Nationalism thesis

Thesis Two: A nation is a community, united by sentiments of loyalty and mutual concern, that shares a cultural heritage and belief in a common destiny. Some nations additionally invoke common descent, which in nearly all cases is mythical, as it was when John Jay posited it for the nascent United States in Federalist 2.

The construction of international institutions and norms—in economics, politics, and human rights—as antidotes to nationalist excesses dominated Western diplomacy for decades after 1945, and the global struggle between liberal democracy and communism muted the expression of nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

“Nationalism rightly understood means that no nation is an island, and that in the long run the wellbeing of one’s nation cannot be decoupled from the fate of others.” The growth of nationalism as a political phenomenon encouraged the emergence of nationalist theoreticians and ideologues.

Thesis Five: Nationalism poses a challenge to the modern state system. The familiar term “nation-state” implicitly assumes that the geographical locations of distinct nations coincide with state boundaries. Occasionally this is true (Japan comes close), but mostly it isn’t.