Nationalism Lecture 13: Beyond nationalism? Pan-Nationalism and - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Nationalism

Lecture 13: Beyond nationalism?

Pan-Nationalism and Fundamentalism

• Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) Seilergraben 49, Room G.2 lcederman@ethz.ch http://www.icr.ethz.ch/teaching/nationalism Assistant: Kimberly Sims, CIS, Room E 3, k-sims@northwestern.edu

Outline

• Pan-nationalism
• Historical examples
• Civilizations
• Implications for the “war on terrorism”

Pan-Nationalism

• Pan-nationalism aggregates many related

ethnic identities into one over-arching macro- identity with the aim of promoting interstate cooperation or political unification

• Does not always imply unification
• Main basis is a cultural political project
• Builds on or opposes lower-level nationalism
• Expansionist temptations

Pan-nationalism

Common state? Common nation? No Yes No Yes Phase I: Nation- formation Division or unification? Phase II: Pan-Nationalist foreign-policy coordination

Historical examples

• Pan-Europeanism
• Pan-Slavism
• Pan-Germanism
• Pan-Turkism
• Pan-Africanism
• Pan-Arabism

Pan-Africanism (see Breuilly)

• Started in British West Africa by a

tiny minority

• “Golden age” in 1950s
• Leader Nkrumah (Ghana)
• 1963 Organization of African Unity
• Support for unification fizzles, in

spite of a strong ideological program

Kwame Nkruhmah

Pan-Arabism

(see Barnett, Breuilly)

• Historical origins: Christians in

Lebanon, anti-Ottoman opposition

• More powerful than other pan-

nationalist movements

– Cultural cohesion? Language and religion? – Anti-imperialism – Anti-Zionism – Leadership: Nasser

The Arab League, founded in 1944 Gamal Abd al-Nasser

Pan-Arabism (continued)

• United Arab Republic in 1958 but

collapses in 1961

• Divisions between Egypt and Saudi

Arabia

• Military failure and partial peace with

Israel => Sadat returns to Egyptian nationalism

• First Gulf War leads to more division
• Failure of pan-Arabism opens the

door for Islamism

Anwar As-Sadat (1918-1981)

Huntington’s civilizations

• A civilization is “the highest

cultural grouping of people”

• Combination of objective

elements and self-definition; religion crucial!

• According to Huntington, there

are 7 or 8 major civilizations:

– Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin-American, and possibly African

Samuel Huntington

Huntington’s civilizational map

Huntington cont’d

• Civilizational differences engender conflict

– Differences are “real” and “basic” – Local identities threatened – West at the peak of its power – Entropy of cultural traits

• Consequences:

– Fault lines – Civilizational rallying – The West against the Rest – Torn countries

Critique

• Definitions:

– inconsistent traits: role of religion? internal differences... – self-definition? African civilization? – ignores exchanges

• Role of states
• Overly pessimistic about conflict
• Self-fulfilling prophecy

Islamist Fundamentalism

• Islamist fundamentalism seeks to

recapture and apply the fundamentals of Islam in the contemporary world (Barth)

• Political agenda: not in terms of

states but

– spiritual community: “ummah” – reaction to secular Arab regimes – reaction to Israel and the West – violence: “Jihad”

Fredrik Barth

Defining terrorism

• Terrorism is the “deliberate creation and

exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change” (Bruce Hoffmann, Inside Terrorism)

• Psychological phenomenon
• “Political change” can be, but does not have

to be, about nationalism

• Asymmetric conflict: “weapon of the weak”

Three waves of terrorism in the Middle East

• Religion dominant until 19th century
• Wave 1: Post-colonial liberation:

– Irgun and Stern Gang fight both Arabs and British – Model for post-colonial movements

• Wave 2: Internationalization:

– PLO – Model for terrorist movements

• Wave 3: New religious terrorism:

– Iranian Revolution in 1979 – Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda

Menachem Begin (1913-1992) Yasser Arafat (1929-2004)

Implications for the war on terrorism

• Need to attack root causes
• State-led terror also major

problem

• Danger of clash of

civilizations

– risk of anti-Western mobilization – resist vilification of Islam – against fundamentalism at home and abroad – problems of nation-building