Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Declining USA imperial power — more Nationalisms in Europe
by Jeffrey Harrod
abstract: Early in the history if the USA the rulers devised a value-nationalism to prevent conflict between groups of European immigrants who still retained their language, ethnic or religious loyalty. Value-nationalism was thus supposed to be above ethnic nationalism because loyalty was to such values as democracy and justice rather than to a language and culture. All imperial powers seek to spread its beliefs and practices around the world and the USA was no exception which meant it demanded value-nationalism and promoted the immigrant-state. This emerged globally as an anti (ethnic) nationalist policy. The European states were the most receptive to these demands. The USA imperial power is now declining and its anti-nationalist policies are less effective. The result is an increase in Europe of nationalist parties and groups recognising the essential ethnic cultural and religious differences between European states. If and when in power these parties may support a more moderate even progressive nationalism which I have elsewhere described as “nationism.”
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For at least three decades the USA as an imperial power has pursued a policy to prevent or oppose expressions of nationalism in states and nations which were subjected to its power. There are many varieties of nationalism and in Europe there were widespread discussions of moderate, positive, progressive, liberal, and “civilized” nationalism. There were also those in different languages who claimed to be autonomists, sovereigntist, independentists, separatists and communitarians. Nevertheless, in USA policy, media and other channels of influence, any sort of nationalism was depicted as extreme and undesirable.
All imperial powers oppose nationalism because this is the principal force which mobilises populations against imperial rule.
In this respect then the USA imperialism was no different.
However, there was another part of USA history which added fuel to the general anti-nationalism imperial rule.
After the end of the 19 century the USA was composed mainly of European migrants. The task of thinkers and governors was to prevent conflicts arising from ethnicity, and religion of the assembled population.
Clearly for this purpose religious-based solidarity and identity within the American population had to be avoided. This was essential to create a peaceful, immigrant-state but, by a twist of history, the USA became the first immigrant-state to achieve imperial power in world history.
For this exercise a new type of nationalism was needed. A nationalism which would distinguish itself from the nationalisms of Europe which, it was believed, had been the source of the incessant wars between the “old countries.”
For this reason, then, a unique new nationalism was forged. You could exalt the nation, you could love the flag but not because it represented a language, culture, or religion but because it meant freedom, democracy, and justice. This was coupled with a legal framework guaranteeing so-called freedom of worship.
Academics have called this value-nationalism rather than ethno-nationalism
Exporting the Value-Nationalism of the USA
On a world scale it was the countries of Europe which most willingly accepted these policies. In-migration was convenient and although statistics on immigration are unreliable – as they always exclude illegal migration – citizens foreign born or born of one foreign parent quickly rose to over 10 percent of population in many countries. Ironically and unfortunately, this resulted in an ethnically or racially recognisable low-income group which was indeed in conformity with the American model.
Partly because the experience of the trauma of aggressive nationalism of the 1930s many European countries also accepted a hybrid form of value nationalism allowing the continued expression of an ethnic collectively. It was the European Union (EU) which most assisted the promotion of value nationalism in Europe. The early European organisation under the Schuman plan was simply designed to amalgamate the weapon supply industries to prevent another war in Europe. That was followed by an attempt under Commission President Delor to make the European organisation a power block between the USA and USSR. The power-bloc initiative failed after the collapse of the USSR and beginning in 1999, with EU Commission President Prodi, the so-called European norms of the EU emerged in strict conformity with the demands of USA value nationalism.
It was at this point then that the “West” as opposed to the rest was consolidated.
Global Resistance to Value-Nationalism
From the beginning this imperial policy faced several major political problems.
The first was that countries emerging from colonialism from the 1950s onwards were based almost exclusively on ethnic or racial nationalism and religions differences. Seventy-five percent of the nations of the world are now distinguished from each other by a single or combined politically-expressed difference in ethnicity, race, religious and occasional cultural differences. So, in many African countries party-based democratic demandsincreasingly collapsed into party-ethnic groups or gangs. The demands then that the American model should be followed simply was not possible, I have elsewhere called this “imperial dysfunction” - when an imperial demand cannot be met because of entirely unsuitable circumstances.
The second problem was that the rising economic powers of China and India did not accept that populations should not be mobilised by values arising from ethnic or religious belonging or that one-person-one-vote democracy was necessarily the best form of government. The richer countries of Asia, for example Japan and South Korea, never accepted the American mass in-migration model and the foreign-born population never rose for many years above 2 percent of the population.
Third, it became clear to many politically aware groups that the problem of one nation could not be solved by importing solutions or following internationally-generated policies and that some degree of focus on the special national needs was necessary.
It is difficult to pinpoint the start of the decline or resistance to USA value-nationalism policies. Even in 1974 for example, the argument that only international borders and not religion and ethnicity were the criteria for inter-state relations was rejected when Turkey – a NATO member - invaded and occupied part of Cyprus on behalf of the minority Muslim and ethnic Turkish population of the island. During the 1980s more and more countries accepted “multiculturalism” as a policy which allowed minority groups to sustain and promote their ethnicity and religion. The policy of multiculturalism was not part of the USA model and it was never incorporated in that model even though there are differences between states and cities concerning both language and minority rights.
At the end of the 20th century the resistance to the anti-nationalist policies of the USA became more evident and stronger and the power of the USA to resist them became weaker. There was, of course, an apparent general decline in USA imperial power. It is not intended here to discuss the reasons for the decline in strength of USA hegemony. There are many elements to this - the lack of cohesion between USA state policies and those of their non-state corporations, the instability of internal politics and the incipient conflict between the three great divisions in the USA between African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and European-Americans. All of this is cemented by social media and the internet which revealed that the USA globally-promoted model may not be working or achievable.
From the beginning of the 21st century the European countries which had accepted the imperial model and the domestic intervention originating from international organisations and agreements started to have difficulty in meeting the demands of their populations. Globalisation was the ideology of both corporate and state USA hegemony, at least in relation to trade and free capital movements. The acceptance of globalisation and policies and regulation from treaty organisations as the EU or inter-state organisations as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had profound effects on domestic policies of EU states. Essentially, they lost control over migration, trade, and finance – the three policy instruments needed to meet the demands of citizens. This was especially the case in those countries which still accepted the post 1930s belief that it was the responsibility of the state to maintain full employment and provide an acceptable minimum standard of welfare.
In addition, major European states also began to struggle to peacefully incorporate the newly established religious or ethnic minority groups which achieved significant dimensions and concentration. Groups and parties in Europe emerged opposing the idea of a multi-ethnic, religious, or immigrant state in which the inherent conflicts were supposed to be eliminated by a cross-sector belief in tolerance, democracy, freedom, and peace.
The unspoken argument surfaced again and again that the social and economic problems of a country could not be solved without a greater recourse to local interest and local control of key economic, social, and political dimensions.
Political Responses: Recognising the Demands to Belong
These oppositions gathered momentum over the last twenty years of the 20th century and in in the first quarter of the 21st-century they started to emerge as major and sometimes successful political parties in Europe.
The basic demand was for greater national control of society and economy. These parties represent a level of resistance to the USA hegemony and model unknown since the end of the World War 11 in 1945. The decline of the American imperial power and its accompanying ideology/practice of globalisation has meant that restrictions imposed against recognition of, racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences between nations have weakened. The forces, movements and political parties using these mobilising practices have found new strengths and increased approval by larger sections of the populations.
The decline of promoted USA value-nationalism is enhancing the re-emergence of traditional nationalism.
It is not certain how these parties and movements will perform if or when they achieve power – whether they will indeed yield to an exclusory, aggressive, nationalism that characterised the European region in the 1930s or whether they will adopt a more moderate acceptance of the importance of the differences between national populations. In government they may develop a different, 21st century, recognition of the human need to belong and to live in at least perceived security and to avoid the inter-ethnic wars of the past - elsewhere I have called this ‘nationism.”
Either of these outcomes nevertheless means that the states of Europe are slowly returning to what they were after a thousand years of costly bloody wars and ethnic cleansing — nations and states with boundaries which recognise the differences between ethnicities, religion, and cultures of the region.
They are returning to the extant and acceptable expression of their differences so long discouraged. Free from imposition they are hopefully prepared to restart the project of the middle of 20th century to secure through local solidarity the best possible economic and social conditions for their populations, and to forge a regionally sourced, modern, international cooperation. A cooperation which builds on, and recognises differences, rather than accepting the conformity to an alien model or the debilitating uniformity demanded by international integration
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