have accepted the Western model, shouldering the extremely difficult task of creating a nation-state by following the Western model. Considering this fact, it is not surprising that many newly independent states in Africa are suffering from political turmoil. It is equally evident why the ethnic and religious groups in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia fought for independence. In the former case, tribes do not have written languages, written histories and common established religions, while in the latter case each ethnic group has its own language, history and established religion. Most Arab states have a common written language, a common history and a common established religion, and therefore Pan-Arabism is attractive to some of the Arab people. Anti-Semitism and the ISIS movement can be explained from this perspective. Thus, the nation-building processes in Africa on the one hand and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union on the other were reversed: In the former case a state was established before a nation was created, and in the latter case a nation already existed before a new state was created.

From the above, we can see that there are three patterns of nationalism: Western, Arab and African. Non-Western countries uphold the Western principle of national sovereignty and intend to create the Western type of nation-state. But it is very difficult for them to achieve these two goals. It took centuries for Western states to consolidate the centralized nation-state and the principle of national sovereignty. Now they intend to make the principle of national sovereignty less than absolute, and some suffer from the danger of disintegration of nationhood or extreme xenophobia. More significant and ironic is the fact that some Western states themselves have not yet completed their nation-state building, as seen above. In view of the Western countries’ historical experiences, non-Western countries have a long way to go to build their nation-states.

It is highly noteworthy that very few new states have disintegrated despite numerous antigovernment rebellions and organized movements, mainly because these peoples do not seek separatism and simply make basic demands of their governments: the inclusive participation of all groups, ethnic and economic, in the decision-making process and a fair distribution of national wealth among all groups.

All the political turmoil caused by nationalism has serious political implications for the world order. First, the polarization and decentralization of the world order is less important than nationalism for world peace, because a unipolar or multipolar system can hardly solve ethnic and religious conflicts within states. How to persuade or force the leaders of conflict-ridden non-Western states to solve their domestic conflicts has become more important.

But the world is faced with a dilemma: The rulers of non-Western states invoke the principle of national sovereignty to defend their rule. Though Western states try to justify their intervention by invoking the principle of human rights protection, these rulers adamantly defend themselves, claiming that sovereignty is an inalienable right of nation-states. This is a clash between the Western and non-Western models of nationalism. The West has become a victim of its own creation.

Second, the world is living in the age of globalization. Ironically, all types of nation-states benefit from economic globalization, but have no intention of compromising the nation-state system. The U.N. is destined to lead the world to a global governance system, but in the face of the nationalist states, it is helpless. It is also a product of Western nationalism.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a former rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, and the author of “Globalized Korea and Localized Globe.” ― Ed.