Cosmopolitanism and nationalism

History is inhabited by competing principles. Cosmopolitanism is the principle that says people of different backgrounds and histories can live together constructively. Nationalism is the principle that says they can't. Cosmopolitanism is the principle that underwrites empires. Nationalism is the principle that demands empires’ destruction.

Cosmopolitanism and nationalism have competed in the Middle East for millennia. Successive empires rose and fell, sometimes displaced by other empires but sometimes by nationalist movements. The descendants of Abraham carved out a country for themselves, only to see it absorbed into the Roman and Ottoman empires. The followers of Muhammad couldn't decide whether the cosmopolitanism of their religion mattered more than the nationalism of their histories as Sumerians, Egyptians, Syrians and Bedouins.

The First World War terminated Ottoman cosmopolitanism without fatally discrediting cosmopolitanism itself. There's a crucial moment in the movie Lawrence of Arabia when T. E. Lawrence, a British officer dispatched to coordinate an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, discovers that Arab freedom is not on the agenda of Britain and France, who have secretly agreed to partition Arab lands between their two empires. Much of the movie is about Lawrence's disillusionment. The Sykes-Picot agreement, as the covert compact was called, plays a central role.

A second world war was required to cast cosmopolitanism upon the ash heap of history. From the ruins of the British and French empires emerged the nations of the Middle East today. Zionism is the nationalism of the Jews and the premise for the nation of Israel. Other nationalisms gave rise to modern Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and so on. Palestinian nationalism and Kurdish nationalism remain aspirational, suppressed for now by the nationalisms of their neighbors.

The rise of nationalism is closely related to the rise of democracy. Both claim legitimacy from an asserted natural right of people to govern themselves. Nationalism is self-government vis-a-vis other peoples. Democracy is self-government within a single country.

To believers in such a natural right, there’s no plausible rejoinder to nationalism or democracy. They are decreed by the configuration of the universe. The responsibility of humans is to make the best of them.

Skeptics have to be won over by the track record of nationalism and democracy. Winston Churchill arrived at democracy by process of elimination, saying it was the worst form of government except all the others that had been tried. Nationalism was an even greater stretch. Churchill eventually concluded that Britain should hand over the “thankless deserts” of the Middle East to their inhabitants, but he stubbornly resisted independence for India and the British-controlled parts of Africa.

Yet Churchill was a dinosaur by the end of his life. After the Second World War, the principle of nationalism carried all before it. The charter of the United Nations made national sovereignty the touchstone of international affairs.

But even the UN hedged its bets, as well it might have. Slow to arrive in other parts of the world, nationalism had been rampant in Europe for centuries. And it spawned the two world wars. The charter of the UN authorized its security council to override national sovereignty and impose good behavior on disorderly members.

The Europeans themselves conceded the limitations of nationalism. During several decades they created the European Union, embodying a kind of cosmopolitanism for the post-imperial age. The EU evolved in fits and starts. The nationalisms of the members chafed at its cosmopolitan restrictions. Britain remained outside the group, then joined, then bolted, then apparently rued leaving.

As for the Middle East, eight decades of nationalism have left much to be desired. Many of the peoples of the region live in countries they can call their own, but they often have difficulty doing so in peace.

This was always the trade-off. Cosmopolitanism’s peace was imposed from above, by the Romans, the Ottomans, the British or the French. Nationalism removed the imposition but diminished the peace.

The liberal thinkers who designed the world order after 1945 embraced as an article of faith the idea that self-government could be good government, with the latter implying peaceful coexistence with neighbors.

Were they fooling themselves? Is there no middle ground between cosmopolitanism and nationalism?

There might be.

The United States by itself is something of a compromise between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. In the earliest colonial days, America was an offshoot of England. But soon people came from Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands. More came, against their will, from Africa. Following independence the flow from Africa ended but new streams commenced from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe. In the middle of the 19th century tens of thousands came to America from China. In the 20th century the origins of immigration broadened still further. Yet as a result of a nationalist revolt beginning in 1775, this cosmopolitan group of people occupied an independent nation.

Balancing cosmopolitanism against nationalism has always been a challenge for Americans. Some Americans have been more comfortable with cosmopolitanism than others. During some periods American nationalism has turned nativist. At times cosmopolitanism has caused certain Americans to lose sight of the single nation America had become.

On the whole, however, the American experiment of making a single nation out of many peoples has been the brilliant success story of modern world history. No other country has delivered such freedom and prosperity to so many millions for so long. This is why so many people have wanted to come to America.

The experiment continues. Every generation has a chance to screw it up.