Omgz, Its Like The New Huntington

Oh snaps! Its been a long time, I shouldn't have left you...without some boring posts to not read. I think that's how the song goes, right?

My brain went on a little vacation from blogging, but now its back, much due in part this new article from Foreign Affairs magazine on ethnic nationalism.

Basically this guy is talking about the view of the world that says ethnic groups get their own country, and how this was more widely accepted in the West in the 19th century as nationalisms started sprouting up, but a lot more trouble in areas of the world where the idea of nation state isn't nearly as old.

In short, ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased urbanization, literacy, and political mobilization; differences in the fertility rates and economic performance of various ethnic groups; and immigration will challenge the internal structure of states as well as their borders. Whether politically correct or not, ethnonationalism will continue to shape the world in the twenty-first century.

And yay of all yays, he mentions my view of Israel-Palestine as an example.

This story is widely believed by educated Europeans and even more so, perhaps, by educated Americans. Recently, for example, in the course of arguing that Israel ought to give up its claim to be a Jewish state and dissolve itself into some sort of binational entity with the Palestinians, the prominent historian Tony Judt informed the readers of The New York Review of Books that "the problem with Israel ... [is that] it has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a 'Jewish state' ... is an anachronism."

Unfortunately, this guy is suggesting the best way to deal with ethnonationalist conflict is to go ahead with the partitioning, keep groups that hate each other away from each other. I say that's unfortunate, because I don't think it fixes anything. It may reduce casualties on both sides of a conflict, but a certain structural violence is still inherent. Negative peace, meaning the simple absence of violence, is not a sustainable peace. If you keep pink people and green people seperate from each other, you're reinforcing the idea that they are seperate, that there is enough of a difference between them that they cannot live together. There is such a thing as a pluralistic society, and that should be the goal, as it is the most beneficial for all involved.

More will come on this topic I think, because the article itself is 8 pages long, and that's a lot of information to take in on such an intense topic. But anyways, this sounds like its the kind of thing that'll make as big a splash as Samuel Huntington's (or Sam H-Dizzle as we call him in the academic circles) Clash of Civilizations. Let's just hope an administration doesn't pick up and run with it like its a giant pair of safety scissors.