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But it is a mistake to think of nationalism as an inherently regressive or destructive political force. In fact, nationalism was the engine that established modern political liberty, and it has been a spur to diversity among nations. It has been embraced by both liberals and conservatives, including revered figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, David Ben-Gurion and Mahatma Gandhi, Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher.

What did all of these leaders see in nationalism that made it so attractive? And if nationalism is, in many respects, genuinely attractive, what can be said about the powerful considerations that are cited against it?

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Orwell praises patriotism, which he sees as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.” As it happens, this description of patriotism is exactly how most self-identified nationalists describe their own views. When read in context, Orwell’s famous critique of nationalism turns out to be sympathetic to a moderate nationalism.

A more compelling anti-nationalist position was proposed by Elie Kedourie in his 1960 book “Nationalism,” which founded an entire academic movement devoted to analyzing the shortcomings of nationalism. Kedourie, an Iraqi-Jewish scholar who admired the Ottoman and British empires, understood that nationalism is not a mental state. It is a political theory that suggests the world is governed best when it is divided into diverse nations, each having independence and self-government.

Kedourie argued that, though this theory had come to seem self-evident, its actual consequences were “disastrous.” National populations are too mixed to permit agreed-upon borders, and the resulting disputes between nations invariably lead to tension and mutual hatred. Nationalism is “a chain reaction, a vicious circle,” Kedourie wrote, observing that minorities on the wrong side of an international border become “a foreign body in the state” and are persecuted by the majority as it strives either to assimilate or expel them.

Perhaps most important, Kedourie believed that nationalist agitation over borders had precipitated the devastating conflicts of the 20th century. World War I was started by Serbian nationalism, while Hitler’s demand to annex the German populations of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland “occasioned the outbreak” of World War II.

But the historical record is far more complex than Kedourie allows. World War I began as an Austrian response to Serbian nationalist violence, but it became a vast conflagration due to the conflicting global aspirations of the British, French and German empires. As for World War II, Hitler did not, after all, attack France, Britain and Russia in order to unite the world’s German-speakers. As he wrote in “Mein Kampf,” his aim was to make Germany “mistress of the globe” and “lord of the earth.” This aspiration was not so different from those of the imperial states that Kedourie applauded.

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Consider the Western tradition of limited government, individual liberty and open elections. Historically, free institutions appeared and persisted in national states such as England, the Netherlands and Scotland—countries built upon a dominant national language and religion, as well as a history of setting aside internal differences to fight common enemies. In “Considerations on Representative Government” (1861), John Stuart Mill argued that it is no accident that free institutions exist in such countries. As he wrote, “It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of government should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.”

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This argument is based on an empirical observation. Limitations on executive authority, achieved by means of competing branches of government and protections for individual rights, have taken root only where a high degree of mutual loyalty and trust exists between rulers and ruled. Similarly, rival tribes will agree to sharing power through democratic institutions only when a powerful “fellow-feeling” or “cohesion” (to use Mill’s terms) has been previously established.

Such political cohesion is rare in arbitrarily assembled human populations. But it can be found in certain human collectives—particularly in families, tribes and nations that share a distinctive cultural inheritance and a history of joint action in the face of adversity. The national state leverages these bonds of mutual loyalty to get individuals to obey the laws, serve in the military and pay taxes, even when their own party or tribe is out of power and the government’s policies are not to their liking.

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The United States, with its history of religious and racial diversity, may seem to be an exception, defying the demands of national cohesion. But that isn’t so. The original American states shared the English language, Protestant religion and British legal traditions, and they had fought together in wartime.

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National cohesion is the secret ingredient that allows free institutions to exist, the bedrock on which a functioning democracy is built. No wonder, then, that no multinational empire has ever been ruled as a democracy. Lacking mutual loyalty, its respective nationalities see one another only as a threat. That was the case in multinational states such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Syria and Iraq. In the long run, nothing holds such states together but coercion. In such cases, lifting the oppression of the state doesn’t bring freedom, only dissolution and civil war.


Of course, this doesn’t mean that every national state will have free institutions and protect individual liberties. But even national states far removed from the West—such as India, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—have succeeded in imitating the English and American precedents. We are still waiting to see a multinational regime that is able to maintain genuine democracy over time.

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In certain respects, today’s demands for the imposition of universal standards of speech and belief are a reversion to a pre-Westphalian view of the world. Like universalists of the old school—whether Christian, Muslim or Marxist—the new liberal universalists tend to reject the constitutional, religious and cultural diversity of independent nations. As they see it, the way of life they propose—the downplaying of national distinctions, the unrestricted movement of peoples and goods, the elevation of individual judgment over tradition in all areas of life—will provide what everyone needs. Not surprisingly, the correlate of this rejection of diversity among nations is often a disdain for diversity of viewpoints at home, in one’s own country.

Nationalism has its vices and its extreme expressions. Every nationalist movement contains haters and bigots (though not necessarily more of them than are found in universalist political and religious movements). But nationalism’s vices are outweighed by its considerable virtues. A world in which independent nations are permitted to compete freely with one another is a world in which diverse ways of life can flourish, each an experiment in how human beings should live. We have good reason to believe that such a world holds out the best prospects for freedom, for innovation and advancement, and for tolerance.