Why does globalisation strengthen nationalism?
opinion August 10, 2018 01:00
By Park Sang-seek
The Korea Herald
Asia News Network
10,049 Viewed
When globalistion began to accelerate in the 1990s, globalists rejoiced and predicted that globalism would eventually weaken nationalism, and international organistions, particularly the UN, would become more powerful. However, such optimism has turned out to be a naive dream.
Nation organistions are their clubs.
Immediately after World War II, global leaders and scholars believed that nation-states would become gradually subordinate to international organisations, globalisation takes place in all fields of human life – political, economic, social, cultural, knowledge and information – and forces nation-states to promote mutual exchanges, cultural homogenisation, all kinds of international organisations, globalisation can bring about. This is the reason why most peoples in the non-West are willing to preserve the primordial ties rather than to gain economic and other benefits of globalisation at the sacrifice of ethnic unity.
Globalisation civilisations in the cultural, knowledge and information fields are now going through a period of conflict and accommodation. In this period of globalisation, conflicts between the West and the non-West on the global, regional and national levels are inevitable.
Globalisation of economic, social and cultural life actually means the westernisationisation, have succeeded in achieving political stability and economic prosperity.
In Africa and the Middle East, religious and ethnic ties are so strong that any aspects of globalisation that they consider harmful to these primordial ties are rejected strongly. They consider the West as the prime mover of globalisation because the West uses globalisation as the weapon for global domination. The non-West uses nationalism as a counter weapon against globalisation.
The stronger the forces of globalisationisation and globalisation. Big ethnic and religious groups have mostly succeeded in establishing an independent state but small ones can hardly succeed.
The result is not what globalists have predicted: globalisation weakens nationalism.
On the contrary, the result is what nationalists have predicted: globalisation strengthens nationalism. Nationalism taking various forms of independence movements – separatism, irredentism, pan-nationalism and Zionism – is reasserting itself in the midst of globalisation.
It is ironical that in the midst of globalisation, nationalism becomes stronger. As long as humans completely abandon their primordial instinct, the nation-state will remain the basic unit in international relations and nationalism will prevail over internationalism regardless of how strong globalisation becomes. Humanity has to live with nationalism for a long time and war will remain a way of life in the nation-state system.
Park Sang-seek is a former chancellor of the National Diplomatic Academy, Korean Foreign Ministry.