Chapter 4: Nationalism and international politics 194591

Aims of the chapter

In this chapter we will review the following topics: the nature of international society the post-Second World War context nationalism in international organisations economic nationalism irredentist and secessionist challenges to international order.

Learning objectives
On completing this chapter and having completed the essential reading and activities you should be able to: explain how the concept of international society is used in the international relations literature outline the way in which traditional international society was modified by the admission of many new states after 1945 assess the ways in which the Cold War reinforced nationalism and constrained its impact on international relations describe how economic nationalism influenced post-war international relations describe the empirical circumstances that favoured irredentist secessionist claims and the main legal arguments that were advanced in their support.

Essential reading
From your essential textbook:
Mayall, J. Nationalism and International Society. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7.

From the Online library or available online:

Beran, H. A Liberal Theory of Secession, Political Studies 32(1) 1984, pp.2131 [ASP] Buchanan, A. Theories of Secession, Philosophy and Public Affairs 26(1) 1997, pp.3161 [JSTOR]. Emerson, R. Nationalism and Political Development, Journal of Politics 22(1) 1960, pp.328 [JSTOR]. Emerson, R. Self-Determination, The American Journal of International Law 65(3) 1971, pp.459475 [JSTOR] Horowitz, D. 1998., Structure and Strategy in Ethnic Conflict, Report prepared for the World Bank, available at http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Oqo1XdVl5PMJ:www.worl dbank.org/html/rad/abcde/horowitz.pdf+Horowitz+ethnic+confli ct&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7.

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84 Nationalism and international relations Jackson, R. and G. Rosberg Sovereignty and Underdevelopment: Juridical Statehood in the African Crisis, The Journal of Modern African Studies 24(1) 1986, pp.131 [JSTOR]. James, F.C. Economic Nationalism and War, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 175 The Shadow of War (September 1934), pp.6572 [JSTOR]. Kaldor, M. Nationalism and Globalisation, Nations and Nationalism 10 (1-2) 2004 , pp.161177 [ASP]. Kohn, H. The United Nations and National Self-Determination, The Review of Politics 20(4) 1958, pp.526545 [JSTOR]. Mazrui, A. On The Concept of We Are Africans, The American Political Science Review 57(1) 1963, pp.8897 [JSTOR]. Moffat, J.E. Nationalism and Economic Theory, The Journal of Political Economy 36(4) 1928, pp.417446 [JSTOR]. Spechler, M.C. Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World, Nations and Nationalism 12(2) 2006, pp.360362 [ASP]. Yack, B. Popular Sovereignty and Nationalism, Political Theory 29(4) 2001, pp.517536 [JSTOR].

Further reading
Bull, Hedley The Anarchical Society. (Cambridge University Press, 2002) third edition [ISBN 9780231127639]. Bull, Hedley and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion of International Society. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) [ISBN 9780198219422] Chapters 1416. Burnell, P. Economic Nationalism in the Third World. (Prentice Hall, 1987) [ISBN 9780745004808]. Chazan, N. (ed.) Irredentism and International Politics. (London: Adamantine Press; Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992) [ISBN 9781555872212]. Cobban, Alfred The Nation-State and National Self-Determination. (London: Collins, 1969) revised edition. [ASIN: B0006CAIAE]. Emerson, Rupert From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples. (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1962) [ASIN: B000M1IMA2]. Jackson, R.H. Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) [ISBN 9780521353106]. List, F. The National System of Political Economy. (1840) translated by Matile, George A. (Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007) [ISBN 9780548560099]. Mazrui, Ali Towards a Pax Africana. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967) [ISBN 9780226514277]. Seers, Dudley The Political Economy of Nationalism. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) [ISBN 9780198284734]. Viner, Jacob Power Versus Plenty as objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, World Politics, 1(1) 1948, pp.129. Wight, Martin Power Politics. (Leicester: Leicester University Press for RIIA, 1977, 1995) [ISBN 9780718510022] Chapter 10.

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Chapter 4: Nationalism and international politics 1945 91

Works cited
Beran, Harry A Liberal Theory of Secession, Political Studies 32(1) 1984, pp.2131. Cobban, Alfred The Nation State and National Self-Determination. Revised edition (London: Collins, 1969) quoted in Hutchinson, J. and A.D. Smith (eds) Nationalism. (Oxford Readers, Oxford University Press, 1994) [ISBN 9780192892607] p.249. Gellner, E. Nations and Nationalism. (Oxford: Blackwell, and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983) [ISBN 9780631130888] pp. 445. Hansen, A.H. Power Shifts and Regional Balances in Streeton, Paul and Michael Lipton (eds) The Crisis of Indian Planning. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) [ASIN: B000LAFSYC]. Mazrui, Ali Towards a Pax Africana. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967) [ISBN 9780226514277] Chapter 1.

Introduction
Between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of communism, world politics were dominated by the Cold War. It was both a power conflict between the two strongest states in the world and an ideological struggle between the forces of MarxismLeninism and those of liberal democracy. Nonetheless, as the Soviet Union, the United States and their respective allies confronted one another around the world, each side formed alliances with local nationalists, for reasons discussed in the previous chapter. At the same time because the Cold War and the nuclear stalemate between the two superpowers influenced politics everywhere, it also constrained the impact of nationalism on international relations and channelled it in specific directions. In this chapter we will review the following topics: the nature of international society the post-Second World War context nationalism in international organisations economic nationalism irredentist and secessionist challenges to international order. Since the basic text for this section, Nationalism and International Society, is written by the author of this subject guide, it is particularly important that you compare the argument with that contained in alternative readings unfortunately there is as yet no competing single book on the subject and also check it against your own understanding of the influence of nationalism on the foreign policy of your own country and/or region.

International society
It is possible, although difficult, to give an account of world politics purely in terms of power politics in which the map of the world is simply the outcome of battles, real or threatened. On this view the role of nationalism, or indeed of any other ideology, is marginal. What makes such accounts implausible is their extreme behaviourism: they eliminate altogether the influence of ideas, beliefs and passions on politics: that is, precisely what most people believe politics are all about. It is true that the political map of the

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world has been drawn by soldiers and diplomats, but the competition and conflicts in which they engage are never conducted in an ideological vacuum: nor can international cooperation be readily understood in traditional realist terms. Indeed, war itself can only be distinguished from random violence if it is acknowledged that, even in the most ferocious conflict, certain values and rules of combat are shared by the belligerents. In the past two centuries, attempts have been made to codify many of these rules in legal form. The laws of war may be breached as often as they are observed, but this does not alter the fact that the framework of international law provides compelling evidence for the existence of an international society of states. Moreover, when we consider the nearly fivefold expansion in the number of independent states since 1945, it is clear that the inclusion of the principle of self-determination of all peoples in the UN Charter (that is the central nationalist claim of one people, one state) has had a decisive impact on the context of international relations. To understand the impact of nationalism, therefore, we must also have an understanding of the nature of international society. There are two aspects of international society which are crucial to this understanding. In the first instance, it is a society of sovereign states rather than of peoples. Admittedly, since 1945, and particularly since 1989, there have been attempts to qualify the legal protection that sovereignty affords to the governments of all independent states, in the name of individual human rights and to avert humanitarian disaster: but as we shall see in Chapter 5 these efforts have not progressed very far. Todays global international society is the result of the expansion of the European international society which developed gradually between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the absorption of enormously varied cultures from all over the world, and of countries with their own ancient traditions of statecraft, both the legal norms and institutional structure of international society are western in origin.

Learning activity If you would like to pursue this topic in greater detail, the most succinct description of international society itself is contained in Martin Wights classic study, Power Politics (Chapter 10) but you should supplement this by reading Hedley Bull's enormously influential The Anarchical Society (1977). The expansion of international society is discussed in a book with that title, edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (1984). Parts II and III in particular are useful in assessing the impart of the non-European world on the contemporary international order. When you have consulted these texts, ask yourself whether nationalism in your part of the world, and the increasing cultural diversity in international society, have strengthened or weakened the prospects of international co-operation. Evidence can be adduced for either of these propositions. What seems certain is that they have made it much more complex than in the earlier European state system.

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The post-war context

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War there was an optimistic assumption that the wartime alliance, particularly between the United States and the Soviet Union, would survive into the peace and provide the basis for a stable world order. While this optimism lasted, the two superpowers, acting from completely different motives. supported the claims and ambitions of anticolonial nationalists. For practical reasons at this stage the USSR had very restricted access to the British and French colonies the major pressure was provided by the United States which had been trying to persuade the British to commit themselves to imperial withdrawal from the time they entered the war on the allied side and in the case of India, even before. Later, after the onset of the Cold War, the United States relaxed its opposition to the retention of colonies wherever they needed bases, as for example in North Africa, while the Soviet Union attempted, rather belatedly, to present itself as the natural ally of the anti-colonial countries, despite the fact that most of them had declared themselves to be non-aligned. The end of the war strengthened the forces of nationalism beyond Europe, but had the opposite effect within the continent itself. This was partly because nationalism was generally equated with fascism and Nazism, which had just been defeated, and partly because the division of Europe not only divided Germany into two but left the eastern half of the continent effectively under Soviet (and in the case of Yugoslavia, local communist) domination. The iron curtain between east and west sealed off that part of Europe whose nationalist conflicts had proved most intractable between the two world wars. While east European nationalisms were suppressed rather than extinguished under communist rule, one paradoxical consequence of the Cold War was to bequeath to Europe the most stable international borders the continent had known since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Because the front line of the Cold War ran through the centre of Europe symbolically through the divided city of Berlin no one could afford to fan the flames of nationalist conflict. The stakes were simply too high. The major influence of nationalism on world politics during this period was not, therefore, on the strategic competition of the great powers, but on international organisations and more generally on the issue of north/south relations.

Nationalism and international organisations

Under this heading you will need to consider two broad issues: the impact of nationalism on the membership of international society, and the use made by nationalist governments of international organisations. The first of these issues revolves around the interpretation of the principle of self-determination in the UN Charter. The second concerns the attempts by Third World states, supported by the Soviet Union for propaganda reasons, to reform the international order to support their interests rather than those of the major powers.

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The self-determination of peoples

You will remember that the principle of self-determination of peoples was written into the UN Charter8. Its inclusion, theoretically as an inalienable right, placed a time-bomb beneath the old European-dominated structure of the state system. As Alfred Cobban (1969) wrote:
as an agency of destruction the theory of nationalism proved one of the most potent that even modern society has known.
8.

See Chapter 2 National self-

determination on page 17 of this subject guide

Learning activity If you have not already done so, now would be a good time to read the articles by Kohn and Yack. Cobbans book, which was originally published in 1945, and revised in the 1960s to take account of Asian and African decolonisation, is still the best account of the impact of the principle on the international system. If you can get hold of a copy many university libraries are likely to have it you should read it in its entirety, particularly as it is extremely well-written and quite short. Failing that, the extract in the Oxford Reader Nationalism (pp.24550) will convey the essence of his argument.

The problem with self-determination as a political right is deciding who is to exercise it. Nationalists, of course, do not concede that this is a problem at least they do not concede it so long as they themselves remain without a state. Once they have achieved state power they are very seldom prepared to countenance further division of their territory to allow the self-determination of groups which feel trapped by the new political dispensation and claim that they have had a fundamental right denied them. You will need to consider the implications of this trapped minority problem when you come to the final section of this chapter on secession and irredentism. Here the point to grasp is that there are no objectively agreed criteria to decide which groups can legitimately claim to be nations or peoples and therefore be entitled to a state and which cannot. The United Nations resolved this matter pragmatically by confining the principle of self-determination to decolonisation by the west European imperial powers. There was one exception to this solution: under an elaboration of the principle which Ali Mazrui (1967) once dubbed pigmentational self-determination, majority rule in South Africa was also included. In no other case was the United Nations prepared to include a post-independence test of opinion to decide the legitimacy of the state, and in no case at all was the principle held to include a right of secession. What this meant was that at the international level considerations of order took priority over those of justice, wherever the two were in conflict. It also meant that nationalist governments were able to monopolise and manipulate the symbols of national identity to promote their own, primarily economic, objectives. Before going on to examine the use that Third World nationalists made of international organisations, you should try and make up your own mind on the reasonableness, or otherwise, of the UNs interpretation of the self-determination principle. We can all think

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of stateless groups, such as the Kurds, who have suffered as a result of the way it has operated. But does that mean that there is an alternative, and more satisfactory, way of settling the matter? Ernest Gellner (1983) pointed out that on a conservative estimate there are 8,000 natural languages, and therefore potentially the same number of national cultures that might claim a state for themselves. It is difficult to believe that fragmentation on this scale would not fatally undermine international security.

Learning activity One critic of the conventional interpretation is Harry Beran whose article is cited above. Beran has advanced an alternative proposal for settling the issue of new state creation according to the principle of self-determination. He employs the concept of reiterated plebiscites under which the group to be polled would be allowed to define itself provided it granted the same right to dissatisfied minorities within its own territory. Under such a system the number of states would be likely to increase above the current figure, which is just short of 200, but prudential considerations, he believes, would prevent any widespread and anarchical fragmentation. It is certainly an ingenious idea, but would it work? If you live in a multi-ethnic country, consider what would be the likely implications of following Berans proposal, and the arguments that might be advanced against doing so.

The Third World revolt against the West

Many nationalists in different parts of the world have seen themselves as internationalists indeed it is the civic/liberal interpretation of the term9 on which the United Nations Charter is based. Nevertheless there is a tension between the national idea and that of international co-operation. It arises because, where national sovereignty is accepted as the primary political value, the national interest is likely to take priority over any international interests whenever there is a conflict between the two. Cooperation has accordingly generally depended on the existence of a strong perceived common interest or on the existence of a common enemy. Most ex-colonies at independence found themselves vested with formal or juridical sovereignty, but still dependent on the western industrial states which continued to dominate world politics and the international economy. The distinction between juridical and empirical sovereignty was developed by Jackson (1990). His book is not about nationalism, but examines developments within international society, for which nationalism was largely responsible, and for that reason alone will certainly repay study, if you have time available.
9.

See Chapter 1 'Rival definitions of the

nation' on page 8 of this subject guide.

Learning activity Except where there were deep-seated local animosities (e.g. as between India and Pakistan or Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1960s), the ex-colonial states found no difficulty in forging a loose diplomatic alliance of their own the nonaligned movement and in co-operating at the United Nations to make demands of the west.

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It is not cynical to suggest that, in many cases, membership of international organisations provided the government and new states the opportunity to continue the anti-colonialist nationalist struggle by other means. There are several accounts of this process. Among the best is Rupert Emersons From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self Assertion of Asian and African Peoples. The argument presented here is summarised in the two articles by Emerson cited above.

Throughout the Cold War period there were two main areas of inter-nationalist co-operation among Asian, African, Caribbean, Latin American and Oceanic countries the approximately 120 states that after the period of decolonisation came to be known as the Third World. The first was in applying pressure on Britain and France at the United Nations for further and more rapid decolonisation. All excolonies had an obvious interest in delegitimising the concept of empire as a way of justifying and securing their own independence. They achieved this objective in 1960 with the passage of General Assembly Resolution 1514 which ruled, among other things, that lack of preparation for self-government should not be used as a reason for delaying independence. Not surprisingly, the resolution was not supported by the colonial powers but, within a few years, they had given up any intention of maintaining their overseas possessions by force. The second area of co-operation was in pressing the industrial west to introduce reforms to the international economy. We shall consider the substance of these demands in the next section of this chapter. Here you should note that the democratic structure of the UN in the General Assembly every state regardless of size or wealth has a single vote allowed the anti-colonial nationalist alliance to use its numerical majority in the Assembly to pass resolutions which successfully put the western powers on the defensive. The fact that, wherever supporting Third World positions was cost-free, anti-colonial states could count on Soviet support, meant that the western powers could not simply ignore their demands. The main Third World achievements in this area were the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 and the orchestrated campaign for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s.

Economic nationalism
In Chapter 3 we saw that one reason why nationalists have been drawn towards liberalism or socialism is that nationalist ideology itself cannot easily generate substantive social or economic policies. What then are we to understand by the concept of economic nationalism? During the Cold War it was variously regarded as anathema, a contributory cause of the rise of fascism and the drift to war (the western democracies), a precondition of development (most Third World countries) and as a necessary defence against capitalist exploitation (the socialist block). In a straightforward sense economic nationalism merely refers to those policies which are adopted to defend the nation and further its interests. These can range from the expropriation of assets and requisitioning of property, through various ways of limiting imports and promoting exports (e.g. tariffs, quotas and subsidies) to policies to prohibit or control the flow of foreign direct investment. On closer inspection,

10.

Jacob Viner (19 48) provides an excellent

analysis of the pre-history of economic nationalism and its continuing relevance, which you should read if you have access to it

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however, it becomes clear that, while the objective of economic nationalism is the welfare of the nation, the methods adopted for bringing this about are inherited from the pre-nationalist era (mercantilism) or are derivatives of liberal or socialist theory10. Chapters 5 and 6 of Nationalism and International Society discuss the context in which after 1945 the western democracies attempted to render the destructive potential of economic nationalism innocuous largely by establishing a framework of institutions and international trading rules and the various hostages to fortune that were taken in this process. Most of these were the result of earlier accommodations between liberal and nationalist thought. The two that have had the most lasting consequences for international relations concern the right of governments to protect their infant industries and their duty to promote full employment. The idea of infant industry protection had been advanced by Alexander Hamilton in the United States and Frederick List in Germany, both of whom were concerned to buy time in which to catch up with Britain which as the first and strongest industrial country advocated the opening of markets through free trade. Later, the idea was widely accepted by liberal economists. Lists book, published in 1840, is still the clearest account of liberal political economy deliberately adjusted to nationalist ends. For obvious reasons it has never been popular in Britain or the United States, the two successive hegemonic states of the liberal international economy, but for that reason alone it will still repay study. Lists economic nationalism also fits closely with the policies pursued in Japan and more recently in other East Asian countries since 1945. Maynard Keynes is generally remembered as the intellectual architect of the Bretton Woods institutions, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) rather than as the economic thinker who insisted that the state break with liberal economic orthodoxy in order to promote full employment. His short article, National Selfsufficiency (1933) (available online at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/keynes.htm) was written at height of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although he later abandoned his opposition to the international division of labour, this was only because he believed that in the post-war world, employment could be protected through a reformed internationalism. Like the idea of infant industry protection which was even permitted under the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), the idea of self-sufficiency or self-reliance became deeply influential in the Third World, many of whose nationalist leaders perceived themselves to have achieved the formal trappings of independence only.

Activity The ideas of infant industry protection and self-sufficiency are currently out of favour, but that does not mean that they may not be revived in some shape or form. If you have not already done so, now would be a good time to read the articles by Moffat, James and Spechler. Think of your own part of the world: would you be prepared to see the government withdraw from the market completely, regardless of the consequences for security, employment, or the

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structure of national industry. If the answer is no, then you should consider what criteria you would adopt in deciding on the level and scope of national protection. For most of the Cold War period, the majority of governments, both north and south, pursued a range of nationalist and protectionist policies. In the south, the need for economic nationalist policies to promote development was generally taken as axiomatic, particularly as in many countries the local private sector barely existed and therefore did not have the capacity to act as an engine of growth. The alternative was to rely solely on foreign investment mostly from giant transnational corporations which were regarded with deep suspicion by many nationalist leaders. At the same time, partly as a result of the perceived success of the Soviet Union in achieving rapid industrialisation by non-capitalist means, the idea of central planning enjoyed high prestige for most of the period. As A.H. Hansen (1968) wrote of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, many nationalist leaders:
dreamed of combining economic mobilisation with political conciliation, a Soviet economy with a western polity.

From the perspective of the 1990s, when the majority of governments are busy rolling back the state or pursuing structural adjustment policies, such ideas may seem very remote. But it is important to remember that for more than 40 years they were a central feature of the nationalist agenda. Although the subject has been dominated by economists, the two studies by Peter Burnell and Dudley Seers in the reading list provide sympathetic analyses of Third World development dilemmas from the nationalist perspective.

Secession and irredentism

Economic nationalism is by definition a governmental or official form of nationalism: it was, therefore, fully consistent with an international system in which the principle of self-determination had been pragmatically defined as decolonisation11. But for those groups which had not been separately colonised, or which had lost out in the post-independence struggle to control the new state, or for those existing national states which still had outstanding territorial claims, the way in which nationalism was accommodated in international society was not so satisfactory. Despite the resentments it aroused, between 1945 and 1991 this accommodation survived most of the tests with which it was confronted: indeed, only the forced secession of Bangladesh in 1971 and the peaceful secession of Singapore from the Malaysian Federation in 1963, broke the pattern. The truth was that the selfinterest of all existing states in the territorial status quo and most particularly of the new ones was powerfully reinforced by the Cold War stalemate. This successfully buttressed the political dispensation in Europe against revisions on both sides of the ideological divide, although territorial stability did not imply universal consent to the conventional interpretation of national self-determination as became clear after the collapse of communist rule. The Cold War calm was broken by periodic civil wars in Asia and Africa and many more low level secessionist or irredentist

11.

See The self-determination of peoples

on page 39 of this subject guide.

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