Nation vs. Religion vs. State

IN 1964, POLITICAL SCIENTIST Ernst B. Haas wrote Beyond the Nation-State, contending that the nation-state system was dysfunctional and should be replaced. Just on the back end of the European colonialist system, Haas was proposing movement to a means of governance that would merge human societies and eliminate the competitive elements of rule that lead to conflict.

There has been little but retrogression since. The hopeful thinking of Beyond the Nation-State was composed on the eve of the Vietnam conflict and the most threatening days of the Cold War. The demise of the Soviet Union 25 years later only exacerbated the division of human society into more numerous, absolutist, and competitive pieces of political terrain, ensuring more opportunities for conflict and, indeed, more conflict. Today, the promise is for a mirrored shadow of Haas' prospective political order. In Turkey, Sudan, Russia, Lebanon, Iraq, and many other hot spots, devolution of the governance systems is underway.

We understand what is going on about us by dealing with it linguistically. Phenomena do not exist until we give them names. Political entities--which exist to establish and maintain harmony within the group and to protect it against outsiders, among other purposes--have had various names in every language over time. These entities have been the family, tribes, nations, religions, states, and, potentially, regional and global organizations. They are the sources of rifles and laws and are the a basis of enforcement.

However, political science has been remiss in keeping up with the terminology and its meanings; the language we use in political discourse is out of date and misleading. If it were not, we would better understand the directional shift away from the unity of purpose and organization that Haas sought toward the chaos that political philosopher Thomas Hobbes feared.

To get a grip on our fate, we need to address something of this vocabulary and the associated human history. In prehistoric times, the blood-related family was the unit of organization. Tribes arose out of the need of families to derive mates from different bloodlines and to do so without stealing them. Nations grew from economic necessity when tribes required control and guidance in commercial transactions across tribal domains and functions. Think of it in terms of the Iroquois Nation in New York and Ontario. They are one people, homogenous in ethnicity, culture, and language, and still rule unto themselves. Customs, enforced by the members of the society, amount to laws.

Where human enforcement of customs falls to hold, religions intervene. Powerful deities as enforcers came into being three millennia ago when nations grew too large for simple human controls. Gods entered the political scene, with shaman and priest-conveyed roles and threats about how eternity would be spent. Nations had no bounds. They grew or contracted as control of land was gained or lost.

The nation-state originally was a European entity where a nation defined the territory it held with borders to establish what was in and what was out. The merged nation-state was born. Its ideal form is one culture, language, religion, government, and border with territorial definition. With lesser armies, the religious entities (the Church, in Europe) were pushed to the side. The state is an abstract entity of rule. It is a civil and secular government--a class of technocrats directing a civil administration to replace hereditary and "royal" leadership. Multiple nationalities can fall under its domain--when they are willing.

Nineteenth-century European colonialism attempted to export the nation-state to the rest of the world as war-drawn borders encircled multiple ethnicities and cultures. The French creatively drew borders with Cambodians (Khmer) on the Vietnamese side and Vietnamese on the Cambodian side of artificial lines. The British created Iraq as an administrative tool. Cameroon was a compromise between the British and the French as they were forced out of their colonial roles.

Iraq is the prime example of the forces of nation, religion, and the secular state at work in competition with one another. Saddam Hussein forced an Iraqi identity on three quarters of the population with a secular umbrella and a unified economy. His removal has unleashed the forces of tribe, clan, nation, and religion. Iraq has taken a step back into the 19th century.

Turkey fights its own internal demons, driven forward by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's vision of a secular state but backward by the rise of political Islam. Religious and state-directed segments of the Turkish population are contending for political power, while nationalist Kurds seek a breakaway state of Kurdistan.

While the U.S. clearly falls into the secular state category, regressive forces are at work here, too. They are reflected in anti-immigration initiatives, the English-only drive, and increased efforts to include religion in schools and the judiciary system. Moreover, the Bush Administration's movement toward unilateral and nonconsultative action in the global arena is far from the world envisioned by Haas 40-plus years ago.