Why borders in the right places matter, even to post-nationalists.

The human quest for an identity is a very strong impulse.  The reasons for this impulse will not be discussed here, but the consequences of this impulse are very important for geopolitics.  People can have many identities.  They may identify strongly with their family, with their religion or with their occupation or hobby.  Many, however, identify strongly with a sense of being a member of a particular nation.

Many modern academics, particularly from the elites of western society, like to talk as though nationalism is a dying force in our increasingly post-modern world; and perhaps it is.  Waning or not, though, nationalism is still a very powerful force in our world and will continue to be so for as long as people continue to choose to identify themselves by their national ethnicity.

Given the continuing power of national identity in today’s world one can fairly reliably predict geopolitical strife wherever one finds national borders that are drawn in the wrong places.
 
So what is the problem if a border doesn’t exactly align with ethnic groupings; shouldn’t we all be ignoring national and cultural differences now anyway so that we can all live together in harmony?
This essentially is the ‘post-nationalist’ argument against any nationalist’s assertion that a border is in the wrong place.

In theory (and current western morality), they have a strong argument, but I would argue that in practice even someone who believes in the creation of a post-nationalist humanity in the future should be concerned about the placement of borders in the here and now. I say this because those countries which have gone furthest toward establishing a post-nationalist mentality amongst their citizens (by which I mean loyalty to a state apparatus rather than a particular ethnic grouping of people) tend to be those which have had the closest correlation between their state borders and ethnic borders. Here I will refer to Australia, USA, New Zealand and Canada as primary examples. These nations were by the early twentieth century, and often earlier, secure and happy within their borders. There were no large groups of Australians or Americans outside their respective countries’ borders wishing to be included, and likewise there were no significant groups of ‘other’ nationalities within their borders hoping to join with a rival, neighbouring state (certainly there were aboriginal groups in most of these countries which might not have identified with the dominant ‘nationality’ but they had no external national state that held their loyalty and in most cases their numbers were not enough to be significant either). Since the beginning of the twentieth century all of these nation states were happy and secure within their borders (the fact that most of their borders were sea-borders was certainly something which helped to bring about this relatively unique set of circumstances).

So, how do I justify my claim that these former British colonies have ‘gone furthest toward establishing a post-nationalist mentality amongst their citizens’? I base this claim on the fact that these countries have recently transitioned, or are in the processes of transitioning, from being a mono-cultural society to being a multi-cultural society. Certainly other multicultural states exist, but in the vast majority of others the various national groups have been present from the beginning of the state’s formation. These are generally federations or former empires where national groupings have either agreed to work together or been conquered by more powerful ethnicities. What is so remarkable about the countries I have highlighted is that in them we have examples of the dominant ethnic groups choosing to share their territory and power with large numbers of incoming/immigrating members of other national groups.
I would contend that it is no coincidence that these countries which have moved first toward a post-nationalist mindset are also ones in which the state borders have corresponded so concretely with their national/ethnic borders for the past one hundred years. It is only when a state has secure and correct borders that it can afford to begin giving primacy to citizen welfare and start devoting resources to the sort of social advancement agendas/movements which eventually lead via minority rights and multiculturalism to the post-nationalist mentality.

Why is this so?

This is so because one of the first priorities/instincts of any nation is the desire to collect all of its people together into one political entity. This desire is based in rationality not just sentimentality. To begin with, there is strength in unity; the larger the political unit is the better able it will be to defend itself. At the same time, any of the nation’s people that are left outside its borders are at risk of being subsumed into another nationality and lost to the parent national group, thus weakening it.
The first national struggle is always for national self-determination. Consequently, if any part of the national group is left outside the borders of the free nation state then the national liberation project  is left unfinished. As a result, the finishing of that great establishing project always becomes a priority of any newly created nation state. The unfinished business of national unification and liberation will rest heavily on the national consciousness and will take primacy over any other national projects until such a time as it is brought to a satisfactory resolution. Even once the goals of national unification and liberation are achieved, if it is felt that the national independence or territorial integrity is under threat then national security will continue to be of primary importance in the national psyche until such a time as the threat to the nation has passed.

Only when a state feels its borders are correct and secure is it willing to invest greater resources into citizen welfare. An investment which often leads down the path to a post-nationalist mentality.
One might also say that very ‘secure’ states, ones that are not threatened by other nations on their borders, have less fear of diluting their national/ethnic identity and as such are more willing to take in members of other nationalities.
So, having borders in the right places is something which matters to nationalists and should matter to post-nationalists as well, if they are interested in hastening the spread of the post-nationalist mentality.

I will endeavour to illustrate this point by highlighting what I see as a great ‘lost opportunity’ to global citizenship caused by some of the international borders created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Following the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union, one certainly hoped that the powerful nation of Russia might reform itself into a state that more closely resembled the freedom and prosperity of the west. One hoped, in fact, that it would become a successful partner to the western nations and the USA in particular, ushering in a new era of pan-European peace and development. One was, however, worried by the fact that the fall of communism had come about through the disintegration of the federation that was the Soviet Union. The fifteen constituent nations of the Soviet Union were now all suddenly free and independent states, many for the first time, and while I rejoiced for the independence of most of these I was at the same time worried by the fact that several of the new borders left some sizeable areas of Russian populated lands within the territories of other countries. I do not wish to get into the arguments over what land belongs to who and the rights and wrongs of the various claims. It is sufficient for my argument to simply acknowledge the fact that there were many Russians who considered the borders of Kazakhstan, Belorussia and Ukraine to be separating them from significant numbers of their compatriots. Given that fact, I expected that the Russian state would be uneasy over these borders and that the prospects for Russia developing into a confident and neighbourly state were not good.  One could say that the prerequisites for Russian development along a citizen’s welfare trajectory towards post-nationalism did not exist. Now, many years later, we find that after an initial period of difficulty the Russian state has coalesced around a nationalist leader and a nationalist discourse. Not only that, but the Russian state has also become involved in conflict over the placement of the Ukrainian border.

To come back to my central contention: the importance of borders even for post-nationalists, I will raise the speculation that had the Soviet Union disintegrated in a way that did not leave large areas of Russian populated land outside of Russia’s borders then we may well have seen a very different development trajectory within the Russian state, and that development may well have been far more pleasing to post-nationalists than the current reality.