02 Foreign Affairs March April PDF

FUKUYAMA & HIS CRITICS ON IDENTITY POLITICS
MARCH/APRIL 2019
The New
MARCH/APRIL 2019 • VOLUME 98 • NUMBER 2 •
Nationalism
THE NEW NATIONALISM
F O R E I G N A F F A I R S .C O M
Volume 98, Number 2
THE NEW NATIONALISM

A New Americanism 10
Why a Nation Needs a National Story
Jill Lepore
The Importance of Elsewhere 20

In Defense of Cosmopolitanism
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Why Nationalism Works 27

And Why It Isn’t Going Away
Andreas Wimmer
False Flags 35
The Myth of the Nationalist Resurgence
C OV E R: P H O T O I L L U ST R AT I O N BY T H E VO O R H ES
Jan-Werner Müller
This Is Your Brain on Nationalism 42

The Biology of Us and Them
Robert Sapolsky
Building a Better Nationalism 48

The Nation’s Place in a Globalized World
Yael Tamir
March/April 2019
The Broken Bargain 54
How Nationalism Came Back
Jack Snyder
Blood for Soil 61

The Fatal Temptations of Ethnic Politics
Lars-Erik Cederman
ESSAYS
The Future of the Liberal Order Is Conservative 70
A Strategy to Save the System
Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth
Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits? 82

How Washington Should End Its Debt Obsession
Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers
No Country for Strongmen 96

How India’s Democracy Constrains Modi
Ruchir Sharma
The Kurdish Awakening 107

Unity, Betrayal, and the Future of the Middle East
Henri J. Barkey
The New Containment 123

Handling Russia, China, and Iran
Michael Mandelbaum
ON FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM
Arthur Goldhammer Emily Gogolak on Peter Harrell on how
on Macron and the Trump’s chaotic to ramp up pressure
“yellow vest” protests. border policy. on Russia’s economy.
March/April 2019
Educate to Liberate 132
Open Societies Need Open Minds
Carla Norrlof
Less Than Zero 142

Can Carbon-Removal Technologies Curb Climate Change?
Fred Krupp, Nathaniel Keohane, and Eric Pooley
REVIEWS & RESPONSES

The Original Hidden Figures 154
The Women Scientists Who Won the Great War
Elaine Weiss
E Pluribus Unum? 160

The Fight Over Identity Politics
Stacey Y. Abrams; John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck;
Jennifer A. Richeson; Francis Fukuyama
Recent Books 171
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March/April 2019
March/April 2019 · Volume 98, Number 2
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CONTRIBUTORS
JILL LEPORE ’s prolific and pathbreaking work has made
her one of the United States’ most prominent scholar-
intellectuals. A professor of history at Harvard University,
Lepore is the author of 12 books, including, most recently,
These Truths, a history of the United States from the
fifteenth century to the present. In “A New Americanism”
(page 10), she argues that historians’ failure to tell a
common American national story has ceded the field to
charlatans offering their own twisted versions—and allowed
a dangerous strain of American nationalism to take hold.
Born to a British mother and a Ghanaian father, KWAME

ANTHONY APPIAH grew up traveling between his two
homelands, an experience that shaped his wide-ranging
scholarship and writing on everything from ethnicity
and identity to ethics and language. He is the author of
numerous books, including Cosmopolitanism and The Lies
That Bind, and has won scores of prizes, among them the
National Humanities Medal. Now a professor of philoso-
phy and law at New York University, Appiah, in “The
Importance of Elsewhere” (page 20), makes the case for
cosmopolitanism.
After he graduated from Harvard, ROBERT SAPOLSKY

spent over 30 years living on and off in Kenya, observing a
troop of baboons for several months at a time. Now a
professor of biology and neurology at Stanford, Sapolsky
is best known for his work on the long-term effects of
stress hormones on the brains of baboons and humans. In
“This Is Your Brain on Nationalism” (page 42), he asks
whether humans can overcome the neurological, hormonal,
and developmental underpinnings of their tribalism.
HENRI BARKEY is one of the world’s foremost experts on the

Kurds. During the Clinton administration, he worked on
the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department on
issues relating to the Middle East; he went on to serve as
the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson
Center. Now a professor at Lehigh University and an
adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
in “The Kurdish Awakening” (page 107), Barkey argues
that the United States’ actions in the Middle East have
helped promote a new Kurdish nationalism.
THE NEW NATIONALISM
T
he nation-state is so dominant Jan-Werner Müller argues that the
today that it seems natural. But true challenge comes not from national-
no political arrangements are ism per se but from a particular populist
natural, and any concept with a hyphen variant. The best response is to avoid
has a fault line running through it by getting distracted and focus on deliver-
definition. States are sovereign political ing practical results.
structures. Nations are unified social Robert Sapolsky offers a depressing
groups. What does each owe the other? take on nationalism’s cognitive enablers.
The claims of the state are obvious: When it comes to group belonging,
it has a host of practical responsibilities humans don’t seem too far from chim-
and legions of technocrats working to panzees: people are comfortable with
satisfy them. But the claims of the nation the familiar and bristle at the unfamiliar.
are less clear, and they come with ugly Taming our aggressive tendencies re-
echoes. The advocacy of those claims— quires swimming upstream.
nationalism—drove some of the great- Yael Tamir suggests that the main
est crimes in history. And so the concept problem today is a clash between
became taboo in polite society, in hopes nationalism and neoliberal globalism.
that it might become taboo in practice, Nationalists want states to intervene
as well. Yet now it has come back with in the market to defend their citizens;
a vengeance. Here, a dazzling collection their opponents favor freer trade and
of writers explain what’s happening freer movement of people. Jack Snyder
and why. concurs, suggesting that the proper
Jill Lepore opens with a bravura survey response is to allow governments greater
of two and a half centuries of American freedom to manage capitalism. And
national consciousness. Today’s challenge, Lars-Erik Cederman shows that rising
she argues, is not to resist nationalism ethnic nationalism has usually been
but to reappropriate it. followed by violent upheavals, so keep-
Kwame Anthony Appiah tackles the ing things peaceful down the road will
supposed incompatibility of nationalism be difficult.
and cosmopolitanism, which he claims Nationalism’s largely unpredicted
is based on a misunderstanding, since resurgence is sobering. But these essays
cosmopolitans believe in the possibility left me hopeful, because they show a
of multiple nested identities. way out. Underneath all the theory and
Andreas Wimmer notes that distin- history and science, everything boils
guishing good, civic nationalism from down to politics. Leaders and govern-
bad, ethnic nationalism is largely unhelp- ments need to produce real solutions to
ful, since the two share so many assump- real problems. If they don’t, their disaf-
tions. For him as well, the contemporary fected publics will look for answers
battle is not to fight nationalism but to elsewhere. It’s as simple as that.
promote inclusive versions of it. —Gideon Rose, Editor
Nationalism drove
some of the greatest
crimes in history.
Now it’s back with a
vengeance.
A New Americanism This Is Your Brain on Nationalism

P H O T O I L L U ST R AT I O N BY T H E VO O R H ES
Jill Lepore 10 Robert Sapolsky 42
The Importance of Elsewhere Building a Better Nationalism

Kwame Anthony Appiah 20 Yael Tamir 48
Why Nationalism Works The Broken Bargain

Andreas Wimmer 27 Jack Snyder 54
False Flags Blood for Soil

Jan-Werner Müller 35 Lars-Erik Cederman 61
Return to Table of Contents
the nineteenth century, had become, in

A New
THE NEW NATIONALISM
the first half of the twentieth, a monster.

But in the second half, it was nearly
Americanism dead—a stumbling, ghastly wraith, at
least outside postcolonial states. And
historians seemed to believe that if they
Why a Nation Needs a stopped studying it, it would die sooner:
National Story starved, neglected, and abandoned.
Francis Fukuyama is a political
Jill Lepore scientist, not a historian. But his 1989
essay “The End of History?” illustrated
Degler’s point. Fascism and communism
I
n 1986, the Pulitzer Prize–winning, were dead, Fukuyama announced at the
bowtie-wearing Stanford historian end of the Cold War. Nationalism, the
Carl Degler delivered something greatest remaining threat to liberalism,
other than the usual pipe-smoking, had been “defanged” in the West, and in
scotch-on-the-rocks, after-dinner disqui- other parts of the world where it was
sition that had plagued the evening still kicking, well, that wasn’t quite
program of the annual meeting of the nationalism. “The vast majority of the
American Historical Association for world’s nationalist movements do not
nearly all of its centurylong history. have a political program beyond the
Instead, Degler, a gentle and quietly negative desire of independence from
heroic man, accused his colleagues of some other group or people, and do not
nothing short of dereliction of duty: offer anything like a comprehensive
appalled by nationalism, they had agenda for socio-economic organization,”
abandoned the study of the nation. Fukuyama wrote. (Needless to say, he
“We can write history that implic- has since had to walk a lot of this back,
itly denies or ignores the nation-state, writing in his most recent book about
but it would be a history that flew in the “unexpected” populist nationalism
the face of what people who live in a of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Poland’s
nation-state require and demand,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Hungary’s Viktor
Degler said that night in Chicago. He Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
issued a warning: “If we historians fail the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, and
to provide a nationally defined history, the United States’ Donald Trump.)
others less critical and less informed Fukuyama was hardly alone in
will take over the job for us.” pronouncing nationalism all but dead.
The nation-state was in decline, said A lot of other people had, too. That’s
the wise men of the time. The world what worried Degler.
had grown global. Why bother to study Nation-states, when they form,
the nation? Nationalism, an infant in imagine a past. That, at least in part,
accounts for why modern historical
JILL LEPORE is David Woods Kemper ‘41 writing arose with the nation-state. For
Professor of American History at Harvard, a
staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of more than a century, the nation-state
These Truths: A History of the United States. was the central object of historical
10 F O R E I G N A F FA I R S
A New Americanism
Proud to be an American: at a Trump rally in Missoula, Montana, October 2018

inquiry. From George Bancroft in the profession. Most historians started
1830s through, say, Arthur Schlesinger, looking at either smaller or bigger things,
Jr., or Richard Hofstadter, studying investigating the experiences and cultures
American history meant studying the of social groups or taking the broad
American nation. As the historian John vantage promised by global history. This
Higham put it, “From the middle of the turn produced excellent scholarship. But
nineteenth century until the 1960s, the meanwhile, who was doing the work of
nation was the grand subject of Ameri- providing a legible past and a plausible
can history.” Over that same stretch of future—a nation—to the people who
time, the United States experienced a lived in the United States? Charlatans,
civil war, emancipation, reconstruction, stooges, and tyrants. The endurance of
segregation, two world wars, and nationalism proves that there’s never
F R E D. R . C O N R A D / G U A R D I A N / E Y V I / R E D U X
unprecedented immigration—making any shortage of blackguards willing to

the task even more essential. “A history prop up people’s sense of themselves
in common is fundamental to sustaining and their destiny with a tissue of myths
the affiliation that constitutes national and prophecies, prejudices and hatreds,
subjects,” the historian Thomas Bender or to empty out old rubbish bags full of
once observed. “Nations are, among other festering resentments and calls to
things, a collective agreement, partly violence. When historians abandon the
coerced, to affirm a common history as study of the nation, when scholars stop
the basis for a shared future.” trying to write a common history for a
But in the 1970s, studying the nation people, nationalism doesn’t die. Instead,
fell out of favor in the American historical it eats liberalism.
March/April 2019 11
Jill Lepore The CSS Point
Maybe it’s too late to restore a Constitution’s advocates called themselves

common history, too late for historians “Federalists,” when they were in fact
to make a difference. But is there any nationalists, in the sense that they were
option other than to try to craft a new proposing to replace a federal system,
American history—one that could foster under the Articles of Confederation, with
a new Americanism? a national system. When John Jay in-
sisted, in The Federalist Papers, no. 2, “that
THE NATION AND THE STATE Providence has been pleased to give this
The United States is different from one connected country to one united
other nations—every nation is different people—a people descended from the
from every other—and its nationalism same ancestors, speaking the same
is different, too. To review: a nation is a language, professing the same religion,
people with common origins, and a state attached to the same principles of govern-
is a political community governed by ment, very similar in their manners and
laws. A nation-state is a political com- customs,” he was whistling in the dark.
munity governed by laws that unites a It was the lack of these similarities
people with a supposedly common that led Federalists such as Noah Webster
ancestry. When nation-states arose out to attempt to manufacture a national
of city-states and kingdoms and empires, character by urging Americans to adopt
they explained themselves by telling distinctive spelling. “Language, as well as
stories about their origins—stories government should be national,” Webster
meant to suggest that everyone in, say, wrote in 1789. “America should have her
“the French nation” had common ances- own distinct from all the world.” That
tors, when they of course did not. As I got the United States “favor” instead of
wrote in my book These Truths, “Very “favour.” It did not, however, make the
often, histories of nation-states are little United States a nation. And by 1828,
more than myths that hide the seams when Webster published his monumental
that stitch the nation to the state.” American Dictionary of the English Language,
But in the American case, the origins he did not include the word “nationalism,”
of the nation can be found in those seams. which had no meaning or currency in the
When the United States declared its United States in the 1820s. Not until
independence, in 1776, it became a state, the 1840s, when European nations were
but what made it a nation? The fiction swept up in what has been called “the age
that its people shared a common ancestry of nationalities,” did Americans come to
was absurd on its face; they came from all think of themselves as belonging to a
over, and, after having waged a war nation, with a destiny.
against Great Britain, just about the last This course of events is so unusual, in
thing they wanted to celebrate was their the matter of nation building, that the
Britishness. Long after independence, historian David Armitage has suggested
most Americans saw the United States that the United States is something other
not as a nation but, true to the name, as a than a nation-state. “What we mean by
confederation of states. That’s what made nationalism is the desire of nations
arguing for ratification of the Constitu- (however defined) to possess states to
tion an uphill battle; it’s also why the create the peculiar hybrid we call the
A New Americanism
nation-state,” Armitage writes, but “there’s collectivity—was raised as the banner

also a beast we might call the state-nation, of liberalism.”
which arises when the state is formed Liberal nationalism, as an idea, is
before the development of any sense of fundamentally historical. Nineteenth-
national consciousness. The United States century Americans understood the
might be seen as a, perhaps the only, nation-state within the context of an
spectacular example of the latter”—not emerging set of ideas about human
a nation-state but a state-nation. rights: namely, that the power of the
One way to turn a state into a nation is state guaranteed everyone eligible for
to write its history. The first substantial citizenship the same set of irrevocable
history of the American nation, Bancroft’s political rights. The future Massachu-
ten-volume History of the United States, setts senator Charles Sumner offered
From the Discovery of the American Conti- this interpretation in 1849:
nent, was published between 1834 and
Here is the Great Charter of every
1874. Bancroft wasn’t only a historian; he
human being drawing vital breath
was also a politician who served in the upon this soil, whatever may be his
administrations of three U.S. presidents, condition, and whoever may be his par-
including as secretary of war in the age of ents. He may be poor, weak, humble,
American continental expansion. An archi- or black,—he may be of Caucasian,
tect of manifest destiny, Bancroft wrote his Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race,—
history in an attempt to make the United he may be of French, German,
States’ founding appear inevitable, its English, or Irish extraction; but before
growth inexorable, and its history ancient. the Constitution of Massachusetts all
De-emphasizing its British inheritance, he these distinctions disappear. . . . He is
celebrated the United States as a pluralistic a MAN, the equal of all his fellow-men.
and cosmopolitan nation, with ancestors He is one of the children of the State,
all over the world: which, like an impartial parent, regards
all of its offspring with an equal care.
The origin of the language we speak Or as the Prussian-born American politi-
carries us to India; our religion is
from Palestine; of the hymns sung in
cal philosopher Francis Lieber, a great
our churches, some were first heard in influence on Sumner, wrote, “Without a
Italy, some in the deserts of Arabia, national character, states cannot obtain
some on the banks of the Euphrates; that longevity and continuity of political
our arts come from Greece; our society which is necessary for our progress.”
jurisprudence from Rome. Lieber’s most influential essay, “Nation-
alism: A Fragment of Political Science,”
Nineteenth-century nationalism was appeared in 1860, on the very eve of the
liberal, a product of the Enlightenment. It Civil War.
rested on an analogy between the indi-
vidual and the collective. As the American THE UNION AND THE CONFEDERACY
theorist of nationalism Hans Kohn once The American Civil War was a struggle
wrote, “The concept of national self- over two competing ideas of the nation-
determination—transferring the ideal of state. This struggle has never ended; it
liberty from the individual to the organic has just moved around.
March/April 2019 13
In the antebellum United States, Washington ever said so, that any
Northerners, and especially northern President ever said so, that any
abolitionists, drew a contrast between member of Congress ever said so, or
(northern) nationalism and (southern) that any living man upon the whole
earth ever said so, until the necessities
sectionalism. “We must cultivate a na-
of the present policy of the Demo-
tional, instead of a sectional patriotism” cratic party, in regard to slavery, had
urged one Michigan congressman in 1850. to invent that affirmation.
But Southerners were nationalists, too.
It’s just that their nationalism was what No matter, the founders of the Confed-
would now be termed “illiberal” or eracy answered: we will craft a new
“ethnic,” as opposed to the Northerners’ constitution, based on white supremacy.
liberal or civic nationalism. This distinc- In 1861, the Confederacy’s newly elected
tion has been subjected to much criticism, vice president, Alexander Stephens,
on the grounds that it’s nothing more than delivered a speech in Savannah in which
a way of calling one kind of nationalism he explained that the ideas that lay behind
good and another bad. But the national- the U.S. Constitution “rested upon the
ism of the North and that of the South assumption of the equality of races”—
were in fact different, and much of U.S. here ceding Lincoln’s argument—but that
history has been a battle between them. “our new government is founded upon
“Ours is the government of the white exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations
man,” the American statesman John C. are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the
Calhoun declared in 1848, arguing against great truth that the negro is not equal to
admitting Mexicans as citizens of the the white man; that slavery is his natural
United States. “This Government was and moral condition.”
made by our fathers on the white basis,” The North won the war. But the
the American politician Stephen Douglas battle between liberal and illiberal
said in 1858. “It was made by white men nationalism raged on, especially during
for the benefit of white men and their the debates over the 14th and 15th
posterity forever.” Amendments, which marked a second
Abraham Lincoln, building on argu- founding of the United States on terms
ments made by black abolitionists, exposed set by liberal ideas about the rights of
Douglas’ history as fiction. “I believe the citizens and the powers of nation-
entire records of the world, from the date states—namely, birthright citizenship,
of the Declaration of Independence up to equal rights, universal (male) suffrage,
within three years ago, may be searched and legal protections for noncitizens.
in vain for one single affirmation, from These Reconstruction-era amendments
one single man, that the negro was not also led to debates over immigration,
included in the Declaration of Indepen- racial and gender equality, and the limits
dence,” Lincoln said during a debate with of citizenship. Under the terms of the
Douglas in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1858. 14th Amendment, children of Chinese
He continued: immigrants born in the United States
would be U.S. citizens. Few major
I think I may defy Judge Douglas to political figures talked about Chinese
show that he ever said so, that
immigrants in favorable terms. Typical
was the virulent prejudice expressed by
William Higby, a one-time miner and
Republican congressman from Califor-
nia. “The Chinese are nothing but a
pagan race,” Higby said in 1866. “You
cannot make good citizens of them.”
AT A
And opponents of the 15th Amendment
found both African American voting and
Chinese citizenship scandalous. Fumed
Garrett Davis, a Democratic senator
from Kentucky: “I want no negro govern- CROSSROADS
Russia in the Global Economy
ment; I want no Mongolian government;
I want the government of the white man
which our fathers incorporated.” An examination of the challenges Russia
The most significant statement in faces in the global economy given its current
this debate was made by a man born foreign policies and globalization’s impact on
into slavery who had sought his own its decision-making process.
freedom and fought for decades for
emancipation, citizenship, and equal Globalization proceeds
apace, taking on new forms
rights. In 1869, in front of audiences that affect global economic,
across the country, Frederick Douglass financial and social processes.
delivered one of the most important Interdependence is not
simply strengthening the
and least read speeches in American range of possibilities
political history, urging the ratification for national economies
of the 14th and 15th Amendments in to participate in these
developments, but expanding
the spirit of establishing a “composite the opportunities that
nation.” He spoke, he said, “to the are available to them. The
question of whether we are the better or By Sergey Kulik, question is: how do states
Nikita Maslennikov take advantage of these
the worse for being composed of differ- and Igor Yurgens global developments?
ent races of men.” If nations, which are Although Russia actively participates in the globalization
essential for progress, form from process, it is confronting greater economic, technological,
similarity, what of nations like the structural and institutional problems than other
countries. These problems exist alongside the risk that
United States, which are formed out of the gap between Russia and other economies in terms of
difference, Native American, African, economic performance and technological development
European, Asian, and every possible and growth will continue to widen.
mixture, “the most conspicuous example The old model of Russian development has been
exhausted and a new one must be chosen. Russia’s choice
of composite nationality in the world”? at this juncture will determine the future of its economic
To Republicans like Higby, who development for many years to come.
objected to Chinese immigration and to
birthright citizenship, and to Democrats CIGI Press books are distributed by McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup.ca)
and can be found in better bookstores and through online book retailers.
like Davis, who objected to citizenship
and voting rights for anyone other than
white men, Douglass offered an impas-
sioned reply. As for the Chinese: “Do
15
you ask, if I would favor such immigra- NATIONAL HISTORIES

tion? I answer, I would. Would you have The American Historical Association
them naturalized, and have them invested was founded in 1884—two years after
with all the rights of American citizen- the French philosopher Ernest Renan
ship? I would. Would you allow them to wrote his signal essay, “What Is a Na-
vote? I would.” As for future generations, tion?” Nationalism was taking a turn,
and future immigrants to the United away from liberalism and toward illiber-
States, Douglass said, “I want a home alism, including in Germany, beginning
here not only for the negro, the mulatto with the “blood and iron” of Bismarck.
and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic A driver of this change was the emer-
to find a home here in the United States, gence of mass politics, under whose
and feel at home here, both for his sake terms nation-states “depended on the
and for ours.” For Douglass, progress participation of the ordinary citizen to
could only come in this new form of a an extent not previously envisaged,” as
nation, the composite nation. “We shall the historian Eric Hobsbawm once
spread the network of our science and wrote. That “placed the question of the
civilization over all who seek their shelter, ‘nation,’ and the citizen’s feelings towards
whether from Asia, Africa, or the Isles whatever he regarded as his ‘nation,’
of the sea,” he said, and “all shall here ‘nationality’ or other centre of loyalty, at
bow to the same law, speak the same the top of the political agenda.”
language, support the same Government, This transformation began in the
enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the United States in the 1880s, with the rise
same national enthusiasm, and seek the of Jim Crow laws, and with a regime of
same national ends.” That was Douglass’ immigration restriction, starting with the
new Americanism. It did not prevail. Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal
Emancipation and Reconstruction, law restricting immigration, which was
the historian and civil rights activist passed in 1882. Both betrayed the
W. E. B. Du Bois would write in promises and constitutional guarantees
1935, was “the finest effort to achieve made by the 14th and 15th Amendments.
democracy . . . this world had ever Fighting to realize that promise would
seen.” But that effort had been be- be the work of standard-bearers who
trayed by white Northerners and white included Ida B. Wells, who led a cam-
Southerners who patched the United paign against lynching, and Wong Chin
States back together by inventing a Foo, who founded the Chinese Equal
myth that the war was not a fight over Rights League in 1892, insisting, “We
slavery at all but merely a struggle claim a common manhood with all
between the nation and the states. other nationalities.”
“We fell under the leadership of those But the white men who delivered
who would compromise with truth in speeches at the annual meetings of the
the past in order to make peace in the American Historical Association during
present,” Du Bois wrote bitterly. those years had little interest in discuss-
Douglass’ new Americanism was thus ing racial segregation, the disenfranchise-
forgotten. So was Du Bois’ reckoning ment of black men, or immigration
with American history. restriction. Frederick Jackson Turner
A New Americanism
drew historians’ attention to the frontier. Madison Square Garden, decorated with
Others contemplated the challenges of swastikas and American flags, with
populism and socialism. Progressive-era posters declaring a “Mass Demonstration
historians explained the American nation for True Americanism,” where they
as a product of conflict “between democ- denounced the New Deal as the “Jew
racy and privilege, the poor versus the Deal.” Hitler, for his part, expressed
rich, the farmers against the monopolists, admiration for the Confederacy and
the workers against the corporations, regret that “the beginnings of a great
and, at times, the Free-Soilers against new social order based on the principle
the slaveholders,” as Degler observed. of slavery and inequality were destroyed
And a great many association presidents, by the war.” As one arm of a campaign
notably Woodrow Wilson, mourned what to widen divisions in the United States
had come to be called “the Lost Cause of and weaken American resolve, Nazi
the Confederacy.” All offered national propaganda distributed in the Jim Crow
histories that left out the origins and South called for the repeal of the 14th
endurance of racial inequality. and 15th Amendments.
Meanwhile, nationalism changed, The “America first” supporter Charles
beginning in the 1910s and especially Lindbergh, who, not irrelevantly, had
in the 1930s. And the uglier and more become famous by flying across the
illiberal nationalism got, the more Atlantic alone, based his nationalism on
liberals became convinced of the impos- geography. “One need only glance at a
sibility of liberal nationalism. In the map to see where our true frontiers lie,”
United States, nationalism largely took he said in 1939. “What more could we ask
the form of economic protectionism and than the Atlantic Ocean on the east and
isolationism. In 1917, the publishing the Pacific on the west?” (This President
magnate William Randolph Hearst, Franklin Roosevelt answered in 1940,
opposing U.S. involvement in World declaring the dream that the United
War I, began calling for “America first,” States was “a lone island,” to be, in fact, a
and he took the same position in 1938, nightmare, “the nightmare of a people
insisting that “Americans should main- lodged in prison, handcuffed, hungry,
tain the traditional policy of our great and fed through the bars from day to day
and independent nation—great largely by the contemptuous, unpitying masters
because it is independent.” of other continents.”)
In the years before the United States In the wake of World War II, Ameri-
entered World War II, a fringe even can historians wrote the history of the
supported Hitler; Charles Coughlin—a United States as a story of consensus, an
priest, near presidential candidate, and unvarying “liberal tradition in America,”
wildly popular broadcaster—took to the according to the political scientist Louis
radio to preach anti-Semitism and Hartz, that appeared to stretch forward
admiration for Hitler and the Nazi Party in time into an unvarying liberal future.
and called on his audience to form a new Schlesinger, writing in 1949, argued that
political party, the Christian Front. In liberals occupied “the vital center” of
1939, about 20,000 Americans, some American politics. These historians
dressed in Nazi uniforms, gathered in had plenty of blind spots—they were
March/April 2019 17
especially blind to the forces of conser- flourished as the handmaiden of nation-

vatism and fundamentalism—but they making; the nation provided both
nevertheless offered an expansive, liberal support and an appreciative audience,”
account of the history of the American Bender observed in Rethinking American
nation and the American people. History in a Global Age in 2002. “Only
The last, best single-volume popular recently,” he continued, “and because of
history of the United States written in the uncertain status of the nation-state
the twentieth century was Degler’s 1959 has it been recognized that history as a
book, Out of Our Past: The Forces That professional discipline is part of its
Shaped Modern America: a stunning, own substantive narrative and not at
sweeping account that, greatly influ- all sufficiently self-conscious about the
enced by Du Bois, placed race, slavery, implications of that circularity.” Since
segregation, and civil rights at the center then, historians have only become more
of the story, alongside liberty, rights, self-conscious, to the point of paralysis.
revolution, freedom, and equality. If nationalism was a pathology, the
Astonishingly, it was Degler’s first thinking went, the writing of national
book. It was also the last of its kind. histories was one of its symptoms, just
another form of mythmaking.
THE DECLINE OF NATIONAL HISTORY Something else was going on, too.
If love of the nation is what drove Beginning in the 1960s, women and
American historians to the study of the people of color entered the historical
past in the nineteenth century, hatred profession and wrote new, rich, revolu-
for nationalism drove American histori- tionary histories, asking different
ans away from it in the second half of questions and drawing different conclu-
the twentieth century. sions. Historical scholarship exploded,
It had long been clear that nationalism and got immeasurably richer and more
was a contrivance, an artifice, a fiction. sophisticated. In a there-goes-the-
After World War II, while Roosevelt neighborhood moment, many older
was helping establish what came to be historians questioned the value of this
called “the liberal international order,” scholarship. Degler did not; instead, he
internationalists began predicting the contributed to it. Most historians who
end of the nation-state, with the Har- wrote about race were not white and
vard political scientist Rupert Emerson most historians who wrote about women
declaring that “the nation and the nation- were not men, but Degler, a white man,
state are anachronisms in the atomic was one of two male co-founders of the
age.” By the 1960s, nationalism looked National Organization for Women and
rather worse than an anachronism. Mean- won a Pulitzer in 1972 for a book called
while, with the coming of the Vietnam Neither Black nor White. Still, he shared
War, American historians stopped study- the concern expressed by Higham that
ing the nation-state in part out of a fear most new American historical scholarship
of complicity with atrocities of U.S. was “not about the United States but
foreign policy and regimes of political merely in the United States.”
oppression at home. “The professional By 1986, when Degler rose from his
practice of history writing and teaching chair to deliver his address before the
A New Americanism
American Historical Association, a lot triumph, that the United States had
of historians in the United States had become all the world. But the Ameri-
begun advocating a kind of historical can experiment had not in fact ended.
cosmopolitanism, writing global rather A nation founded on revolution and
than national history. Degler didn’t universal rights will forever struggle
have much patience for this. A few against chaos and the forces of particu-
years later, after the onset of civil war in larism. A nation born in contradiction
Bosnia, the political philosopher Michael will forever fight over the meaning of
Walzer grimly announced that “the tribes its history. But that doesn’t mean
have returned.” They had never left. history is meaningless, or that anyone
They’d only become harder for histori- can afford to sit out the fight.
ans to see, because they weren’t really “The history of the United States at
looking anymore. the present time does not seek to answer
any significant questions,” Degler told
A NEW AMERICAN HISTORY his audience some three decades ago. If
Writing national history creates plenty American historians don’t start asking
of problems. But not writing national and answering those sorts of questions,
history creates more problems, and other people will, he warned. They’ll
these problems are worse. echo Calhoun and Douglas and Father
What would a new Americanism and Coughlin. They’ll lament “American
a new American history look like? They carnage.” They’ll call immigrants “ani-
might look rather a lot like the compos- mals” and other states “shithole coun-
ite nationalism imagined by Douglass tries.” They’ll adopt the slogan “America
and the clear-eyed histories written by first.” They’ll say they can “make Amer-
Du Bois. They might take as their ica great again.” They’ll call themselves
starting point the description of the “nationalists.” Their history will be a
American experiment and its challenges fiction. They will say that they alone
offered by Douglass in 1869: love this country. They will be wrong.∂
A Government founded upon justice,
and recognizing the equal rights of
all men; claiming no higher authority
for existence, or sanction for its laws,
than nature, reason, and the regularly
ascertained will of the people;
steadily refusing to put its sword and
purse in the service of any religious
creed or family, is a standing offense
to most of the Governments of the
world, and to some narrow and
bigoted people among ourselves.
At the close of the Cold War, some

commentators concluded that the
American experiment had ended in
March/April 2019 19
Return to Table of Contents The CSS Point
Although May never used the term,

The Importance
THE NEW NATIONALISM
her target was clear: the so-called

cosmopolitan elite.
of Elsewhere Days after this speech, I was giving
a lecture on nationalism for the BBC.
The prime minister had been talking in
In Defense of Birmingham, the only one of the five
Cosmopolitanism largest British cities that had voted—by
the barest of margins, 50.4 percent to
Kwame Anthony Appiah 49.6 percent—for Brexit. I was speaking
in the largest Scottish city, Glasgow,
where two-thirds of the population had
I
n October 2016, British Prime voted to stay in the EU, just as every
Minister Theresa May made her other Scottish district did. Naturally,
first speech to a Conservative somebody asked me what I thought about
conference as party leader. Evidently May’s “citizen of nowhere” comment.
seeking to capture the populist spirit of It wasn’t the first time I’d heard such
the Brexit vote that brought down her a charge, and it won’t be the last. In the
predecessor, she spoke of “a sense— character of Mrs. Jellyby, the “telescopic
deep, profound, and, let’s face it, often philanthropist” of Bleak House, Charles
justified—that many people have today Dickens memorably invoked someone
that the world works well for a privi- who neglects her own children as she
leged few, but not for them.” What was makes improving plans for the inhabi-
needed to challenge this, May argued, tants of a far-off land and whose eyes
was a “spirit of citizenship” lacking among “had a curious habit of seeming to look
the business elites that made up one a long way off,” as if “they could see
strand of her party’s base. Citizenship, nothing nearer than Africa!” The atti-
she said, “means a commitment to the tude that May evoked has a similar
men and women who live around you, affliction: it’s that of the frequent flyer
who work for you, who buy the goods who can scarcely glimpse his earth-
and services you sell.” She continued: bound compatriots through the clouds.
But this is nearly the opposite of
Today, too many people in positions of cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan task,
power behave as though they have more
in common with international elites
in fact, is to be able to focus on both far
than with the people down the road, and near. Cosmopolitanism is an expan-
the people they employ, the people they sive act of the moral imagination. It sees
pass on the street. But if you believe human beings as shaping their lives
you are a citizen of the world, you within nesting memberships: a family, a
are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t neighborhood, a plurality of overlapping
understand what citizenship means. identity groups, spiraling out to encom-
pass all humanity. It asks us to be many
KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH is Professor things, because we are many things. And if
of Philosophy and Law at New York University
and the author of The Lies That Bind: Rethinking its critics have seldom been more clamor-
Identity. ous, the creed has never been so necessary.
The Importance of Elsewhere
Containing multitudes: pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, December 2018
NOWHERE MEN Village equals small; globe equals enor-

Cosmopolitanism was born in the fourth mous. Cosmopolitanism takes something
century BC as an act of defiance, when small and familiar and projects it onto a
Diogenes the Cynic—who came from whole world of strangers.
Sinope, a Greek-speaking city on the Nonetheless, this paradoxical formu-
Black Sea—first claimed he was a kosmo- lation has come to enjoy extraordinary
politês. The word, which seems to be a appeal around the planet. Conservative
neologism of his own, translates more or populism may be on the rise in Europe,
less as “citizen of the world.” Diogenes but in a 2016 study conducted by the BBC,
was fond of challenging the common nearly three-quarters of the Chinese
sense of his day, and this word was meant and Nigerians polled—along with more
to have a paradox built into it: a politês than half of the Brazilians, Canadians,
was a free adult male citizen of a polis, and Ghanaians polled—said that they
one of the self-governing Greek towns in saw themselves “more as a global citizen”
southeastern Europe and Asia Minor, than a citizen of their own country. Even
and the kosmos was, well, the whole of the two in five Americans felt the same way.
universe. It would have been obvious to Yet there is something misleading
K AR ST E N M O R A N / T H E N EW YO R K T I M ES
any of Diogenes’ contemporaries that about this conception of identity. The

you couldn’t belong to the universe in the BBC poll presupposes that one must
same way as you belonged to a town such weigh the relative importance of global
as Athens, which had some 30,000 free and local allegiances against each other,
male adult citizens in his day (and a total as if they were bound to be in competi-
population of perhaps 100,000). It was a tion. That seems to be the wrong way
contradiction in terms as obvious as the to think about things. After all, I am,
one in “global village,” a phrase coined by like millions of people, a voting mem-
the media theorist Marshall McLuhan a ber of at least three political entities:
little more than half a century ago. New York City, New York State, and
March/April 2019 21
Kwame Anthony Appiah The CSS Point
the United States. If asked which I was century Roman emperor whose Medita-
more committed to, I’d have a hard time tions lived alongside the Bible on his
knowing how to answer. I’d feel the bedside table. Marcus wrote that for
same puzzlement if my metaphorical him, as a human being, his city and
citizenship of the world were added to fatherland was the universe. It’s easy to
the list. Because citizenship is a kind of dismiss this as so much imperial gran-
identity, its pull, like that of all identities, deur, and yet the point of the metaphor
varies with the context and the issue. for Stoics such as Marcus was that
During mayoral elections, it matters most people were obliged to take care of the
that I’m a New Yorker; in senatorial whole community, to act responsibly
elections, the city, the state, and the with regard to the well-being of all their
country all matter to me. In presiden- fellow world citizens. That has been the
tial elections, I also find myself think- central thought of the cosmopolitan
ing as both a citizen of the United States tradition for more than two millennia.
and a citizen of the world. So many of But there is something else impor-
the gravest problems that face us— tant in that tradition, which developed
from climate change to pandemics— more clearly in European cosmopoli-
simply don’t respect political borders. tanism in the eighteenth century: a
In her speech to her fellow Conserva- recognition and celebration of the fact
tives, May was asking not just for a sense that our fellow world citizens, in their
of citizenship but also for patriotism, an different places, with their different
attachment that is emotional, not merely languages, cultures, and traditions,
procedural. Yet there’s no reason a merit not just our moral concern but
patriot cannot feel strongly in some also our interest and curiosity. Interac-
moments about the fate of the earth, just tions with foreigners, precisely because
as a patriot can feel strongly about the they are different, can open us up to
prospects of a city. Managing multiple new possibilities, as we can open up
citizenships is something everyone has new possibilities to them. In under-
to do: if people can harbor allegiances to standing the metaphor of global citizen-
a city and a country, whose interests can ship, both the concern for strangers
diverge, why should it be baffling to and the curiosity about them matter.
speak of an allegiance to the wider The German intellectual historian
world? My father, Joe Appiah, was an Friedrich Meinecke explored the
independence leader of Ghana and titled modern philosophical origins of this
his autobiography The Autobiography of idea in his 1907 book, Cosmopolitanism
an African Patriot; he saw no inconsis- and the National State. Through a careful
tency in telling his children, in the letter reading of German intellectuals from
he left for us when he died, that we the Enlightenment until the late nine-
should remember always that we were teenth century, he showed how the rise
citizens of the world. of German nationalism was intimately
intertwined with a form of cosmopoli-
PATRIOTIC COSMOPOLITANS tanism. In the late eighteenth century,
That thought is one my father probably Johann Gottfried Herder and other
got from Marcus Aurelius, the second- cosmopolitan thinkers began imagining
a German nation that brought together Cosmopolitans worthy of the label have
the German-speaking peoples of dozens rhizomes, spreading horizontally, as
of independent states into a union well as taproots, delving deep; they
founded on a shared culture and are anything but rootless.
language, a shared national spirit. Another corollary of cosmopolitan-
It took a century for modern Ger- ism is worth stressing: in respecting the
many to achieve that vision (although rights of others to be different from
without the German-speaking parts of themselves, cosmopolitans extend that
the Austro-Hungarian Empire). In 1871, right to the uncosmopolitan. The thought
a Prussian monarch presided over the that every human being matters—the
unification of more than two dozen universalism at the heart of cosmopoli-
federated kingdoms, duchies, princi- tanism—is not optional. Cosmopolitan-
palities, and independent cities. But as ism is thus also committed to the idea
Meinecke showed, the thinkers behind that individuals and societies have the
this accomplishment were deeply right to settle for themselves many
respectful of the national spirits and questions about what is worthwhile and
peoples of other nations, as well. In true many features of their social arrange-
cosmopolitan spirit, Herder revered the ments. In particular, many people value
literature and arts of foreigners. His a sense of place and wish to be surrounded
ideas about national culture inspired a by others who speak a familiar language
generation of folklorists, including the and who follow customs they think of as
Brothers Grimm, but he also wrote their own. Those people—the British
essays on Shakespeare and Homer. One journalist David Goodhart has dubbed
could be both cosmopolitan and patriotic; them “Somewheres,” in contrast to
indeed, for the great liberal nationalists “Anywheres”—are entitled to shape a
of the nineteenth century, patriotism was social world that allows them these
ultimately a vehicle for cosmopolitanism. things, that grants them the proverbial
It’s why Giuseppe Mazzini, a champion comforts of home. And if they want to
of Italian unification, urged his fellow sustain those comforts by keeping away
citizens to “embrace the whole human people unlike themselves or cultural
family in your affections.” imports from elsewhere, then (assuming
The stock modern slander against certain moral basics of nondiscrimination
the cosmopolitans—which played a are observed) that is their right.
central role in anti-Semitic Soviet The problem, of course, is that
propaganda under Stalin in the period these uncosmopolitan localists live in
after World War II—is that they are societies with others who think differ-
“rootless.” This accusation reflects not ently. They must cohabit with the
just moral blindness but also intellec- cosmopolitans, just as the cosmopoli-
tual confusion. What’s distinctive about tans must cohabit with them. Further-
modern cosmopolitanism is its celebra- more, societies have moral and legal
tion of the contribution of every nation duties to admit at least some foreign-
to the chorus of humanity. It is about ers—namely, those escaping persecu-
sharing. And you cannot share if you tion and death. Those obligations are
have nothing to bring to the table. shared by the community of nations,
The The CSSof Point
Importance Elsewhere
so the burden must be distributed universal morality does not mean that
fairly. But each society must contrib- each of us has the same obligations to
ute to meeting the need. everyone. I have a particular fondness
The fact that the localists share for my nephews and nieces, one that
societies with cosmopolitans in coun- does not extend to your nephews and
tries that have duties to asylum seekers nieces. Indeed, I believe it would be
constrains the ways in which the localist morally wrong not to favor my rela-
camp can achieve the comforts of home. tives when it comes to distributing my
But the existence of the localists con- limited attention and treasure. Does it
strains what the cosmopolitans can do, follow that I must hate your nephews
as well. Democracy is about respecting and nieces or try to shape the world to
the legitimate desires of fellow citizens their disadvantage? Surely not. I can
and seeking to accommodate them recognize the legitimate moral inter-
when you reasonably can. ests of your family, while still paying
special attention to mine. It’s not that
PLAYING FAVORITES my family matters more than yours;
If nationalism and cosmopolitanism are, it’s that it matters more to me. And
far from being incompatible, actually requiring people to pay special atten-
intertwined, how has cosmopolitanism tion to their own is, as the great
become such a handy bugbear for those cosmopolitan philosopher Martha
who, like the political strategist Steve Nussbaum once put it, “the only
Bannon, seek to ally themselves with sensible way to do good.”
the spirit of nationalism? One reason is We generally have a stronger attach-
that some people have made excessive ment to those with whom we grew up
claims on behalf of cosmopolitanism. and with whom we make our lives than
They have often been seduced by this we do to those outside the family. But
tempting line of thought: if everybody we can still favor those with whom we
matters, then they must matter equally, share projects or identities, and it is a
and if that is true, then each of us has distinct feature of human psychology
the same moral obligations to everyone. that we are capable of intense feelings
Partiality—favoring those to whom one around identities that are shared with
is connected by blood or culture or millions or billions of strangers. In-
territory—can look morally arbitrary. deed, this characteristic is evident in
The real enemy of those who worry the forms of nationalism that do not
about “citizens of nowhere” is not a give rise to respect for other nations—
reasonable cosmopolitanism but the as Herder’s did—but explode instead in
different idea, occasionally espoused by hostility and xenophobia. That side of
people calling themselves “citizens of nationalism needs taming, and cosmo-
the world,” that it is wrong to be partial politanism is one means of mastering
to your own place or people. it. But it is absurd to miss the other
What the impartial version of side of nationalism: its capacity to
cosmopolitanism fails to understand bring people together in projects such
is that the fact of everybody’s matter- as creating a social welfare state or
ing equally from the perspective of building a society of equals.
March/April 2019 25
GLOBAL IDENTITY POLITICS he sang along to the work of the English

Beyond the charge that cosmopolitan- musical-theater duo Gilbert and Sullivan.
ism is inconsistent with nationalism, None of that stopped him from joining
another objection to it holds that the Ghanaian independence movement,
humanity as a whole is too abstract to serving in Ghana’s national parliament, or
generate a powerful sense of identity. laying the foundations of pro bono legal
But scale simply cannot be the problem. work in the country. He recognized that
There are nearly 1.4 billion Chinese, what May called the “bonds and obliga-
and yet their Chinese identification is a tions that make our society work” are
real force in their lives and politics. The global as well as local. He saw that those
modern nation-state has always been a obligations existed not only in his home
community too large for everyone to country and his hometown but also in the
meet face-to-face; it has always been international arena. He recognized what
held together not by literal companion- that very English poet Philip Larkin once
ship but by imaginative identification. called “the importance of elsewhere.”
Cosmopolitans extend their imagina- Those who deny the importance of
tions only a small step further, and in elsewhere have withdrawn from the
doing so, they do not have to imagine world, where the greatest challenges
away their roots. Gertrude Stein, the and threats must be confronted by a
Pittsburgh-born, Oakland-raised writer community of nations, with a genuine
who lived in Paris for four decades, was sense of obligation that transcends
right: “What good are roots,” she asked, borders. Today, atmospheric carbon
“if you can’t take them with you?” dioxide levels are at their highest point
To speak for global citizenship is not in 800,000 years. Oceanic acidification
to oppose local citizenship, then. My worsens each year. And according to
father, a self-described citizen of the the UN, there were almost 260 million
world, was deeply involved in the politi- international migrants in 2017, many
cal life of his hometown, Kumasi, the fleeing war and oppression in Africa,
capital of the old empire of Ashanti, to the Middle East, and Asia.
which he was proud to belong. He was As populist demagogues around the
active, too, in the Organization of African world exploit the churn of economic
Unity (which became the African Union). discontent, the danger is that the
He served his country, Ghana, at the UN, politics of engagement could give way
in which he also believed passionately. to the politics of withdrawal. A success-
He loved Ashanti traditions, proverbs, ful cosmopolitanism must keep its eyes
and folktales, as well as Shakespeare; as a on matters near and far, promoting
lawyer, he admired Cicero, whom he political systems that also work for
would quote at the drop of a hat, but also localists. The Anywheres must extend
Thurgood Marshall and Mahatma their concern to the Somewheres. But
Gandhi. He listened to the music of forgetting that we are all citizens of the
Bessie Smith (the African American world—a small, warming, intensely
“Empress of the Blues”), Sophie Tucker vulnerable world—would be a reckless
(a Ukrainian-born vaudeville star), and relaxation of vigilance. Elsewhere has
Umm Kulthum (an Egyptian singer), and never been more important.∂
President Emmanuel Macron declared

Why Nationalism
THE NEW NATIONALISM

last November that “nationalism is a
betrayal of patriotism.”
Works The popular distinction between
patriotism and nationalism echoes the
one made by scholars who contrast
And Why It Isn’t Going “civic” nationalism, according to which
Away all citizens, regardless of their cultural
background, count as members of the
Andreas Wimmer nation, with “ethnic” nationalism, in
which ancestry and language determine
national identity. Yet efforts to draw a
N
ationalism has a bad reputation hard line between good, civic patriotism
today. It is, in the minds of and bad, ethnic nationalism overlook
many educated Westerners, a the common roots of both. Patriotism is
dangerous ideology. Some acknowledge a form of nationalism. They are ideo-
the virtues of patriotism, understood as logical brothers, not distant cousins.
the benign affection for one’s homeland; At their core, all forms of national-
at the same time, they see nationalism as ism share the same two tenets: first,
narrow-minded and immoral, promoting that members of the nation, under-
blind loyalty to a country over deeper stood as a group of equal citizens with
commitments to justice and humanity. a shared history and future political
In a January 2019 speech to his country’s destiny, should rule the state, and
diplomatic corps, German President second, that they should do so in the
Frank-Walter Steinmeier put this view interests of the nation. Nationalism is
in stark terms: “Nationalism,” he said, thus opposed to foreign rule by mem-
“is an ideological poison.” bers of other nations, as in colonial
In recent years, populists across the empires and many dynastic kingdoms,
West have sought to invert this moral as well as to rulers who disregard the
hierarchy. They have proudly claimed perspectives and needs of the majority.
the mantle of nationalism, promising Over the past two centuries, national-
to defend the interests of the majority ism has been combined with all manner
against immigrant minorities and of other political ideologies. Liberal
out-of-touch elites. Their critics, mean- nationalism flourished in nineteenth-
while, cling to the established distinc- century Europe and Latin America,
tion between malign nationalism and fascist nationalism triumphed in Italy
worthy patriotism. In a thinly veiled and Germany during the interwar period,
shot at U.S. President Donald Trump, and Marxist nationalism motivated the
a self-described nationalist, French anticolonial movements that spread
across the “global South” after the end
ANDREAS WIMMER is Lieber Professor of of World War II. Today, nearly every-
Sociology and Political Philosophy at Columbia one, left and right, accepts the legiti-
University and the author of Nation Building:
Why Some Countries Come Together While macy of nationalism’s two basic tenets.
Others Fall Apart. This becomes clearer when contrasting
March/April 2019 27
Andreas Wimmer
nationalism with other doctrines of THE NATION IS BORN

state legitimacy. In theocracies, the Nationalism is a relatively recent
state should be ruled in the name of invention. In 1750, vast multinational
God, as in the Vatican or the caliphate empires—Austrian, British, Chinese,
of the Islamic State (or ISIS). In French, Ottoman, Russian, and Span-
dynastic kingdoms, the state is owned ish—governed most of the world. But
and ruled by a family, as in Saudi then came the American Revolution, in
Arabia. In the Soviet Union, the state 1775, and the French Revolution, in
was ruled in the name of a class: the 1789. The doctrine of nationalism—rule
international proletariat. in the name of a nationally defined
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, people—spread gradually across the
the world has become a world of nation- globe. Over the next two centuries,
states governed according to nationalist empire after empire dissolved into a
principles. Identifying nationalism series of nation-states. In 1900, roughly
exclusively with the political right means 35 percent of the globe’s surface was
misunderstanding the nature of nation- governed by nation-states; by 1950, it
alism and ignoring how deeply it has was already 70 percent. Today, only
shaped almost all modern political half a dozen dynastic kingdoms and
ideologies, including liberal and pro- theocracies remain.
gressive ones. It has provided the ideo- Where did nationalism come from,
logical foundation for institutions such and why did it prove so popular? Its roots
as democracy, the welfare state, and reach back to early modern Europe.
public education, all of which were European politics in this period—
justified in the name of a unified people roughly, the sixteenth through the
with a shared sense of purpose and eighteenth centuries—was characterized
mutual obligation. Nationalism was by intense warfare between increasingly
one of the great motivating forces that centralized, bureaucratic states. By the
helped beat back Nazi Germany and end of the eighteenth century, these
imperial Japan. And nationalists liber- states had largely displaced other institu-
ated the large majority of humanity tions (such as churches) as the main
from European colonial domination. providers of public goods within their
Nationalism is not an irrational territory, and they had eliminated or
sentiment that can be banished from co-opted competing centers of power,
contemporary politics through enlight- such as the independent nobility. The
ening education; it is one of the mod- centralization of power, moreover,
ern world’s foundational principles and promoted the spread of a common
is more widely accepted than its critics language within each state, at least
acknowledge. Who in the United among the literate, and provided a shared
States would agree to be ruled by focus for the emerging civil society
French noblemen? Who in Nigeria organizations that were then becoming
would publicly call for the British to preoccupied with matters of state.
come back? Europe’s competitive and war-prone
With few exceptions, we are all multistate system drove rulers to extract
nationalists today. ever more taxes from their populations
The CSS Point
Why Nationalism Works
Party in the U.S.A.: at a Fourth of July cookout in Brooklyn, New York, July 2018
and to expand the role of commoners in quickly became more powerful than
the military. This, in turn, gave com- the old dynastic kingdoms and empires.
moners leverage to demand from their Nationalism allowed rulers to raise more
rulers increased political participation, taxes from the ruled and to count on their
equality before the law, and better political loyalty. Perhaps most impor-
provision of public goods. In the end, a tant, nation-states proved able to defeat
new compact emerged: that rulers should empires on the battlefield. Universal
govern in the population’s interests, and military conscription—invented by the
that as long as they did so, the ruled revolutionary government of France—
owed them political loyalty, soldiers, and enabled nation-states to recruit massive
taxes. Nationalism at once reflected and armies whose soldiers were motivated to
C H R I ST O P H E R L E E / T H E N EW YO R K T I M ES
justified this new compact. It held that fight for their fatherland. From 1816 to
the rulers and the ruled both belonged to 2001, nation-states won somewhere
the same nation and thus shared a between 70 and 90 percent of their wars
common historical origin and future with empires or dynastic states.
political destiny. Political elites would As the nation-states of western
look after the interests of the common Europe and the United States came to
people rather than those of their dynasty. dominate the international system,
Why was this new model of state- ambitious elites around the world
hood so attractive? Early nation-states— sought to match the West’s economic
France, the Netherlands, the United and military power by emulating its
Kingdom, and the United States— nationalist political model. Perhaps the
March/April 2019 29
Andreas Wimmer
most famous example is Japan, where in bargain, that is, citizens embraced a
1868, a group of young Japanese noble- nationalist vision of the world. This
men overthrew the feudal aristocracy, laid the foundation for a host of other
centralized power under the emperor, positive developments.
and embarked on an ambitious program One of these was democracy, which
to transform Japan into a modern, flourished where national identity was
industrialized nation-state—a develop- able to supersede other identities, such
ment known as the Meiji Restoration. as those centered on religious, ethnic,
Only one generation later, Japan was or tribal communities. Nationalism
able to challenge Western military provided the answer to the classic
power in East Asia. boundary question of democracy: Who
Nationalism did not spread only are the people in whose name the
because of its appeal to ambitious politi- government should rule? By limiting
cal elites, however. It was also attractive the franchise to members of the nation
for the common people, because the and excluding foreigners from voting,
nation-state offered a better exchange democracy and nationalism entered an
relationship with the government than enduring marriage.
any previous model of statehood had. At the same time as nationalism
Instead of graduated rights based on established a new hierarchy of rights
social status, nationalism promised the between members (citizens) and non-
equality of all citizens before the law. members (foreigners), it tended to
Instead of restricting political leadership promote equality within the nation
to the nobility, it opened up political itself. Because nationalist ideology
careers to talented commoners. Instead holds that the people represent a united
of leaving the provision of public goods body without differences of status, it
to guilds, villages, and religious institu- reinforced the Enlightenment ideal that
tions, nationalism brought the power of all citizens should be equal in the eyes
the modern state to bear in promoting of the law. Nationalism, in other words,
the common good. And instead of entered into a symbiotic relationship
perpetuating elite contempt for the with the principle of equality. In
uncultured plebs, nationalism elevated Europe, in particular, the shift from
the status of the common people by dynastic rule to the nation-state often
making them the new source of sover- went hand in hand with a transition to a
eignty and by moving popular culture to representative form of government and
the center of the symbolic universe. the rule of law. These early democracies
initially restricted full legal and voting
THE BENEFITS OF NATIONALISM rights to male property owners, but
In countries where the nationalist over time, those rights were extended to
compact between the rulers and the all citizens of the nation—in the United
ruled was realized, the population came States, first to poor white men, then to
to identify with the idea of the nation white women and people of color.
as an extended family whose members Nationalism also helped establish
owed one another loyalty and support. modern welfare states. A sense of
Where rulers held up their end of the mutual obligation and shared political
Andreas Wimmer The CSS Point
destiny popularized the idea that European parts of the Ottoman Empire
members of the nation—even perfect among themselves, expelling millions of
strangers—should support one another Muslims across the new border into the
in times of hardship. The first modern rest of the empire. Then, during World
welfare state was created in Germany War I, the Ottoman government engaged
during the late nineteenth century at the in massive killings of Armenian civilians.
behest of the conservative chancellor During World War II, Hitler’s vilification
Otto von Bismarck, who saw it as a way of the Jews—whom he blamed for the
to ensure the working class’ loyalty to the rise of Bolshevism, which he saw as a
German nation rather than the interna- threat to his plans for a German empire
tional proletariat. The majority of Europe’s in eastern Europe—eventually led to
welfare states, however, were established the Holocaust. After the end of that
after periods of nationalist fervor, mostly war, millions of German civilians were
after World War II in response to calls expelled from the newly re-created
for national solidarity in the wake of Czechoslovakian and Polish states. And
shared suffering and sacrifice. in 1947, massive numbers of Hindus and
Muslims were killed in communal
BLOODY BANNERS violence when India and Pakistan
Yet as any student of history knows, became independent states.
nationalism also has a dark side. Loyalty Ethnic cleansing is perhaps the most
to the nation can lead to the demoniza- egregious form of nationalist violence,
tion of others, whether foreigners or but it is relatively rare. More frequent are
allegedly disloyal domestic minorities. civil wars, fought either by nationalist
Globally, the rise of nationalism has minorities who wish to break away from
increased the frequency of war: over an existing state or between ethnic groups
the last two centuries, the foundation competing to dominate a newly indepen-
of the first nationalist organization in a dent state. Since 1945, 31 countries have
country has been associated with an experienced secessionist violence and 28
increase in the yearly probability of have seen armed struggles over the ethnic
that country experiencing a full-scale composition of the national government.
war, from an average of 1.1 percent to
an average of 2.5 percent. INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE
About one-third of all contemporary Although nationalism has a propensity
states were born in a nationalist war of for violence, that violence is unevenly
independence against imperial armies. distributed. Many countries have
The birth of new nation-states has also remained peaceful after their transition
been accompanied by some of history’s to a nation-state. Understanding why
most violent episodes of ethnic cleansing, requires focusing on how governing
generally of minorities that were consid- coalitions emerge and how the bounda-
ered disloyal to the nation or suspected ries of the nation are drawn. In some
of collaborating with its enemies. During countries, majorities and minorities are
the two Balkan wars preceding World represented in the highest levels of the
War I, newly independent Bulgaria, national government from the outset.
Greece, and Serbia divided up the Switzerland, for instance, integrated
Why Nationalism Works
French-, German-, and Italian-speaking goods. This makes them more attractive
groups into an enduring power-sharing as alliance partners for ordinary citizens,
arrangement that no one has ever ques- who shift their political loyalty away
tioned since the modern state was founded, from ethnic, religious, and tribal leaders
in 1848. Correspondingly, Swiss nation- and toward the state, allowing for the
alist discourse portrays all three linguistic emergence of more diverse political
groups as equally worthy members of the alliances. A long history of centralized
national family. There has never been a statehood also fosters the adoption of a
movement by the French- or the Italian- common language, which again makes it
speaking Swiss minority to secede from easier to build political alliances across
the state. ethnic divides. Finally, in countries
In other countries, however, the state where civil society developed relatively
was captured by the elites of a particu- early (as it did in Switzerland), multi-
lar ethnic group, who then proceeded to ethnic alliances for promoting shared
shut other groups out of political power. interests have been more likely to
This raises the specter not just of ethnic emerge, eventually leading to multiethnic
cleansing pursued by paranoid state elites ruling elites and more encompassing
but also of secessionism or civil war national identities.
launched by the excluded groups them-
selves, who feel that the state lacks BUILDING A BETTER NATIONALISM
legitimacy because it violates the nation- Unfortunately, these deep historical
alist principle of self-rule. Contemporary roots mean that it is difficult, especially
Syria offers an extreme example of this for outsiders, to promote inclusive
scenario: the presidency, the cabinet, the ruling coalitions in countries that lack
army, the secret service, and the higher the conditions for their emergence, as
levels of the bureaucracy are all domi- is the case in many parts of the devel-
nated by Alawites, who make up just oping world. Western governments and
12 percent of the country’s population. international institutions, such as the
It should come as no surprise that many World Bank, can help establish these
members of Syria’s Sunni Arab majority conditions by pursuing long-term
have been willing to fight a long and policies that increase governments’
bloody civil war against what they regard capacity to provide public goods,
as alien rule. encourage the flourishing of civil
Whether the configuration of power society organizations, and promote
in a specific country developed in a linguistic integration. But such policies
more inclusive or exclusive direction is a should strengthen states, not under-
matter of history, stretching back before mine them or seek to perform their
the rise of the modern nation-state. functions. Direct foreign help can
Inclusive ruling coalitions—and a corre- reduce, rather than foster, the legiti-
spondingly encompassing nationalism— macy of national governments. Analy-
have tended to arise in countries with a sis of surveys conducted by the Asia
long history of centralized, bureaucratic Foundation in Afghanistan from 2006
statehood. Today, such states are better to 2015 shows that Afghans had a more
able to provide their citizens with public positive view of Taliban violence after
March/April 2019 33
Andreas Wimmer The CSS Point
foreigners sponsored public goods should go hand in hand with a new

projects in their districts. form of inclusive nationalism. In the
In the United States and many United States, liberals such as the
other old democracies, the problem of intellectual historian Mark Lilla and
fostering inclusive ruling coalitions and moderate conservatives such as the
national identities is different. Sections political scientist Francis Fukuyama
of the white working classes in these have recently suggested how such a
countries abandoned center-left parties national narrative might be constructed:
after those parties began to embrace by embracing both majorities and
immigration and free trade. The white minorities, emphasizing their shared
working classes also resent their interests rather than pitting white men
cultural marginalization by liberal against a coalition of minorities, as is
elites, who champion diversity while done today by progressives and populist
presenting whites, heterosexuals, and nationalists alike.
men as the enemies of progress. The In both the developed and the
white working classes find populist developing world, nationalism is here to
nationalism attractive because it prom- stay. There is currently no other prin-
ises to prioritize their interests, shield ciple on which to base the international
them from competition from immi- state system. (Universalistic cosmopoli-
grants or lower-paid workers abroad, tanism, for instance, has little purchase
and restore their central and dignified outside the philosophy departments of
place in the national culture. Populists Western universities.) And it is unclear
didn’t have to invent the idea that the if transnational institutions such as the
state should care primarily for core European Union will ever be able to
members of the nation; it has always assume the core functions of national
been deeply embedded in the institu- governments, including welfare and
tional fabric of the nation-state, ready defense, which would allow them to
to be activated once its potential audi- gain popular legitimacy.
ence grew large enough. The challenge for both old and new
Overcoming these citizens’ alien- nation-states is to renew the national
ation and resentment will require both contract between the rulers and the
cultural and economic solutions. West- ruled by building—or rebuilding—in-
ern governments should develop public clusive coalitions that tie the two
goods projects that benefit people of all together. Benign forms of popular
colors, regions, and class backgrounds, nationalism follow from political
thereby avoiding the toxic perception inclusion. They cannot be imposed by
of ethnic or political favoritism. Reas- ideological policing from above, nor by
suring working-class, economically attempting to educate citizens about
marginalized populations that they, too, what they should regard as their true
can count on the solidarity of their interests. In order to promote better
more affluent and competitive fellow forms of nationalism, leaders will have
citizens might go a long way toward to become better nationalists, and learn
reducing the appeal of resentment- to look out for the interests of all their
driven, anti-immigrant populism. This people.∂
have managed to convince not only their

False Flags
THE NEW NATIONALISM

supporters but also their opponents that
they are responding to deep nationalist
yearnings among ordinary people. The
The Myth of the Nationalist more that defenders of liberalism and
Resurgence the liberal order buy the stories these
leaders (and associated movements) are
Jan-Werner Müller selling and adopt the framing and
rhetoric of populism, the more they allow
T
here appears to be one indisput- their opponents’ ideas to shape political
able global trend today: the rise debates. In doing so, parties and institu-
of nationalism. Self-described tions of the center-left and the center-
nationalists now lead not only the world’s right are helping bring about the very
largest autocracies but also some of its thing they hope to avoid: more closed
most populous democracies, including societies and less global cooperation to
Brazil, India, and the United States. address common problems.
A deepening fault line seems to divide
cosmopolitans and nationalists, advo- THE PEOPLE AND THE NATION
cates of “drawbridge down” and “draw- What the past few years have witnessed
bridge up.” And it seems that more and is not the rise of nationalism per se
more people are opting for the latter— but the rise of one variant of it: nationalist
for “closed” over “open.” populism. “Nationalism” and “popu-
They do so, many commentators lism” are often conflated, but they refer
claim, because they feel threatened by to different phenomena. The most
something called “globalism” and charitable definition of “nationalism” is
crave to have their particular national the idea that cultural communities
identities recognized and affirmed. should ideally possess their own states
According to this now conventional and that loyalty to fellow nationals
narrative, today’s surge of nationalist ought to trump other obligations.
passions represents a return to normal: “Populism,” meanwhile, is sometimes
the attempts to create a more integrated taken to be a shorthand for “criticism of
world after the Cold War were a mere elites,” and it is true that populists, when
historical blip, and humanity’s tribal in opposition, criticize sitting govern-
passions have now been reawakened. ments and other parties. More impor-
This, however, is a deeply flawed tant, however, is their claim that they
interpretation of the current moment. and they alone represent what they
In reality, the leaders described as usually call “the real people” or “the
“nationalists” are better understood as silent majority.” Populists thus declare
populist poseurs who have won support all other contenders for power to be
by drawing on the rhetoric and imagery illegitimate. In this way, populists’
of nationalism. Unfortunately, they complaints are always fundamentally
personal and moral: the problem,
JAN-WERNER MÜLLER is Professor of invariably, is that their adversaries are
Politics at Princeton University. corrupt. In this sense, populists are
March/April 2019 35
Jan-Werner Müller The CSS Point
indeed antiestablishment. But populists countries. These beliefs often cross over
also deem citizens who do not take their into nativism or racism, as when nation-
side to be inauthentic, not part of “the alist populists promote the idea that
real people”: they are un-American, un- only native-born citizens are entitled to
Polish, un-Turkish, and so on. Populism jobs and benefits or insinuate that some
attacks not merely elites and establish- immigrants can never be loyal citizens.
ments but also the very idea of political To be sure, one can be a nationalist
pluralism—with vulnerable minorities without being a populist; a leader can
usually becoming the first victims. maintain that national loyalties come
This antipluralism explains why popu- first without saying that he or she alone
list leaders tend to take their countries in can represent the nation. But today, all
an authoritarian direction if they have right-wing populists are nationalists.
sufficient power and if countervailing They promise to take back control on
forces, such as an independent judiciary behalf of “the real people,” which in
or free media, are not strong enough to their definition is never the population
resist them. Such leaders reject all as a whole. Nigel Farage, the leader of
criticisms with the claim that they are the far-right UK Independence Party at
merely executing the people’s will. They the time of the Brexit vote, celebrated
seek out and thrive on conflict; their the outcome as a “victory for real
political business model is permanent people,” implying that the 48 percent of
culture war. In a way, they reduce all British voters who preferred that their
political questions to questions of country stay in the EU were not prop-
belonging: whoever disagrees with them erly part of the nation.
is labeled an “enemy of the people.”
Populism is not a doctrine; it is more DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE
like a frame. And all populists have The potent combination of nationalism
to fill the frame with content that will and populism has spread in recent years.
explain who “the real people” are A populist playbook—perhaps even a
and what they want. That content can populist art of governance—has emerged
take many different forms and can draw as politicians in disparate countries have
on ideas from the left or the right. studied and learned from one another’s
From the late 1990s until his death in experiences. In 2011, Jaroslaw Kaczynski,
2013, the Venezuelan populist leader who leads Poland’s populist ruling Law
Hugo Chávez created a disastrous and Justice party, announced that he
“socialism for the twenty-first century” wanted to create “Budapest in Warsaw,”
in his country, wrecking its economy and he has systematically copied the
and demonizing all of his opponents in strategies pioneered by Prime Minister
the process. Today’s right-wing popu- Viktor Orban in Hungary. On the other
lists mostly draw on nationalist ideas, side of the world, Jair Bolsonaro got
such as distrust of international institu- elected president by following the
tions (even if a nation joined such playbook, railing against immigration
organizations voluntarily), economic (even though more people leave Brazil
protectionism, and hostility to the idea than enter) and declaring, “Brazil above
of providing development aid to other all, God above everyone.”
False Flags
Full of hot air: at the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro, Brasília, Brazil, January 2019
To some observers, it appears that Hungary constituted a “revolution at the
nationalist populists have profited from voting booths” and that Hungarians had
a bitter backlash against globalization endorsed what he has described as his
and increasing cultural diversity. This “Christian and national” vision of an
has, in fact, become the conventional “illiberal democracy.” In reality, all that
wisdom not only among populists them- happened was that a majority of Hungar-
selves but also among academics and ians were deeply disappointed by the
liberal opponents of populism. The country’s left-wing government and did
irony, however, is that although critics what standard democratic theory recom-
often charge populists with peddling mended they do: they voted for the main
reductive messages, it is these same opposition party, Orban’s Fidesz. By the
critics who now grasp at simple expla- next time Hungarians went to the polls,
nations for populism’s rise. In doing in 2014, Orban had gerrymandered the
so, many liberal observers play right electoral map in Fidesz’s favor; erected
S I PAP R E / S I PA U SA VIA AP
into their opponents’ hands by taking the Orwellian-sounding System of

at face value and even amplifying the National Cooperation, which included
dubious stories that nationalist populists drastic restrictions on media pluralism
tell about their own success. and civil society; and weakened the
For example, Orban has claimed that independence of the judiciary and other
the 2010 parliamentary elections in sources of checks and balances.
March/April 2019 37
Similarly, in the 2016 U.S. presiden- right’s willingness to collaborate with

tial election, “the people” did not them—as was the case for Trump,
comprehensively endorse a nationalist Bolsonaro, and the pro-Brexit cam-
“America first” agenda. Rather, in more paigners—or they win by at least partly
mundane fashion, citizens who identi- hiding their intentions, as was the case
fied as Republicans came out to vote for with Orban.
their party’s candidate, who was not a Once in power, most nationalist
typical politician but also hardly the populists don’t actually work to take
leader of a spontaneous grass-roots back control on the people’s behalf, as
antiglobalization movement. Donald they promised to do. Instead, they
Trump ultimately won the backing perform a sort of nationalist pantomime
of the party machinery; the enthusiastic of largely symbolic gestures: for ex-
support of establishment Republican ample, promising to build walls (which
figures such as Chris Christie, Newt achieve nothing concrete other than
Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani; and inciting hatred against minorities) or
near-constant cheerleading on Fox News. occasionally having the state seize a
As the political scientists Christopher multinational company. Behind the
Achen and Larry Bartels have argued, scenes, such leaders are generally quite
it turned out to be a fairly normal elec- accommodating of international institu-
tion, albeit with an abnormal Republican tions and multinational corporations.
candidate who faced a deeply unpopular They are concerned less with genuinely
Democratic contender. reasserting their countries’ autonomy
Likewise, Bolsonaro did not win last than with appearing to do so.
year’s presidential election in Brazil Take Trump, for instance. He has
because a majority of Brazilians wanted threatened individual companies that
a nationalist military dictatorship. The planned to close facilities in the United
bulk of Bolsonaro’s support came from States. But he has also stripped away
citizens fed up with the corruption of labor regulations at a breakneck pace,
traditional political elites from across making it hard to claim that he cares
the political spectrum and unwilling to about protecting workers. Likewise,
return the left-wing Workers’ Party to after deriding the North American Free
power. It also helped that the country’s Trade Agreement during his campaign,
powerful agricultural sector and, even- Trump wound up negotiating a
tually, its financial and industrial elites new trade deal with Canada and Mexico
threw their weight behind the far-right whose terms are substantially similar
candidate—as did influential evangelical to those of NAFTA. In Hungary, Orban
Christian leaders. has nationalized some industries and
As the political scientist Cas Mudde railed against foreign corporations that
has pointed out, nationalist populists he claimed exploited the Hungarian
often represent not a silent majority but people. Yet his government recently
a very loud minority. They do not come passed a law that allows employers to
to power because their ideology is an demand that workers put in 400 hours
unstoppable world-historical force. of overtime each year, up from the prior
Rather, they depend on the center- limit of 250 hours—and to withhold
payment for that extra labor for up to
three years. The main beneficiaries of
PARDEE SCHOOL
this measure (dubbed “the slave law” by
its critics) are the German car companies
that employ thousands of Hungarian Advancing
factory workers.
Human
NOT EVERY FIGHT IS CULTURAL
Many politicians, especially those from Progress
mainstream center-right parties, have
been at a loss when it comes to counter-
ing nationalist populism. Increasingly,
though, they are betting on a seemingly
paradoxical strategy of what one might
BA
NK
call “destruction through imitation.”
I-MO
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and
ON
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, for
(8TH SECRE
example, have tried to outflank their
far-right competitors with tough talk on
TAR
refugees, Islam, and immigration. Y-G
This strategy is unlikely to succeed

NE E
R
in the long run, but it is bound to do

AL
OF
UN
serious damage to European democracy. )W
ITH
PRO
No matter how fast one chases populists FE SSOR
KEVIN GALLAGH
ER.
to the fringes, it’s almost impossible
to catch them. Extremist outfits such as
the Danish People’s Party or the Party
MA in GLOBAL
for Freedom of the far-right Dutch POLICY with a
provocateur Geert Wilders will never specialization
be satisfied with the immigration
proposals of more established parties,
in Environment,
no matter how restrictive they are. And Development,
their supporters are unlikely to switch or Public Health.
their allegiances: they’ll continue to
prefer the originals over the imitators.
A deeper concern is the effect that
established parties making opportunistic
shifts in response to the populist
threat will have. First, they denounce bu.edu/PardeeSchool @BUPardeeSchool
populists as demagogues peddling lies.
Then, when support for populists grows,
mainstream politicians begin to suggest Frederick S. Pardee
that the populists have intuited, or even School of Global Studies
firmly know, something about people’s
39
concerns and anxieties that others the population. The government failed
haven’t, or don’t. This reflects an under- at distributive justice, not at cultural
standing of democratic representation as recognition.
an almost mechanical system for repro- Across Europe and the United States,
ducing existing interests, ideas, and even journalists and analysts have posited
identities. In this view, savvy populist that many people—especially older white
political entrepreneurs discover trends people—feel disrespected by elites. It’s
within the polity and then import them hard to ascertain how many people have
into the political system. directly encountered disrespect. But
But that is not how democracy really virtually day and night—on talk radio,
works. Representation is a dynamic on TV news programs, and on social
process, in which citizens’ self-perceptions media—millions of people are told that
and identities are heavily influenced by they feel disrespected. What is routinely
what they see, hear, and read: images, presented as a cultural conflict between
words, and ideas produced and circulated supposedly authentic rural heartlands
by politicians, the media, civil society, and cosmopolitan cities usually involves
and even friends and family members. a much less dramatic fight over how
Modern democracy is a two-way street, opportunities are distributed through
in which representative systems do not regulatory and infrastructure decisions:
merely reflect interests and political from the price of airline ticket for
identities; they shape them, as well. flights to more remote areas, to the
Nationalist populists have benefited status of community banks, to policies
greatly from this process, as media that determine the cost of housing in
organizations and scholars have adopted big cities.
their framing and rhetoric, with the By casting all issues in cultural terms
effect of ratifying and amplifying their and by embracing the idea that popu-
messages. Casual, seemingly self-evident lists have developed a unique purchase
accounts of “ordinary people” who have on people’s concerns and anxieties,
been “left behind” or “disrespected” and established parties and media organiza-
who fear “the destruction of their culture” tions have created something akin to
need to be treated with extreme caution: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the
they are not necessarily accurate descrip- entire political spectrum adopts popu-
tions of people’s lived experience. One list language about voters’ interests and
can frame, say, the French government’s identities, more and more people
recent decision to raise taxes on gasoline will begin to understand themselves
and to introduce tighter speed limits in and their interests in those terms. For
the countryside—steps that spurred the example, voters fed up with established
“yellow vest” protest movement—as center-right parties might initially
demonstrating disrespect for a “way of cast protest votes for populist parties
life” in rural and exurban areas. But a such as the far-right Alternative for
more mundane interpretation is that Germany (AfD) or outsider political
the French government simply failed to candidates such as Trump. But if those
see how particular policies would have voters are then continuously portrayed
different effects on different parts of as “AfD people” or as members of
False Flags
“Trump’s base,” they may well come ization was like “debating whether
to adopt those identities and develop a autumn should follow summer.” Some
more permanent sense of allegiance supporters of free trade falsely claimed
to the party or politician who at first that everyone would benefit from a
represented little more than a way to more integrated world. But nationalist
express dissatisfaction with the status populists don’t truly want to address
quo. Eventually, as mainstream parties those errors. They seek, instead, to
opportunistically adapt their messages cynically exploit them in order to weaken
and media commentators lazily repeat democratic institutions and lump
populist talking points, the entire together advocates of globalization,
political spectrum can shift rightward. transnational tax evaders, and high-fly-
ing private equity investors—along
BEAT THEM, DON’T JOIN THEM with human rights advocates and
This argument may sound like liberal immigrants, refugees, and many other
wishful thinking: “People are not nearly marginalized groups—into an undiffer-
as nationalist as populists claim! entiated “cosmopolitan, rootless elite”:
Conflicts are really all about material a “them” to pit against an “us.”
interests and not about culture!” But There are deep and often legitimate
the point is not that fights over culture conflicts about trade, immigration,
and identity are illusory or illegitimate and the shape of the international order.
just because populists always happen Liberals should not present their
to promote them. Rather, the point choices on these issues as self-evidently
is that establishment institutions are too correct or as purely win-win; they
quickly turning to culture and identity must convincingly make the case for
to explain politics. In this way, they are their ideas and justify their stance to
playing into populists’ hands—doing the disadvantaged. But they should also
their jobs for them, in effect. not adopt the framing and rhetoric
Consider, for example, populist of populists, opportunistic center-right
attacks on “globalists” who favor “open politicians, and academics who make
borders.” Even center-left parties now careers out of explaining away xenopho-
ritually distancing themselves from that bic views as merely symptoms of
idea, even though, in reality, no politi- economic anxiety. Doing so will lead
cian of any consequence anywhere liberals to make preemptive concessions
wants to open all borders. Even among that betray their ideals.∂
political philosophers not constrained
by political concerns, only a very
small minority calls for the abolition of
frontiers. It is true that advocates of
global governance and economic global-
ization have made serious blunders:
they often presented their vision of the
world as an inevitable outcome, as
when British Prime Minister Tony Blair
asserted in 2005 that debating global-
March/April 2019 41
that chimps are about 30 times as likely

This Is Your Brain
THE NEW NATIONALISM
to kill a chimp from a neighboring group

as to kill one of their own. On average,
on Nationalism eight males gang up on the victim.
If such is the violent reality of life as
an ape, is it at all surprising that hu-
The Biology of Us and Them mans, who share more than 98 percent
of their DNA with chimps, also divide
Robert Sapolsky the world into “us” and “them” and go
to war over these categories? Reductive
comparisons are, of course, dangerous;
H
e never stood a chance. His humans share just as much of their DNA
first mistake was looking for with bonobos, among whom such brutal
food alone; perhaps things behavior is unheard of. And although
would have turned out differently if he’d humans kill not just over access to a
been with someone else. The second, valley but also over abstractions such as
bigger mistake was wandering too far ideology, religion, and economic power,
up the valley into a dangerous wooded they are unrivaled in their ability to
area. This was where he risked running change their behavior. (The Swedes
into the Others, the ones from the ridge spent the seventeenth century rampaging
above the valley. At first, there were through Europe; today they are, well, the
two of them, and he tried to fight, but Swedes.) Still, humankind’s best and
another four crept up behind him and worst moments arise from a system that
he was surrounded. They left him there incorporates everything from the previ-
to bleed to death and later returned to ous second’s neuronal activity to the last
mutilate his body. Eventually, nearly 20 million years of evolution (along with a
such killings took place, until there was complex set of social factors). To under-
no one left, and the Others took over stand the dynamics of human group
the whole valley. identity, including the resurgence of
The protagonists in this tale of blood nationalism—that potentially most
and conquest, first told by the primatolo- destructive form of in-group bias—
gist John Mitani, are not people; they are requires grasping the biological and
chimpanzees in a national park in Uganda. cognitive underpinnings that shape them.
Over the course of a decade, the male Such an analysis offers little grounds
chimps in one group systematically killed for optimism. Our brains distinguish
every neighboring male, kidnapped the between in-group members and outsid-
surviving females, and expanded their ers in a fraction of a second, and they
territory. Similar attacks occur in chimp encourage us to be kind to the former
populations elsewhere; a 2014 study found but hostile to the latter. These biases are
automatic and unconscious and emerge
ROBERT SAPOLSKY is Professor of Biology, at astonishingly young ages. They are,
Neurosurgery, and Neurology and Neurological of course, arbitrary and often fluid.
Sciences at Stanford University and the author
of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best Today’s “them” can become tomorrow’s
and Worst. “us.” But this is only poor consolation.
This Is Your Brain on Nationalism
Not far from the tree: a chimpanzee at a zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, October 2017
Humans can rein in their instincts and face activates the amygdala, a brain
build societies that divert group compe- region central to emotions of fear and
tition to arenas less destructive than aggression, in under one-tenth of a
warfare, yet the psychological bases for second. In most cases, the prefrontal
tribalism persist, even when people cortex, a region crucial for impulse
understand that their loyalty to their control and emotional regulation, springs
nation, skin color, god, or sports team into action a second or two later and
is as random as the toss of a coin. At silences the amygdala: “Don’t think
the level of the human mind, little that way, that’s not who I am.” Still, the
prevents new teammates from once initial reaction is usually one of fear,
again becoming tomorrow’s enemies. even among those who know better.
This finding is no outlier. Looking
TRIBAL MINDS at the face of someone of the same race
The human mind’s propensity for activates a specialized part of the pri-
us-versus-them thinking runs deep. mate brain called the fusiform cortex,
I LYA N AY M U S H I N / R E U T E R S
Numerous careful studies have shown which recognizes faces, but it is acti-
that the brain makes such distinctions vated less so when the face in question
automatically and with mind-boggling is that of someone of another race.
speed. Stick a volunteer in a brain Watching the hand of someone of the
scanner and quickly flash pictures of same race being poked with a needle
faces. Among typical white subjects in activates the anterior cingulate cortex,
the scanner, the sight of a black man’s a region implicated in feelings of
March/April 2019 43
Robert Sapolsky The CSS Point
empathy; being shown the same with and gender. This is not because children
the hand of a person of another race are born with innate racist beliefs, nor
produces less activation. Not everyone’s does it require that parents actively or
face or pain counts equally. implicitly teach their babies racial or
At every turn, humans make auto- gender biases, although infants can pick
matic, value-laden judgments about up such environmental influences at a
social groups. Suppose you are preju- very young age, too. Instead, infants
diced against ogres, something you like what is familiar, and this often
normally hide. Certain instruments, leads them to copy their parents’ ethnic
such as the Implicit Association Test, and linguistic in-group categorizations.
will reveal your prejudice nonetheless. Sometimes the very foundations of
A computer screen alternates between affection and cooperation are also at the
faces and highly emotive terms, such as root of humankind’s darker impulses.
“heroic” or “ignorant.” In response, you Consider oxytocin, a compound whose
are asked to quickly press one of two reputation as a fuzzy “cuddle hormone”
buttons. If the button pairings fit your has recently taken a bit of a hit. In mam-
biases (“press Button A for an ogre’s mals, oxytocin is central to mother-infant
face or a negative term and Button B bonding and helps create close ties in
for a human face or a positive term”), monogamous couples. In humans, it
the task is easy, and you will respond promotes a whole set of pro-social behav-
rapidly and accurately. But if the pair- iors. Subjects given oxytocin become
ings are reversed (“press Button A for more generous, trusting, empathic, and
a human face or a negative term and expressive. Yet recent findings suggest
Button B for an ogre’s face or a positive that oxytocin prompts people to act this
term”), your responses will slow. There’s way only toward in-group members—
a slight delay each time, as the disso- their teammates in a game, for instance.
nance of linking ogres with “graceful” Toward outsiders, it makes them aggres-
or humans with “smelly” gums you up sive and xenophobic. Hormones rarely
for a few milliseconds. With enough affect behavior this way; the norm is an
trials, these delays are detectable, effect whose strength simply varies in
revealing your anti-ogre bias—or, in the different settings. Oxytocin, however,
case of actual subjects, biases against deepens the fault line in our brains
particular races, religions, ethnicities, between “us” and “them.”
age groups, and body types. Put simply, neurobiology, endocri-
Needless to say, many of these biases nology, and developmental psychology
are acquired over time. Yet the cogni- all paint a grim picture of our lives as
tive structures they require are often social beings. When it comes to group
present from the outset. Even infants belonging, humans don’t seem too far
prefer those who speak their parents’ from the families of chimps killing each
language. They also respond more other in the forests of Uganda: people’s
positively to—and have an easier time most fundamental allegiance is to the
remembering—faces of people of their familiar. Anything or anyone else is
parents’ race. Likewise, three-year-olds likely to be met, at least initially, with a
tend to prefer people of their own race measure of skepticism, fear, or hostility.
In practice, humans can second-guess
and tame their aggressive tendencies
toward the Other. Yet doing so is
The National Security Law
INSTITUTE
usually a secondary, corrective step.
TURBANS TO HIPSTER BEARDS

For all this pessimism, there is a crucial
difference between humans and those
warring chimps. The human tendency
toward in-group bias runs deep, but it Center for National Security Law • University of Virginia School of Law
is relatively value-neutral. Although
human biology makes the rapid, implicit
formation of us-them dichotomies
June 2–14, 2019
University of Virginia School of Law
virtually inevitable, who counts as an Charlottesville, Virginia
outsider is not fixed. In fact, it can
change in an instant. The Most Recognized National Security Law
Program of its Kind in the Nation
For one, humans belong to multiple,
overlapping in-groups at once, each Over Thirty National Security Law Topics
with its own catalog of outsiders—those Over Twenty Subject Matter Experts
of a different religion, ethnicity, or race; Advanced training in National Security Law for professors of law
those who root for a different sports and political science, government officials, and practitioners.
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Crucially, the salience of these various about National Security Law.”
An Israeli participant.
group identities changes all the time.
Walk down a dark street at night, see “The scope of the material covered presented a full
spectrum of national security-related legal matters.
one of “them” approaching, and your The Institute taught me as much about being an
amygdala screams its head off. But sit effective government lawyer as it did the current state
of the law.”
next to that person in a sports stadium, A Canadian participant.
chanting in unison in support of the “This was the most relevant course that I’ve ever taken
same team, and your amygdala stays in terms of National Security Law. All presentations
were provided by the highest level of professionals
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humans’ tendency toward in-group/
45
Robert Sapolsky The CSS Point
out-group thinking, in other words, is instead on cultural kin selection, a

not permanently tied to specific human process allowing people to feel closely
attributes, such as race. Instead, this related to what are, in a biological sense,
cognitive architecture evolved to detect total strangers. Often, this requires a
any potential cues about social coali- highly active process of inculcation, with
tions and alliances—to increase one’s its attendant rituals and vocabularies.
chance of survival by telling friend Consider military drills producing
from foe. The specific features that “bands of brothers,” unrelated college
humans focus on to make this determi- freshmen becoming sorority “sisters,” or
nation vary depending on the social the bygone value of welcoming immi-
context and can be easily manipulated. grants into “the American family.” This
Even when group boundaries remain malleable, rather than genetically fixed,
fixed, the traits people implicitly associ- path of identity formation also drives
ate with “them” can change—think, for people to adopt arbitrary markers that
instance, about how U.S. perceptions of enable them to spot their cultural kin in
different immigrant groups have shifted an ocean of strangers—hence the impor-
over time. Whether a dividing line is tance various communities attach to
even drawn at all varies from place to flags, dress, or facial hair. The hipster
place. I grew up in a neighborhood in beard, the turban, and the “Make America
New York with deep ethnic tensions, only Great Again” hat all fulfill this role by
to discover later that Middle America sending strong signals of tribal belonging.
barely distinguishes between my old Moreover, these cultural communi-
neighborhood’s “us” and “them.” In fact, ties are arbitrary when compared to
some actors spend their entire careers the relatively fixed logic of biological
alternating between portraying characters kin selection. Few things show this
of one group and then the other. arbitrariness better than the experience
This fluidity and situational depen- of immigrant families, where the
dence is uniquely human. In other species, randomness of a visa lottery can
in-group/out-group distinctions reflect radically reshuffle a child’s education,
degrees of biological relatedness, or what career opportunities, and cultural
evolutionary biologists call “kin selection.” predilections. Had my grandparents
Rodents distinguish between a sibling, a and father missed the train out of
cousin, and a stranger by smell—fixed, Moscow that they instead barely made,
genetically determined pheromonal maybe I’d be a chain-smoking Russian
signatures—and adapt their cooperation academic rather than a Birkenstock-
accordingly. Those murderous groups of wearing American one, moved to tears
chimps are largely made up of brothers by the heroism during the Battle of
or cousins who grew up together and Stalingrad rather than that at Pearl
predominantly harm outsiders. Harbor. Scaled up from the level of
Humans are plenty capable of kin- individual family histories, our big-
selective violence themselves, yet human picture group identities—the national
group mentality is often utterly indepen- identities and cultural principles that
dent of such instinctual familial bonds. structure our lives—are just as arbitrary
Most modern human societies rely and subject to the vagaries of history.
This Is Your Brain on Nationalism
REVOLUTION OR REFORM? them into two groups by tossing a coin.

That our group identities—national and The participants know the meaningless-
otherwise—are random makes them no ness of the division. And yet within
less consequential in practice, for better minutes, they are more generous toward
and for worse. At its best, nationalism and trusting of members of their in-group.
and patriotism can prompt people to Tails prefer not to be in the company of
pay their taxes and care for their na- Heads, and vice versa. The pull of us-
tion’s have-nots, including unrelated versus-them thinking is strong even when
people they have never met and will the arbitrariness of social boundaries is
never meet. But because this solidarity utterly transparent, to say nothing of when
has historically been built on strong it is woven into a complex narrative about
cultural markers of pseudo-kinship, it is loyalty to the fatherland. You can’t reason
easily destabilized, particularly by the people out of a stance they weren’t
forces of globalization, which can make reasoned into in the first place.
people who were once the archetypes of Modern society may well be stuck
their culture feel irrelevant and bring with nationalism and many other
them into contact with very different varieties of human divisiveness, and it
sorts of neighbors than their grand- would perhaps be more productive to
parents had. Confronted with such a harness these dynamics rather than
disruption, tax-paying civic nationalism fight or condemn them. Instead of
can quickly devolve into something promoting jingoism and xenophobia,
much darker: a dehumanizing hatred leaders should appeal to people’s
that turns Jews into “vermin,” Tutsis innate in-group tendencies in ways
into “cockroaches,” or Muslims into that incentivize cooperation, account-
“terrorists.” Today, this toxic brand of ability, and care for one’s fellow humans.
nationalism is making a comeback Imagine a nationalist pride rooted not
across the globe, spurred on by political in a country’s military power or ethnic
leaders eager to exploit it for electoral homogeneity but in the ability to take
advantage. care of its elderly, raise children who
In the face of this resurgence, the score high on tests of empathy, or ensure
temptation is strong to appeal to people’s a high degree of social mobility. Such a
sense of reason. Surely, if people were to progressive nationalism would surely be
understand how arbitrary nationalism preferable to one built on myths of
is, the concept would appear ludicrous. victimhood and dreams of revenge. But
Nationalism is a product of human with the temptation of mistaking the
cognition, so cognition should be able to familiar for the superior still etched
dismantle it, too. into the mind, it is not beyond the
Yet this is wishful thinking. In human species to go to war over which
reality, knowing that our various social country’s people carry out the most
bonds are essentially random does little noble acts of random kindness. The
to weaken them. Working in the 1970s, worst of nationalism, then, is unlikely
the psychologist Henri Tajfel called this to be overcome anytime soon.∂
“the minimal group paradigm.” Take a
bunch of strangers and randomly split
March/April 2019 47
Yes, nationalism helped give rise to the

Building a Better
THE NEW NATIONALISM
modern state system, served as a liberat-

ing force in anticolonial independence
Nationalism struggles, and fueled anti-Soviet senti-
ment during the Cold War. But surely,
the thinking went, nationalism was a
The Nation’s Place in a phase that the rich democracies of the
Globalized World world had outgrown—and in those
places where it still thrived, it posed
Yael Tamir more problems than solutions.
Today, however, many elite assump-
tions about politics have come under
assault, including those about national-
The Virtue of Nationalism ism. A small but increasingly vocal
BY YORAM HAZONY. Basic Books, group of American and European
2018, 304 pp. thinkers have begun to mount defenses
of nationalism—some modest, others
A
t a rally in Texas last October, more full-throated. One of the most
U.S. President Donald Trump enthusiastic advocates is Yoram Hazony,
was delivering his familiar an Israeli philosopher and political
“America first” message, complaining theorist. His latest book, The Virtue of
about “corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” Nationalism, has brought him to promi-
when he tried out a new line: “You know, nence in some American conservative
they have a word—it sort of became political circles. In it, he presents a
old-fashioned—it’s called, ‘a nationalist.’ spirited defense of nationalism and the
And I say, ‘Really, we’re not supposed nation-state. Although he does not
to use that word,’” he added, grinning. ignore nationalism’s flaws, he rightly
“You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, contends that Western intellectuals
OK? I’m a nationalist.” As the crowd have been too quick to dismiss it and
cheered, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Trump that the topic deserves a more balanced
nodded. “‘Nationalist’: nothing wrong and nuanced analysis than what the
with it. Use that word!” academy has offered in recent years.
As Trump correctly noted, in recent Hazony, however, goes beyond
decades, “that word,” and all it suggests, merely defending nationalism. He also
has fallen out of favor. For most politi- launches a fierce attack on contemporary
cal thinkers and elites in the developed liberalism and its political manifestations,
West, nationalism is a dangerous, divisive, particularly the EU and the American-
illiberal impulse that should be treated led “globalist” world order that emerged
with skepticism or even outright disdain. in the wake of the Cold War, both of
which Hazony derides as “imperialist
YAEL TAMIR is President of Shenkar College projects.” Nationalism, he complains,
of Engineering, Design, and Art, in Israel. From has been unfairly blamed for encourag-
1999 to 2010, she served as a Member of the
Knesset for the Israeli Labor Party. She is the ing hatred and bigotry, even though
author of Why Nationalism. “liberal-imperialist political ideals have
Building a Better Nationalism
Patriot games: an air show with the French Aerobatic Patrol, Marseille, France, July 2013
become among the most powerful marriage of liberal democratic and
agents fomenting intolerance and hate nationalist values. The fact that liberalism
in the Western world today.” Juxtapos- and nationalism don’t tend to advertise
ing nationalism and liberal imperial- their theoretical interdependence should
ism, Hazony accuses liberals of trying not prevent one from acknowledging
to impose a uniform set of values on their commonalities and understanding
nation-states, aiming to displace the their inherent bonds.
authentic, “particular” views and beliefs
held in those places. LIBERAL OR IMPERIAL?
In reality, few liberals endeavor to Hazony begins by making a moral and
establish global governance or oppress political case in favor of the nation-state.
illiberal communities and cultures. A nation, he writes, is constituted of “a
Rather, they seek a world order of number of tribes with a common lan-
international institutions, multilateral guage or religion, and a past history of
S I M O N L A M B E R T / H AY T H A M - R E A / R E D U X
cooperation, free markets, free trade, acting as a body.” A nation offers the
and the free movement of people. best, most legitimate basis for a state, he
Hazony’s insistence that this agenda argues, because it allows for the realiza-
represents an imperialist assault on tion of the human aspiration to achieve
nations ignores the fact that liberal and self-rule and collective freedom in the
nationalist values often interact. More fullest and most satisfactory way. Nation-
precisely, modern liberalism arose from states represent durable political unions
national political frameworks. The that confer meaning on their individual
modern nation-state Hazony is so eager members, celebrating and giving voice
to defend is, in fact, a product of the to what Hazony calls “the particular”
March/April 2019 49
Yael Tamir The CSS Point
(in contrast to the universal). Giving odd idea that, by their very nature, nation-
such nations the ability to govern them- states are bound to live happily within
selves promotes a healthy competition their borders, never looking to expand
that inspires them to excel, opening up or conquer. If that were true, the reputa-
new opportunities for fellow nationals tion of nationalism would be much
while allowing the international com- easier to defend.
munity of nation-states to prosper. Hazony confuses (or purposely
In setting up this analysis, Hazony conflates) the liberal belief in moral
is clear and persuasive. Yet he muddies universalism and internationalism with a
the water in two ways. First, he focuses desire to erect political empires. To him,
too often on Jewish thinking and history those who call themselves “liberal inter-
and relies too heavily on Israel and nationalists”—advocates of international
Zionism as the primary example of law and institutions and humanitarian
nationalism under assault by imperialist intervention—are in fact “liberal imperi-
liberals. This makes what should be a alists.” Just like the tyrants who sought
broad argument feel rather narrow and to rule the world in the nineteenth and
specific. (It is telling, and regrettable, twentieth centuries, today’s imperialists,
that a book extolling nationalism barely he contends, are universalists who harbor
mentions the group that today clamors a hatred for the particular and seek “to
most loudly for a nation-state of its coerce the dissenters—dissenting indi-
own: the Palestinians.) viduals and dissenting nations—making
Things get muddier still when them conform to the universal theory by
Hazony argues that the world faces a force, for their own good.”
stark choice between two moral and This is a straw man. There are no
political options: the nation-state, which contemporary liberal political move-
“inculcates an aversion to adventures of ments or institutions seeking the kind
conquest in distant lands,” and the of global domination Hazony describes.
empire, which seeks “to bring the world No liberal empires wish to coerce,
under a single authority and a single govern, and oppress dissenters the
doctrine.” Those reductive, incomplete world over. Neither the U.S. hegemony
definitions allow Hazony to rewrite the that has defined the post–Cold War
past and miscast the present. period nor the liberal international
Imperialism, he notes, produced the order that Washington has backed can
greatest destroyers the earth has known, be honestly described as imperial—
“with moderns such as Napoleon, Hitler and both are currently flagging, any-
and Stalin not least among them.” Hazony how. The EU has never tried to extend
is right that many empires have been its rule beyond Europe and is presently
driven by universal ideologies (fascism, fighting for its survival. If there are
communism, and liberalism alike) that any imperialists around, they are more
turned oppressive. Yet he ignores the vast likely to be found in corporate head-
and often brutal imperial and colonial quarters in Silicon Valley or on Wall
enterprises launched by nation-states, Street than in Washington or Brussels,
such as Belgium, England, Portugal, and and the global dominance they seek is
Spain. This leaves the reader with the commercial rather than political.
Building a Better Nationalism
In reality, the nation-state has no aligning themselves with nationalist senti-

serious institutional competitors. ment. Witness, for example, the open
International organizations are weak embrace of anti-Muslim rhetoric by the
and ineffective; international corpora- far-right UK Independence Party; the new
tions are powerful and effective but wave of anti-Semitism among French
have no desire to spend their energy on nationalists; and the rebirth of “blood and
governing. The struggle that Hazony soil” nationalism in the United States,
describes between noble nationalists where white nationalist groups have
and hate-filled imperialists is largely a combined populist grievances with racist
fantasy. What does exist is a tension and anti-Semitic appeals.
between nationalism and neoliberal Yet not all nationalists are bigots.
globalism. Nationalism, in this context, Many simply feel ill served by globetrot-
is a theory not just about self-rule but ting, cosmopolitan elites who have more
also about the right (and perhaps the in common with elites elsewhere than
duty) of states to intervene in the market with their fellow citizens. People hunger
in order to defend their citizens and for leaders and policymakers committed
control the malignant effects of hyper- to serving and protecting their own,
globalism: bringing jobs back home, giving preference and offering better
supporting domestic production, limit- opportunities to the neediest among
ing immigration, and raising tariffs. Such them rather than the neediest elsewhere.
policies collide with liberal beliefs in the This is what many American voters hear
primacy of free trade and the free move- when Trump cries, “America first!” and
ment of people. The real debate between it makes them feel safe.
nationalists and globalists is less about The nationalist resurgence is not
identity than about economics. solely a right-wing phenomenon. Progres-
Until recently, this debate seemed to sive and left-wing leaders and voters are
have been settled in favor of globalism. becoming more openly comfortable with
But recently, national preferences have policies that have a distinctly nationalist
exploded into full view. The anger over flavor. This has led to some surprising
the economic and social outcomes of alliances, such as the one between Trump’s
neoliberal globalism (growing inequal- lead trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, a
ity, rapid cultural change) has stirred a career Republican policy hand who spent
populist backlash, some of which has time as a lobbyist pushing for lower taxes
taken on a nationalist bent. Conse- and who advocates pursuing a hard line
quently, politicians on both sides of the against China, and Sherrod Brown, the
Atlantic are competing for popular progressive Democratic senator from Ohio
support by claiming to represent “the and a possible 2020 presidential contender,
people” and by blaming elites for who is a darling of unions and labor
adopting self-serving policies. rights activists.
Critics accuse these newly minted But few liberals seem ready to embrace
nationalists of racism and nativism and the term “nationalist.” Are there any
of grounding their appeals in fears of alternatives? Last November, during a
the other. One can certainly find ample ceremony in Paris to mark the 100th
evidence of bigotry among those now anniversary of the end of World War I,
March/April 2019 51
Yael Tamir The CSS Point
French President Emmanuel Macron from a belief that the United States
tried to offer one, drawing a sharp benefits less than it should from those
distinction between nationalism and global agreements he wants to renegoti-
patriotism. “Patriotism is the exact ate. And on the other side of the globe,
opposite of nationalism,” he argued. Chinese President Xi Jinping has
“By saying, ‘Our interests first. Who developed the One Belt, One Road
cares about the others?’ we erase what a initiative, which seeks to tie together
nation holds dearest, what gives it life, vast swaths of the Eastern Hemisphere
what makes it great, and what is essen- in a Chinese-dominated network of
tial: its moral values.” But if patriotism infrastructure and supply chains: a
does not involve putting the interests of nationalist project with a globalist twist.
one’s own country over the interests of Regardless of Hazony’s claims, the
others, what does it involve? Macron main struggle in today’s international
argued that French patriotism stems politics is not between nationalists and
from a “vision of France as a generous imperialists but between different
nation, of France as a project, of France approaches to balancing national inter-
as the bearer of universal values.” But ests with the demands of a globalized
that could just as easily serve as a defini- economy. When liberals indiscrimi-
tion of traditional French nationalism. nately attack all forms of nationalism,
Far from demonstrating an unequivocal they fuel an unnecessary ideological
contrast between nationalism and patriot- struggle—one that they are currently
ism, Macron managed only to demon- losing. If liberalism is to regain power,
strate that there is no clear, useful it needs to develop its own form of
distinction between the two concepts. nationalism, one that reassures citizens
that their leaders work for them and put
A KINDER, GENTLER NATIONALISM their well-being first.
The kind of semantic acrobatics Macron For too long, the least well-off
performed would be unnecessary if he citizens of powerful states have paid the
and other liberals were willing to openly price of globalism. Their demand that
embrace some forms of nationalism. leaders protect their interests is just and
After all, it is only natural for political timely. One need not embrace Trump’s
leaders to look at global issues from a crude, zero-sum worldview to believe
national perspective and to put their that the wealth of nations should be
own countries’ interests first. Macron produced and distributed as part of a
and German Chancellor Angela Merkel relatively narrow social contract among
endorse a pro-EU position as they particular individuals. Liberals should
identify their countries’ national inter- not promote national egoism but sup-
ests with membership in the union and port policies that will help make their
with a measured degree of regional and fellow citizens feel connected and
global collaboration. The government of committed to a worthy and meaningful
British Prime Minister Theresa May community. Liberalism and nationalism
holds the opposite view and therefore are not mutually exclusive; they can and
supports Brexit. Slogans aside, Trump should go hand in hand.∂
makes similar calculations, operating
democratic welfare states supported by

The Broken
THE NEW NATIONALISM
international institutions, such as the

World Bank and the International
Bargain Monetary Fund (IMF), that coordinated
economic policy between states while
granting them the flexibility to act in
How Nationalism their own national interest. The political
Came Back scientist John Ruggie has called this
arrangement “embedded liberalism,”
Jack Snyder because it embraced free markets while
subjecting them to institutionalized
N
ationalism and nativism are political control at both the domestic
roiling politics on every conti- and the international level—a bargain
nent. With the election of that held for several decades.
President Donald Trump in the United Yet over the past 30 years, liberalism
States, the growing power of right- has become disembedded. Elites in the
wing populist parties in Europe, and United States and Europe have steadily
the ascent of strongmen in states such dismantled the political controls that once
as China, the Philippines, and Turkey, allowed national governments to manage
liberals around the world are struggling capitalism. They have constrained demo-
to respond to populist nationalism. cratic politics to fit the logic of interna-
Today’s nationalists decry the “globalist” tional markets and shifted policymaking
liberalism of international institutions. to unaccountable bureaucracies or supra-
They attack liberal elites as sellouts who national institutions such as the EU. This
care more about foreigners than their has created the conditions for the present
fellow citizens. And they promise to put surge of populist nationalism. To contain
national, rather than global, interests first. it, policymakers will have to return to
The populist onslaught has, under- what worked in the past, finding new ways
standably, prompted many liberals to to reconcile national accountability and
conclude that nationalism itself is a threat international cooperation in a globalized
to the U.S.-led liberal order. Yet histori- word. The proper response to populism,
cally, liberalism and nationalism have in other words, is not to abandon liberal
often been complementary. After World internationalism but to re-embed it.
War II, the United States crafted a liberal
order that balanced the need for interna- THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
tional cooperation with popular demands Nationalism is generally understood as
for national autonomy, curbing the the doctrine that the cultural unit of the
aggressive nationalist impulses that had nation, whether defined along civic or
proved so disastrous in the interwar years. ethnic lines, should be congruent with
The postwar order was based on strong the political unit of the state. For most of
history, political loyalties did not coincide
JACK SNYDER is Robert and Renée Belfer with national boundaries. This began to
Professor of International Relations at Columbia
University and the author of From Voting to change in early modern Europe following
Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict. the Protestant Reformation, as centralized
TheTheCSS Point
Broken Bargain
Meeting in the middle: Viktor Orban greets Angela Merkel in Budapest, February 2015
states secured monopolies on violence however, different ethnic groups gained
and legal authority within their territory, political consciousness while still living
gradually displacing the Catholic Church together in multinational empires—there,
and transnational dynastic networks. At homogeneity was achieved not through
the same time, early commercial capitalism assimilating civic institutions but through
was shifting economic power away from war, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion.) One
rural landlords and toward the thriving of the most widely invoked theorists of
urban middle classes. The state increas- nationalism, Ernest Gellner, argued that
ingly fused with its nation, a distinctive this process of internal cultural homogeni-
people that contributed blood and treasure zation was driven by the requirements of
to the state and that, in exchange, insisted industrial capitalism. In order to partici-
on the right to participate in government. pate in national economies, workers
Over time, the nationalist claim to popular needed to speak the national language
self-determination became the hand- and be fully integrated into the national
maiden of democracy. culture. In countries with a strong civic
During the nineteenth century, nation- state, these pressures transformed the
states in western Europe (as well as Euro- nation-state into a culturally, politically,
pean settler colonies such as the United and economically integrated unit.
States) developed strong civic institutions, By the early decades of the twentieth
such as universalistic legal codes and century, however, tensions had begun to
T I B O R I LY E S / A P
national educational systems, that could emerge between liberal capitalism and
assimilate diverse groups into a shared nationalist democracy. Nineteenth-century
cultural identity. (In eastern European capitalism relied on automatic market
countries and other late-developing states, controls, such as the gold standard, to
March/April 2019 55
Jack Snyder
regulate financial relations between states. international order to manage this ten-
Governments lacked both the will and sion. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s
the ability to intervene in the economy, Fourteen Points called for a world of
whether by spending to counteract independent national democracies, and
downturns in the business cycle or by his proposal for a League of Nations
acting as the lender of last resort to promised a peaceful means for resolving
forestall bank runs. Instead, they let the international disputes. In practice, the
invisible hand of the market correct United States refused to join the League
imbalances, imposing painful costs on of Nations, and the British and the
the vast majority of their citizens. French ensured that the Treaty of Ver-
This laissez-faire policy became sailles humiliated Germany. But despite
politically untenable during the late these shortcomings, the interwar liberal
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, order functioned, for a time. The 1922
as more and more people gained the right Washington Naval Treaty initially helped
to vote. After the crash of 1929 and the prevent a naval arms race between Japan
Great Depression, enfranchised citizens and the Western allies. The 1925 Pact of
could demand that their national leaders Locarno guaranteed Germany’s western
assert control over the economy in order border. And the 1924 Dawes Plan and the
to protect them from harsh economic 1929 Young Plan provided the Weimar
adjustments. In some countries, such as government with enough liquidity to pay
Germany and Japan, this led to the ascent reparations while also funding urban
of militantly nationalist governments that infrastructure improvements and social
created state-directed cartel economies welfare provisions. The system held until
and pursued imperial expansion abroad. the collapse of the international economy
In others, such as the United States after 1929. In both Germany and Japan,
under President Franklin Roosevelt, the resulting economic crisis discredited
governments instituted a form of social liberal and social democratic political
democratic capitalism, in which the state parties, leading to the rise of authoritarian
provided a social safety net and launched nationalists who promised to defend their
employment programs during hard times. people against the vicissitudes of the
In both cases, states were attempting to market and the treachery of foreign and
address what the economic historian Karl domestic enemies.
Polanyi, in The Great Transformation, It was only after World War II that
identified as the central tension of liberal liberal internationalists, led by those in
democratic capitalism: the contradiction the United States and the United King-
between democratic rule, with its dom, learned how to manage the tension
respect for popular self-determination, between free markets and national
and market logic, which holds that the autonomy. The Marshall Plan, in which
economy should be left to operate with the United States, beginning in 1948,
limited government interference. provided financial assistance to western
During the interwar years, the world’s Europe, did more than provide capital
leading liberal powers—France, the for postwar reconstruction. It also condi-
United Kingdom, and the United States— tioned this aid on governments opening
had made tentative efforts to create an their economies to international trade,
TheTheCSS Point
Broken Bargain
thereby strengthening liberal political The Bretton Woods system had relied
coalitions between workers (who ben- on countries fixing their exchange rates
efited from cheaper goods imported from with the U.S. dollar, which was in turn
abroad) and export-oriented capitalists backed by gold. But already by the early
(who gained access to global markets 1970s, chronic U.S. trade deficits and the
for their products). The institutions that increasing competitiveness of European
came out of the 1944 Bretton Woods and Japanese exports were making this
conference, including the World Bank system untenable. At the same time,
and the IMF, offered loans and financial the United States was experiencing
aid so that states could adjust to the “stagflation”—a combination of high
fluctuations of the international market. As unemployment and high inflation that
originally intended, this postwar system, was resistant to the traditional Keynesian
which included the precursor to the EU, strategies, such as government spending,
the European Economic Community, as on which postwar economic management
well as the Bretton Woods institutions, had relied. In response, U.S. President
was designed not to supersede national Richard Nixon suspended the dollar’s
states but to allow them to cooperate convertibility to gold in 1971, moving
while retaining policy autonomy. Cru- toward an unregulated market system of
cially, leading democracies such as France, floating exchange rates. Other structural
the United Kingdom, the United States, developments also put embedded liberal-
and West Germany decided to share ism under strain: the globalization of
some of their sovereignty in international production and markets strengthened
organizations, which made their nation- the relative power of capital, which was
states stronger rather than weaker. In highly mobile, over labor, which was less
more recent decades, however, these so. This weakened the power of tradi-
hard-won lessons have been set aside. tional labor unions, undermining the
capital-labor bargain at the center of the
DISEMBEDDING LIBERALISM postwar order.
For the first few decades following These economic trends were accom-
World War II, embedded liberalism— panied by ideological developments that
characterized by strong domestic challenged both core principles of embed-
welfare states supported by interna- ded liberalism: social democratic regulation
tional institutions—succeeded in of the economy and the political primacy
granting autonomy and democratic of the nation-state. The first of these
legitimacy to nation-states while developments was the rise of free-market
curbing aggressive nationalism. Yet as fundamentalism, pioneered by economists
early as the 1970s, this arrangement such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton
came under pressure from structural Friedman and adopted by political leaders
changes to the global economy and such as British Prime Minister Margaret
ideological assaults from libertarians Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald
and advocates of supra- and trans- Reagan. Beginning with Thatcher’s
nationalism. The resulting erosion of election in 1979, these leaders and their
embedded liberalism has paved the way ideological backers sought to drastically
for the nationalist revival of today. curtail the welfare state and return to the
March/April 2019 57
Jack Snyder
laissez-faire policies of the nineteenth put considerable power in the hands of

century. This market fundamentalism unelected technocrats. Europeans who
was initially used by the right as a cudgel are unhappy with EU policies have no
against the social democratic left, but way to vote out the bureaucrats in
over time it was adopted by leaders of Brussels; their only effective way to
center-left parties, such as French Presi- impose democratic accountability is
dent François Mitterrand, U.S. President through national elections, creating a
Bill Clinton, and British Prime Minister strong incentive for nationalist mobili-
Tony Blair, who during the 1980s and 1990s zation. Different European countries
pushed through financial deregulation and have different policy equilibriums based
cuts to the welfare state. These policies on the preferences of their voters, the
hurt members of the white working class, needs of their national economies, and
alienating them from the political system the rhetorical strategies of their national
and the center-left parties that had tradi- political elites. The search for nationally
tionally protected their interests. tailored solutions, however, is con-
The other element of the ideological founded by the EU’s requirement that
assault on embedded liberalism came all member states agree on a policy in
from enthusiasts of supra- and trans- lockstep. After the 2015 migrant crisis,
nationalism. In an influential 1997 essay in initiated by Germany’s decision to
this magazine, Jessica Mathews argued briefly open its borders, Brussels began
that technological change and the end of cajoling and coercing other EU member
the Cold War had rendered the nation- states to accept some of the migrants
state obsolete. Its functions, according in the name of burden sharing. Small
to Mathews and other, like-minded wonder, then, that Hungarians, Italians,
thinkers, would be usurped by suprana- and Poles who opposed immigration
tional organizations such as the EU, began flocking to nationalist politicians
coordinating institutions such as the who promised to resist pressure from
World Trade Organization, and various the EU. Similar policy divergences on
transnational networks of activists, economic austerity have also been
experts, and innovators. In 1993, for expressed in terms of national resent-
instance, Europe had adopted a comments—between Germans and Greeks,
mon market and created the bureau- for instance—and have fueled mobili-
cratic edifice of the EU to administer the zation against Brussels.
resulting flows of goods, money, and Scholars debate whether populist
people. This was followed by the adop- nationalism in the United States and
tion of the euro in 2002. Although Europe arises mainly from economic or
intended to promote European integra- cultural grievances, but the most per-
tion, the euro effectively stripped its suasive explanation is that nationalist
members of monetary sovereignty, political entrepreneurs have combined
greatly reducing their policy autonomy. both grievances into a narrative about
This transnational paradise, more- perfidious elites who coddle undeserving
over, left little room for democracy. out-groups—immigrants and minorities—
The gradual transfer of authority from while treating the nation’s true people
national governments to Brussels has with contempt. In this view, elites use
TheTheCSS Point
Broken Bargain
bureaucratic and legal red tape to reforms—at the risk, however, of trigger-
shield themselves from accountability ing even more nationalist backlash.
and enforce politically correct speech
norms to silence their critics. This story IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT
doesn’t fit the facts—among other How, then, should leaders respond to the
anomalies, residents of rural regions rise of nationalism? The first step is to
with few immigrants are among the recognize that the tension fueling con-
most dedicated opponents of refugees— temporary nationalism is not new. It is
but it should not be surprising that a precisely the tension identified by
narrative of self-dealing elites and Polanyi, which the embedded liberal
dangerous immigrants has resonated, order of the postwar years was designed
given humans’ well-known propensity to manage: the contradiction between free
for in-group bias. Nativistic prejudice is markets and national autonomy. Illiberal
latent, ready to be activated in times of nationalism has never been particularly
cultural flux or economic strain when successful at governing, but it is a tempta-
traditional elites seem unresponsive. tion whenever liberalism drifts too far
A different face of the contemporary away from democratic accountability.
nationalist revival is the rise of authoritar- Historically, this contradiction has
ian populism in developing states such as been resolved only through an order of
Brazil, India, the Philippines, and Turkey. democratic welfare states supported by
Similar to older rising illiberal powers, international institutions, which grant
such as nineteenth-century Germany, them the policy flexibility to adjust to
these countries have been able to use the market fluctuations without inflicting
so-called advantages of backwardness— undue pain on their citizens. Resolving
cheap labor, technology transfers, and today’s nationalist dilemma will require
state-directed resource allocation—to abandoning laissez-faire economics and
grow rapidly; that is, until they reach unaccountable supranationalism and
approximately one-fourth of U.S. GDP per returning to the principles of embedded
capita. Beyond that point, growth tends liberalism, updated for the present day.
to slow markedly unless states follow in This, in turn, calls for a revival of the
the footsteps of reformers such as Japan, basic practices of postwar liberalism:
South Korea, and Taiwan and adopt national-level democratic accountability,
the full panoply of liberal institutions. economic coordination through interna-
Often, however, their governments tional institutions, and compromise on
eschew liberal reform. Instead, facing competing priorities.
stagnating growth and inefficiencies Today, political polarization makes
from corruption, they double down on compromise seem unlikely. Both illiberal
some combination of demagogic nation- nationalists and cosmopolitan elites
alism, repression, and crippling overin- have, in their own way, doubled down on
vestment in massive infrastructure one-sided solutions, seeking to rout their
projects, which are designed to retain the opponents rather than reach a durable
support of business elites. In such cases, settlement. Trump calls for a border
it is the responsibility of these states’ wall and a ban on Muslim immigration,
liberal economic partners to press for and his opponents continue to speak as
March/April 2019 59
Jack Snyder
if immigration and refugee policy is a populists some of what they want now
matter of abstract legal and moral com- may improve the prospects for embed-
mitments rather than a subject for demo- ded liberal compromises in the future.
cratic deliberation. In Europe, meanwhile, In December 2018, Hungarians began
the Germans cling to austerity policies protesting in massive numbers against
that punish countries such as Greece and their nationalist government’s policy of
Italy, and illiberal populists fume against forced overtime, which had been enacted
EU restrictions on their autonomy. due to labor shortages. Faced with such
Yet the very failure of these one- problems, some of the country’s anti-
sided measures may open up space for immigration zealots may soon begin to
a renewed embedded liberalism. In the reassess their stance.
United States, President Barack Obama’s In the essay in which he coined the
Affordable Care Act, which has mostly term “embedded liberalism,” Ruggie
survived despite egregious assaults from noted that institutionalized power
the right, is a clear example of what a always serves a social purpose. The
modern embedded liberal solution might purpose of the postwar order, in his
look like. It strengthened the welfare view, had been to reach a compromise
state by vastly expanding access to state- between the competing imperatives of
subsidized health care and accommodat- liberal markets and national autonomy.
ing the needs of the private sector—an Today’s crisis of liberalism stems in
echo of the domestic capital-labor large part from a loss of this purpose.
compromises that made the postwar The institutions of the present interna-
order possible. tional order have ceased responding to
Similar arrangements might be the wishes of national electorates.
sought on immigration. For instance, The evidence of the past century
rich countries might agree to coordinate suggests, however, that democratic
investment in poorer ones in order to accountability is necessary for both
stabilize migration flows by improving political stability and economic welfare.
conditions in the source countries. And even today, nation-states remain the
These arrangements should be institu- most reliable political form for achieving
tionalized before the next crisis hits, and sustaining democracy. It is likely
not improvised as they were in 2015–16, impossible to remake them in order to
when Germany and the EU hurriedly better conform to the needs of global
struck a deal with Turkey, paying Ankara markets and transnational institutions,
billions of euros in exchange for housing and even if it were possible, it would be
refugees. And although international a bad idea. Instead, defenders of the
institutions such as the EU should play a liberal project must begin adapting
role in coordinating immigration policy, institutions to once again fit the shape of
democratic states must be allowed to democratic nation-states. This was the
tailor their own policies to the prefer- original dream of the embedded liberal
ences of their voters. Pressuring coun- order; now is the time to revive it.∂
tries to accept more migrants than
they want simply plays into the hands
of illiberal populists. And giving the
the past. The rate of ethnic civil war has

Blood for Soil
THE NEW NATIONALISM

fallen, too.
But now, ethnic nationalism is back
with a vengeance. In 2016, British
The Fatal Temptations of voters chose to leave the EU out of a
Ethnic Politics belief that the postnational vision of
that body undermined British sover-
Lars-Erik Cederman eignty and threatened to overwhelm the
United Kingdom with immigrants from
S
ince the French Revolution, Africa, the Middle East, and the less
nationalism—the idea that state developed parts of Europe. Donald
borders should coincide with Trump won the White House that same
national communities—has constituted year by tapping into fears that the
the core source of political legitimacy United States was being invaded by
around the world. As nationalism spread Mexicans and Muslims. And in office,
from western Europe in the early Trump has not only fanned the flames
nineteenth century, it became increas- of ethnic nationalism; he has also deni-
ingly ethnic in nature. In places where grated and damaged the norms and
the state and the nation did not match institutions designed to save human-
up, such as Germany, Italy, and most kind from such forces.
of eastern Europe, the nation tended to Other leaders around the world have
be defined in terms of ethnicity, which eagerly embraced their own versions
led to violent processes of unification of ethnic nationalism. Across Europe,
or secession. At the beginning of the right-wing populist parties that oppose
twentieth century, ethnic nationalism the EU and immigration have gained
came to disrupt political borders even greater electoral shares. In Austria,
more, leading to the breakup of multi- Hungary, Italy, Norway, and Poland,
ethnic empires, including the Habsburg, among others, they even hold executive
Ottoman, and Russian ones. By chang- power. The brunt of ethnic nationalism
ing the size of Europe’s political units, has targeted migrants and other for-
this undermined the balance of power eigners, but ethnic minorities that have
and contributed to two world wars. long existed in countries have been on
But then came the liberal norms the receiving end of this wave, too, as
and institutions established in the wake illustrated by the resurgence of anti-
of World War II. Principles such as Semitism in Hungary and growing
territorial integrity and universal human discrimination against the Roma in Italy.
rights and bodies such as the United Brazil, India, Russia, and Turkey, once
Nations managed to reduce ethnonation- some of the most promising emerging
alist conflict in most parts of the world. democracies, have increasingly rejected
Today, large interstate wars and violent liberal values. They are defining their
land grabs are almost entirely a thing of governing ideology in narrowly ethnic
terms and giving militants more room to
LARS-ERIK CEDERMAN is Professor of attack those who do not belong to the
International Conflict Research at ETH Zurich. dominant ethnic group. Ethnic nationalism
March/April 2019 61
Lars-Erik Cederman
now exerts more influence than it has at and today, ethnic conflict is far less
any point since World War II. common than it was three decades ago.
That fact has been bemoaned for all A big reason is that governments are
sorts of reasons, from the uptick in hate increasingly accommodating minorities.
crimes against immigrants it has caused That’s what the political scientists
to the damage it has done to the post– Kristian Gleditsch, Julian Wucherpfennig,
World War II order. Yet the scariest and I concluded after analyzing a data
thing about today’s ethnic nationalism is set of ethnic relations that starts in
that it could bring a return to the ills 1993. We found that discrimination
that accompanied its past ascendance: against ethnic groups and their exclusion
major violent upheavals both within and from executive power—major drivers of
among countries. Should ethnic nation- conflict—are declining globally. Out-
alism continue its march, it risks fueling side the exception of the Middle East,
destabilizing civil unrest in multiethnic where minorities in Bahrain, Iraq,
states around the world—and even Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Syria continue
violent border disputes that could reverse to struggle for influence, ethnic groups
the long decline of interstate war. Politi- are increasingly being included in power-
cians need to resist the electoral tempta- sharing deals. Since World War II, the
tions of exclusionary politics at home percentage of the world’s population
and reconfirm their commitment to the that lives in countries engaging in some
norms and institutions of cooperation form of ethnic power sharing has grown
abroad. Those who toy with ethnic from a quarter to roughly a half. Some
nationalism are playing with fire. groups have been granted autonomous
rule—for example, the Acehnese in
IT’S BACK Indonesia and the indigenous Aymara
At the end of the Cold War, there were and Quechua communities in Bolivia.
warning signs that ethnic conflict might The UN’s globe-spanning peacekeeping
return. But at the time, any fear of that operations, meanwhile, are helping
actually happening seemed unwarranted. prevent the outbreak of new hostilities
As the scholar Ted Robert Gurr pointed between old belligerents, and efforts to
out in this magazine in 2000, despite promote democracy are making govern-
the violence in the former Yugoslavia ments more responsive to minorities
and in Rwanda, the frequency of ethnic and thus convincing such groups to
conflict had actually decreased since the settle their scores at the ballot box
mid-1990s. Pointing to inclusive policies rather than on the battlefield.
and pragmatic compromises that had Our data also show that the number
prevented and resolved ethnic conflicts, of rebelling ethnic groups has increased
he argued that the trend toward peace only in the Middle East. Outside that
would continue. Gurr’s essay reflected region, the trend is moving in the oppo-
the liberal optimism that characterized site direction. In the mid-1990s, about
the decades after the Cold War. Global- three percent of the average country’s
ization was transforming the world. population was composed of groups that
Borders seemed to be withering away. rebelled against the government; today,
The optimism was not simply fanciful, the share has fallen to roughly half of
The CSS Point
Blood for Soil
It’ll end in tears: police confront migrants in Roszke, Hungary, September 2015
that. Moreover, based on a global compari- late 2010, rather than marking an
son of the concessions made to various expansion of democracy, brought
ethnic groups in terms of rights, auton- instability and strife.
omy, and power sharing, we found strong Throughout the nineteenth and
evidence that such moves have helped twentieth centuries, nationalism tended
prevent new conflicts and end old ones. to appear in waves, and it is unlikely that
By and large, the post–Cold War efforts to the current one has finished washing
stave off ethnic nationalism and prevent over the world. Moreover, it comes at a
war appear to have worked relatively well. time when the bulwarks against conflict
Yet there have long been signs that it appear to be giving way: democracies
is too soon to declare victory over ethnic around the world are backsliding, and
nationalism. Around the turn of the peacekeeping budgets are under renewed
millennium, right-wing populist parties pressure. Ever since it first appeared,
gained strength in Europe. In 2005, the ethnic nationalism has had violent
treaty to establish an EU constitution consequences. There is good reason to
MAR KO D J U R I CA / R E U T E R S
was defeated by French and Dutch worry that the current surge will, too.
voters, suggesting that Europeans still
cared greatly about national identity. In THE ROAD TO VIOLENCE
2008, the financial crisis started to Rising ethnic nationalism leads to
undermine confidence in globalization conflict in several different ways. The
(and weakened the EU). The upheavals key variable, recent research has found,
that rocked the Arab world beginning in is access to power. When ethnic groups
March/April 2019 63
Lars-Erik Cederman
lack it, they are especially likely to seek These findings are not limited to
it through violence. Oftentimes in multiethnic groups caught in power struggles
ethnic states, elites of a particular group over the control of existing countries;
come to dominate the government and they also apply to minorities seeking
exclude other, weaker groups, even if self-rule. States usually view such
the leaders’ own group represents a demands as anathema to their sover-
minority of the country’s population. eignty, and so they often resist making
Such is the case in Syria, where Presi- even limited compromises with the
dent Bashar al-Assad, a member of the groups issuing them. They are disin-
Alawite minority, a Shiite sect that clined, for example, to grant them
composes 12 percent of the popula- regional autonomy. This stubborn-
tion, nominally runs a country that is ness, in turn, tends to radicalize the
74 percent Sunni. That disparity has aggrieved minority, causing them to
fueled widespread grievances among aim instead for full-fledged indepen-
other ethnic groups and led to a civil war dence, often through violence. Look no
that has so far caused at least 400,000 further than the Catholics in Northern
deaths and triggered a wave of migra- Ireland, the Basques in Spain, the
tion that has destabilized Europe. Most Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, and several
of the time, however, the groups strug- different ethnic groups in Myanmar.
gling for power are minorities, such as Ethnic nationalism can cause conflict
the Tutsis, who launched a civil war in in another way, too: by leading to calls
Rwanda in 1990, or the Sunnis in Iraq, for territorial unity among a single ethnic
who are still fighting to win a seat at group divided by international borders,
the table there. which encourages rebels to rise up
It’s not just a lack of political power against their current states. After the
that can motivate ethnic groups to take breakup of Yugoslavia left ethnic Serbs
up arms under the banner of nationalism; stranded in several countries, their
economic, social, and cultural inequality leader, Slobodan Milosevic, capitalized
can, too. Scholars have consistently found on the resulting resentment and ad-
that inequality along ethnic lines increases vanced claims on territory in Croatia
the risk of rebellion. The economist and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fre-
Frances Stewart, for example, has shown quently, nostalgia is invoked. Character-
that such inequality is much more likely izing the collapse of the Soviet Union
to lead to violent conflict than inequality as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe
among individuals, because it is far easier of the century,” Russian President
to mobilize people along ethnic lines. Vladimir Putin has annexed Crimea and
Similarly, my own collaborative re- invaded eastern Ukraine and justified
search has found that the risk of rebellion these moves by talking of the unification
increases rapidly with economic inequal- of the Russian nation. Turkish President
ity along ethnic lines; for example, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drawn
average Chechen is six times as poor as heavily on the past glory of the Otto-
the average Russian, which translates man Empire to extend his country’s
into a tenfold increase in the propensity influence far beyond its current borders.
for rebellion. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
The CSS Point
has similarly invoked the Habsburg

empire, accepting Russian help to back
Hungarian-minority militias inside
Ukraine that advocate separatism.
Ethnic nationalism is most likely to
lead to civil war, but it can also trigger
interstate war by encouraging leaders
to make the sorts of domestic appeals
that can increase tensions with foreign
countries. That dynamic has been at Bring the
play in the disputes between Armenia
and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, REAL WORLD
and Greece and Turkey. Researchers
have found some evidence that politi- to your classroom
cal inequality along ethnic lines makes
things worse: when ethnonationalist
leaders believe that their kin commu- Case Studies
nities in neighboring countries are
being treated badly, they are more
inclined to come to their rescue with
military force. American foreign policy
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leaders are typically hostile to interna-
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power sharing contradict their ethnic
group’s rightful dominance. They view Women, peace and security
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operations, as direct threats to their
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65
Lars-Erik Cederman
impulses, further encouraging the steady progress toward peace, the trend
erosion of the postwar consensus that could soon be reversed.
put a cap on ethnic conflict.
If all of these are the risk factors for THE PATH TO PEACE
ethnic nationalism sliding into ethnic In order to head off such destructive
conflict, then where are they most preva- consequences, it may be tempting to see
lent today? Statistical analysis suggests ethnic nationalism as part of the solu-
that the ethnically diverse but still relation rather than the problem. Instead of
tively peaceful countries most at risk of trying to resist such urges, the thinking
descending into violence are Ethiopia, goes, one should encourage them, since
Iran, Pakistan, and the Republic of the they are likely to bring political borders
Congo. These are all developing coun- in line with national borders, thus elimi-
tries with histories of conflict and where nating the grievances at the root of the
minorities face discrimination and problem. Some scholars, such as Edward
exclusion from power. Luttwak, have even recommended that
The risk of conflict in the developed ethnic groups simply be allowed to fight
world is much lower, but even there, it out, arguing that the short-term pain
ethnic nationalism could well threaten of war is worth the long-term benefit of
peace. In Spain, the rise of the new the stability that comes when ethnic
right-wing populist party Vox has put dominance replaces ethnic diversity. Yet
pressure on two center-right parties, the as the case of Syria has shown, such
People’s Party and Citizens, to become harsh strategies tend to perpetuate
even less willing to compromise with resentment, not consolidate peace.
Catalan nationalists, setting the stage Others, such as the political scientist
for an enduring standoff that could turn Chaim Kaufmann, contend that the
violent if Madrid resorts to even harsher best way to diffuse ethnic conflict is to
repressive measures. In Northern Ireland, partition a state along ethnic lines and
Brexit could lead to the reimposition of then transfer populations among the new
customs checks on the border with the political entities so that each group has
Republic of Ireland, a development that its own territory. After World War II,
could destroy the agreement that has for example, Western policymakers
kept the peace since 1998. In eastern supported population transfers in the
Europe, the return of ethnic nationalism hopes that they would lead to, in the
threatens to reawaken so-called frozen words of the historian Tony Judt, “a
conflicts, interstate disputes that were Europe of nation states more ethnically
stopped in place first by the Soviet Union homogenous than ever before.” The
and then by the EU. Beyond the outbreak problem with this option, however, is
of new wars, the weakening of liberal that even with large-scale ethnic cleans-
pressures to share power and respect ing—which tends to be both bloody and
minority rights will likely embolden morally dubious—there is no guarantee
ethnonationalists to perpetuate ongoing that separation will create sufficiently
conflicts—particularly the long-standing neat dividing lines. If Catalonia broke
ones in Israel, Myanmar, and Turkey. free from Spain, for example, a new
Across the globe, after seven decades of minority problem would crop up within
The CSS Point
Blood for Soil
Catalonia, since many non-Catalans will have to address its deeper causes, not
would still live there. just its immediate effects. Both supply
Of course, where widespread vio- and demand—that is, the willingness of
lence and hatred have destroyed all governments to implement ethnonation-
potential for peaceful cohabitation, alist policies and the appetite for such
ethnic separation may well constitute policies among populations—will have
the only viable solution. That’s why, for to be decreased.
example, the two-state solution to the On the supply side, political elites
Israeli-Palestinian conflict still enjoys need to reinstate the informal taboo
widespread support, at least outside against explicitly discriminatory appeals
Israel. Yet the problem remains that and policies. Ultimately, there is no
there are no clear criteria for just how place for the tolerance of intolerance.
violent and generally hopeless a situa- What is required is courage on the part
tion needs to be to justify division. of centrist politicians to fight bigotry
Without such a clear benchmark, seces- and defend the basic principles of
sionism could destabilize interstate human decency. Multiethnic democra-
borders around the world. Disgruntled cies will also have to take more forceful
groups and irredentist states the world steps to resist foreign attempts to stoke
over would have more cause to resort grievances among their ethnic groups
to arms to boost their influence. and sow domestic divisions, such as
Although there are good reasons to Russia’s interference campaign during
be skeptical of these radical solutions of the 2016 U.S. presidential election,
ethnic separation, nationalism cannot when, for example, Kremlin-backed
be wished away. Despite the emergence operatives masqueraded as Black Lives
of such organizations as the EU, supra- Matter activists on social media to stir
national bodies are not going to replace up racial conflict.
nation-states anytime soon, because Within international organizations,
people still mostly identify with their governments must defend core liberal
nation, rather than with remote and values more strenuously. In the case of
unelected regional bodies. For the EU, the EU, that means cutting the financial
for example, the problem is not the lack support for illiberal member states
of stronger decision-making authority and perhaps even creating a new, truly
but the absence of pan-European liberal European organization with
solidarity of the type that would allow, more stringent membership criteria.
say, Germans to see themselves as part It also means doubling down on the
of the same political community as promotion of inclusive practices such
Greeks. Thus, any hope of replacing the as power sharing. The UN and regional
nation-state is bound to be futile in the organizations, such as the EU and the
near future. African Union, have done much to
encourage such solutions. A weakening
CONTAINING NATIONALISM of these organizations could also under-
Nationalism should therefore be con- mine the norms they are reinforcing.
tained, not abolished. And to truly Inclusive practices tend to spread from
contain ethnic nationalism, governments state to state, but so do exclusive ones:
March/April 2019 67
Lars-Erik Cederman
just as it did in 1930s Europe, the com- Setting aside the question of whether
mitment to power sharing and group and how the EU should be reformed,
rights has now started to slip in eastern European political elites would do well
Europe and in other parts of the world, to address their own homemade prob-
including sub-Saharan Africa. lems of socioeconomic inequality and
As for the demand side, ethnic regional underdevelopment. They
nationalism tends to attract the most should stop pretending that draconian
support from those who have been cuts to immigration levels will do the
disadvantaged by globalization and trick when it comes to countering
laissez-faire capitalism. Populist dema- populism and ethnic nationalism.
gogues have an easy time exploiting As the violent first half of the twentieth
growing socioeconomic inequalities, century recedes into history, it becomes
especially those between states’ geo- harder and harder to invoke the specter
graphic centers and their peripheries, of ethnic conflict. It would be tragic if
and they blame ethnically distinct memories of that past were forgotten.
immigrants or resident minorities. Part For what they suggest is that the jour-
of the answer is to retool immigration ney from ethnic nationalism to ethnic
policies so as to better integrate new- war may not be so long, after all.∂
comers. Yet without policies that reduce
inequality, populist appeals that depict
out-groups as welfare sponges will only
gain traction. So governments hoping
to tamp down ethnic nationalism should
set up programs that offer job training
to the unemployed in depressed regions,
and they should prevent the further
hollowing out of welfare programs.
Although the economic problems on
which ethnic nationalism feeds are most
acute in the United States and the
United Kingdom, inequality has been
increasing across western Europe, and
many of the welfare states in the region
have been hit hard by austerity policies.
Ultimately, however, the answer to
ethnic nationalism goes beyond narrow
economic fixes; political elites must
argue explicitly for ethnic tolerance and
supranational cooperation, portraying
them as matters of basic human decency
and security. In Europe, politicians have
preferred to use the EU as a scapegoat
for their own failings rather than point
out its crucial contribution to peace.
The CSS Point
ESSAYS
Instead of expanding the

liberal world order,
the United States and its
partners should consolidate
the gains it has reaped.
—Jennifer Lind and
William Wohlforth
The Future of the Liberal Order Is The New Containment

Conservative Michael Mandelbaum 123
Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth 70
Educate to Liberate
Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits? Carla Norrlof 132
M A R C O VA C C A / G E T T Y I M A G E S
Jason Furman and Lawrence H.

Summers 82 Less Than Zero
Fred Krupp, Nathaniel Keohane, and
No Country for Strongmen Eric Pooley 142
Ruchir Sharma 96
The Kurdish Awakening

Henri J. Barkey 107
The Future of the Liberal

Order Is Conservative
A Strategy to Save the System
T
he liberal world order is in peril. Seventy-five years after
the United States helped found it, this global system of alliances,
institutions, and norms is under attack like never before.
From within, the order is contending with growing populism, nation-
alism, and authoritarianism. Externally, it faces mounting pressure
from a pugnacious Russia and a rising China. At stake is the survival
of not just the order itself but also the unprecedented economic
prosperity and peace it has nurtured.
The order is clearly worth saving, but the question is how. Keep
calm and carry on, some of its defenders argue; today’s difficulties
will pass, and the order is resilient enough to survive them. Others
appreciate the gravity of the crisis but insist that the best response
is to vigorously reaffirm the order’s virtues and confront its external
challengers. Bold Churchillian moves—sending more American
troops to Syria, offering Ukraine more help to kick out pro-Russian
forces—would help make the liberal international order great again.
Only by doubling down on the norms and institutions that made the
liberal world order so successful, they say, can that order be saved.
Such defenders of the order tend to portray the challenge as a
struggle between liberal countries trying to sustain the status quo and
dissatisfied authoritarians seeking to revise it. What they miss,
however, is that for the past 25 years, the international order crafted
by and for liberal states has itself been profoundly revisionist, aggres-
sively exporting democracy and expanding in both depth and
JENNIFER LIND is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and an Associate
Fellow at Chatham House.
WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.
The
The Future of the Liberal CSS
Order Point
Is Conservative
breadth. The scale of the current problems means that more of the
same is not viable; the best response is to make the liberal order
more conservative. Instead of expanding it to new places and new
domains, the United States and its partners should consolidate the
gains the order has reaped.
The debate over U.S. grand strategy has traditionally been por-
trayed as a choice between retrenchment and ambitious expansionism.
Conservatism offers a third way: it is a prudent option that seeks to
preserve what has been won and minimize the chances that more will
be lost. From a conservative vantage point, the United States’ other
choices—at one extreme, undoing long-standing alliances and institu-
tions or, at the other extreme, further extending American power and
spreading American values—represent dangerous experiments. This
is especially so in an era when great-power politics has returned and
the relative might of the countries upholding the order has shrunk.
It is time for Washington and its liberal allies to gird themselves for
a prolonged period of competitive coexistence with illiberal great
powers, time to shore up existing alliances rather than add new ones,
and time to get out of the democracy-promotion business. Supporters
of the order may protest this shift, deeming it capitulation. On the
contrary, conservatism is the best way to preserve the global position
of the United States and its allies—and save the order they built.
A REVISIONIST ORDER
Since World War II, the United States has pursued its interests in
part by creating and maintaining the web of institutions, norms, and
rules that make up the U.S.-led liberal order. This order is not a
myth, as some allege, but a living, breathing framework that shapes
much of international politics. It is U.S.-led because it is built on a
foundation of American hegemony: the United States provides security
guarantees to its allies in order to restrain regional competition, and
the U.S. military ensures an open global commons so that trade can
flow uninterrupted. It is liberal because the governments that sup-
port it have generally tried to infuse it with liberal norms about eco-
nomics, human rights, and politics. And it is an order—something
bigger than Washington and its policies—because the United States
has partnered with a posse of like-minded and influential countries
and because its rules and norms have gradually assumed a degree of
independent influence.
March/April 2019 71
This order has expanded over time. In the years after World War II,
it grew both geographically and functionally, successfully integrating
two rising powers, West Germany and Japan. Supporting liberalism
and interweaving their security policies with the United States’, these
countries accepted the order, acting as “responsible stakeholders” well
before the term was optimistically applied to China. As the Cold War
played out, NATO added not just West Germany but also Greece, Tur-
key, and Spain. The European Economic Community (the EU’s prede-
cessor) doubled its membership. And core economic institutions, such
as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (IMF), broadened their remits.
After the Cold War, the liberal order expanded dramatically. With
the Soviet Union gone and China still weak, the states at the core of the
order enjoyed a commanding global posi-
tion, and they used it to expand their
For the past 25 years, system. In the Asia-Pacific, the United
the international order States strengthened its security com-
crafted by and for liberal mitments to Australia, Japan, the Philip-
states has itself been pines, South Korea, and other partners.
In Europe, NATO and the EU took on
profoundly revisionist. more and more members, widened and
deepened cooperation among their
members, and began intervening far beyond Europe’s borders. The EU
developed “neighborhood policies” to enhance security, prosperity,
and liberal practices across Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa;
NATO launched missions in Afghanistan, the Gulf of Aden, and Libya.
For liberals, this is simply what progress looks like. And to be sure,
much of the order’s dynamism—say, the GATT’s transformation into
the more permanent and institutional World Trade Organization, or
the UN’s increasingly ambitious peacekeeping agenda—met with broad
support among liberal and authoritarian countries alike. But some key
additions to the order clearly constituted revisionism by liberal countries,
which, tellingly, were the only states that wanted them.
Most controversial were the changes that challenged the principle of
sovereignty. Under the banner of “the responsibility to protect,” gov-
ernments, nongovernmental organizations, and activists began pushing
a major strengthening of international law with the goal of holding
states accountable for how they treated their own people. Potent secu-
rity alliances such as NATO and powerful economic institutions such as
The CSS Point
the IMF joined the game, too,

adding their muscle to the
campaign to spread liberal
conceptions of human rights,
freedom of information, mar-
kets, and politics.
Democracy promotion as-
sumed a newly prominent role
in U.S. grand strategy, with
President Bill Clinton speak-
ing of “democratic enlarge-
ment” and President George W.
Bush championing his “freedom
agenda.” The United States and its
allies increasingly funded nongov-
ernmental organizations to build civil
society and spread democracy around
the world, blurring the line between pub-
lic and private efforts. U.S. taxpayers, for
example, have footed the bill for the National
Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit that promotes democracy
and human rights in China, Russia, and elsewhere. Meddling in other
states’ domestic affairs is old hat, but what was new was the overt and
institutionalized nature of these activities, a sign of the order’s post–
Cold War mojo. As Allen Weinstein, the co-founder of the National
Endowment for Democracy, admitted in a 1991 interview, “A lot of
what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
As never before, state power, legal norms, and public-private partner-
ships were harnessed together to expand the order’s—and Washington’s—
geopolitical reach. Perhaps the clearest example of these heightened
ambitions came in the Balkans, where, in 1999, NATO harnessed its mili-
tary power to the emerging “responsibility to protect” norm and coerced
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to acquiesce to Kosovo’s de
facto independence—after which the United States and its allies openly
joined forces with local civil society groups to topple him from power.
It was a remarkably bold move. In just a few months, the United States
and its allies transformed the politics of an entire region that had tradi-
tionally been considered peripheral, priming it for incorporation into
the security and economic structures dominated by the liberal West.
March/April 2019 73
To say that all of this represented revisionism is not to equate it

morally with, say, Beijing’s militarization in the South China Sea or
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and electoral meddling in the United
States and Europe. Rather, the point is that the order’s horizons
have expanded dramatically, with state power, new legal norms,
overt and covert actions, and public-private partnerships together
stretching the order wider and pushing it deeper. No country these
days is consistently interested in maintaining the status quo; we are
all revisionists now. Revisionism undertaken by illiberal states is
often seen as mere power grabbing, but revisionism undertaken by
liberal states has also resulted in geopolitical rewards: expanded alli-
ances, increased influence, and more perquisites for the chief sponsors
of the order, the United States above all.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD

There are appropriate times to expand, but today is not one of them.
Although the liberal order is still backed by a powerful coalition of
states, that coalition’s margin of superiority has narrowed markedly.
In 1995, the United States and its major allies produced some 60 per-
cent of global output (in terms of purchasing power parity); now, that
figure stands at 40 percent. Back then, they were responsible for
80 percent of global defense expenditures; today, they account for just
52 percent. It is becoming more difficult to maintain the order, let
alone expand it. All the while, the order is suffering from an internal
crisis of legitimacy that is already proving to be a constraint, as war-
weary Americans, Euroskeptical Britons, and others across the West
have taken to the polls to decry so-called globalist elites.
The order’s illiberal challengers, meanwhile, have gotten savvier
about acting on their long-held dissatisfaction. China and Russia
have insulated themselves from external influences by manipulating
information, controlling the media, and deploying new information-
age techniques to monitor their populations and keep them docile.
They have modernized their militaries and embraced clever asym-
metric strategies to put the order’s defenders on the back foot. The
result is that the United States and its allies not only command a
slimmer power advantage relative to in the halcyon 1990s but also
face a tougher task in sustaining the order.
One might argue that the order should neutralize these challengers
by bringing them in. Indeed, such was the motivation behind the
The
Order Point
Is Conservative
U.S. strategy of engaging a rising China. But even though illiberal

countries can participate productively in many aspects of the order,
they can never be true insiders. Their statist approach to economics
and politics makes it impossible for them to follow Germany’s and
Japan’s path and accept any order that is U.S.-led or liberal. They see
U.S.-dominated security arrangements as potential threats directed
at them. And they have no interest in making concessions on democ-
racy and human rights, since doing so would undermine vital tools
of their authoritarian control. Nor do they wish to embrace liberal
economic principles, which run afoul of the (often corrupt) role of the
state in their economies.
Given their fundamental aversion to the core precepts of the liberal
order, it’s no wonder that illiberal powers have invested resources in
creating alternative institutions reflecting their own statist principles—
bodies such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the New
Development Bank, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank. There was never a chance that a
powerful, undemocratic Russia was going to join NATO, just as there
was never a chance that China was going to be satisfied with U.S.
military dominance in Asia. U.S. security commitments are directed
against these very states. Washington and its allies buy into rules
and values that these countries see as threatening. As long as the
security commitments remain in place and the expansionist project
continues, illiberal states will never fully integrate into the order.
Perhaps, one might argue, the order’s authoritarian adversaries are
paper tigers. In that case, the order has no reason to adopt a conservative
stance; all it has to do is wait for these fragile governments to meet their
inevitable demise. The problem with this bet is that it lay behind the
liberal order’s recent expansion, and yet over the past couple of decades,
illiberal governments have only grown more authoritarian. Indeed,
history has shown that great powers’ domestic regimes rarely collapse
in peacetime; the Soviet case was an anomaly. Cheering on political
dissent within great powers from afar rarely succeeds, and by feeding
narratives about their being encircled by threats, it often backfires.
The bottom line is that the external challenges to the order are
happening now. Insisting on continued expansion while waiting for
adversaries to decline, liberalize, and accept American leadership is
likely to only exacerbate the problems afflicting the order. If that
happens, the ability of the United States and its allies to sustain the
March/April 2019 75
order will decline faster than will the capability of their opponents to
challenge it. And a failure to head off the rising costs of maintaining
the order will only increase the domestic political pressure to abandon
it altogether.
CONSERVATISM IN PRACTICE
A more conservative order would recognize that both internal and
external circumstances have changed and would adjust accordingly.
First and most important, this demands a shift to a status quo mindset in
Washington and allied capitals. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s
occasional bluster about withdrawing from the world, his administra-
tion has retained all of the United States’ existing commitments
while adding ambitious new ones, notably an effort to radically scale
back Iran’s influence. And although the Obama administration was often
accused of retrenchment, it, too, kept U.S. commitments in place and
even tried its hand at regime change in Libya. Under a conservative
approach, Washington would set aside such revisionist projects in
order to concentrate its attention and resources on managing great-
power rivalries.
As part of this, the United States should reduce the expectation
that it will take on new allies. At the very least, any prospective ally
should bring more capabilities than costs—a litmus test that has not
been applied in recent years. Because the liberal order is in dire need
of consolidation rather than expansion, it makes no sense to add
small and weak states facing internal problems, especially if including
them will exacerbate tensions among existing allies or, worse, with
great-power rivals. In July 2018, NATO, with U.S. support, formally
invited Macedonia to join the alliance (reviving a dispute with Greece
over the name of the country), and the Trump administration has
backed NATO membership for Bosnia, too (over the objections of the
Serbian minority there). These straws may not break the camel’s
back, but the principle of limitless expansion might.
The case of Taiwan shows what a successful conservative approach
looks like in practice, demonstrating how the United States can deter
a rival great power from expanding while preventing a partner from
provoking it. For decades, Washington has declared that the island’s
future should be resolved peacefully. Leaders on both sides of the Tai-
wan Strait have sometimes sought to overturn the status quo, as when
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian began making pro-independence
The
Order Point
Is Conservative
moves after he was elected in 2000. In response, U.S. President

George W. Bush publicly warned Chen against unilaterally changing
the status quo—a tough stance toward a longtime U.S. partner that
helped keep the peace. This policy may be tested again, as demographic
and economic trends strengthen the Taiwanese people’s sense of na-
tional identity, as China grows more assertive, and as voices in the
United States call for an unambiguously pro-Taiwan policy. But Wash-
ington should hold fast: for decades, conservatism has served it, and
the region, well.
A conservative order would also entail drawing clearer lines between
official efforts to promote democracy and those undertaken inde-
pendently by civil society groups. By example and activism, vibrant
civil societies in the United States and other liberal countries can
do much to further democracy abroad. When governments get in
the game, however, the results tend to backfire. As the political sci-
entists Alexander Downes and Lindsey
O’Rourke found in their comprehen-
sive study, foreign-imposed regime
The United States should
change rarely leads to improved rela- reduce the expectation that
tions and frequently has the opposite it will take on new allies.
effect. Liberal states should stand
ready to help when a foreign government itself seeks assistance. But
when one resists help, it is best to stay out. Meddling will only ag-
gravate that government’s concerns about violations of sovereignty
and tar opposition forces with the charge of being foreign pawns.
Far from ceding power to illiberal great powers, a strategy of
conservatism would directly address those external threats. Part of
the reason those countries contest the order is that it exacerbates
their insecurities. Restraining the order’s expansionist impulses
would reveal just how much of illiberal states’ current revisionism
is defensive in nature and how much is driven by sheer ambition. It
could also stymie potential balancing against the order by illiberal
states—China, Iran, Russia, and others. Although these revisionists
have many divergent geopolitical and economic interests that currently
limit their cooperation, the more their rulers worry that their grip
on power is under threat from a liberal order, the more they will be
inclined to overcome their differences and team up to check liberal
powers. Reduce that fear, and there will be more opportunities for
the liberal states to divide and rule, or at least divide and deter.
March/April 2019 77
A less revisionist order could take the edge off of growing great-
power rivalry in another way, by fully exploiting the advantages of
a defensive, rather than offensive, stance. In general, preserving the
status quo is cheaper, easier, and less dangerous than overturning it,
as strategists from Sun-tzu to Thomas Schelling have argued. The
order is deeply set, legitimate, and institutionalized. When it re-
mains committed to the status quo, it is easy for its defenders to set
redlines clarifying which challenges will be reversed and which
won’t, a strategy that can help contain adversaries and limit rivalry.
Yet when all the players in the game are revisionists, setting unam-
biguous lines becomes much more difficult; what is acceptable to-
day could become unacceptable tomorrow. Shifting to a more clearly
status quo orientation would increase the chances that the United
States and its allies could strike explicit or, more likely, implicit bar-
gains with their rivals. Like any strategic approach, conservatism
offers no guarantees and requires skilled statecraft. But by setting more
realistic goals, it can dramatically increase the likelihood of success.
Greater conservatism would also help bolster the order against inter-
nal challenges. Although these will require domestic policies to address,
because a less ambitious order would provoke less pushback from au-
thoritarian states—and such pushback is costly to deal with—it would
also be a more sustainable order. The higher the costs of maintaining
the order, the more suspicion about it grows, and the harder it gets to
maintain domestic support for it. Polls show that American voters like
the country’s existing alliances. What many balk at are commitments
they see as costly adventures unrelated to core national security con-
cerns. Continued expansion risks feeding those perceptions and gener-
ating a popular backlash that would throw the baby out with the bath
water. Conservatism, by contrast, would minimize that risk.
Conservatism today need not mean conservatism forever. Any
ambitious enterprise, whether it be a political movement or a corpo-
ration, undergoes phases of expansion and phases of consolidation.
After a firm engages in acquisition, for example, the C-suite must
ask whether the new management and workers are fully on board
with the firm’s culture and mission and must address any disloca-
tions caused by the recent changes. Consolidation, then, should be
seen as a prudent reaction to expansion. In the future, conditions
may change such that the order can responsibly start looking for
ways to grow, but that day has not yet arrived.
The
Order Point
Is Conservative
A TIME TO HEAL
One might wonder whether an order grounded in liberal principles
can in fact practice restraint. In the mid-eighteenth century, the
philosopher David Hume warned that the United Kingdom was
prosecuting its wars against illiberal adversaries with “imprudent
vehemence,” contradicting the dictates of the balance of power and
risking national bankruptcy. Perhaps such imprudence is part and
parcel of the foundational ideology and domestic politics of liberal
powers. As the political scientist John Mearsheimer has put it,
“Liberal states have a crusader mentality hardwired into them.”
Indeed, the principles of liberalism apply to all individuals, not
just those who happen to be citizens of a liberal country. On what
basis, then, can a country committed to liberal ideals stand idly by
when they are trampled abroad—especially when that country is
powerful enough to do something about it? In the United States,
leaders often try to square the circle by contending that spreading
democracy actually serves the national interest, but the truth is that
power and principle don’t always go together.
Because liberal convictions are part of their identity, Americans
often feel they should support those who rise up against tyranny.
Perhaps in the abstract one can promise restraint, but when demon-
strators take to Tahrir Square in Cairo, Maidan in Kiev, or Bolotnaya
Square in Moscow, many Americans want their government to stand
with those flying freedom’s flag. And when countries want to join
the order’s key security and economic institutions, Americans want
the United States to say yes, even when there is scant strategic sense
in it. Political incentives encourage this impulse, since politicians in
the United States know that they can score points by bashing any
leader who sells out lovers of liberty.
There is evidence, however, that liberal countries can check their
appetite for spreading virtue. Nineteenth-century British statesmen
liked to think that liberal principles and imperial interests often coin-
cided, but when the two clashed, they almost always chose realism
over idealism—as when the United Kingdom backed the Ottoman
Empire for reasons of realpolitik despite domestic pressure to take
action on behalf of persecuted Christians in the empire. The United
States in the twentieth century had idealistic presidents, such as
Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, but it also had more pragmatic
ones, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.
March/April 2019 79
The period of détente in U.S.-Soviet relations, which lasted

throughout the 1970s, exemplifies the possibility of a liberal order
going on the defensive. During this period, the West largely followed
a live-and-let-live strategy informed by Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger’s controversial maxim to not hold détente hostage to improve-
ments in Moscow’s human rights record. Washington negotiated with
Moscow on arms control and a range of other security issues and held
frequent summits symbolizing its acceptance of the Soviet Union as
a superpower equal. In the 1975 Helsinki Accords, aimed at reducing
East-West tensions, the United States effectively accommodated itself
to the reality of Soviet suzerainty in Eastern Europe.
The essence of the deal was that the United States would render
unto the Soviets roughly a third of the world—while making it clear
that they should not dare come after its two-thirds. To be sure, super-
power competition never truly ceased, and in the 1980s, détente
died out altogether. But while it was in place, the strategy worked
to limit U.S.-Soviet rivalry and facilitate rapprochement with
China. This gave the United States and its allies the breathing room
they needed to get their own houses in order and patch up alliances
torn apart by domestic upheavals, the Vietnam War, and wrangling
over trade and monetary policy. What this history suggests is that
today’s liberal order, for a time at least, can be conservative.
Liberal countries can never be thoroughly status quo actors, for
they foster relatively free economies and civil societies presided
over by governments committed to giving those vibrant forces free
rein. Left to their own devices, those forces will always be revision-
ist—such is the nature of liberalism. But that inherent revisionism
need not prevent leaders of liberal states, responsible for dealing
with the world as it is, from recognizing that conditions have changed
and deciding to trim their sails and tack away from expansion. That
is what those leaders must do now: to protect an order based on
liberalism, they must embrace conservatism.∂
Who’s Afraid of
Budget Deficits?
How Washington Should End Its
Debt Obsession
T
he United States’ annual budget deficit is set to reach
nearly $1 trillion this year, more than four percent of GDP
and up from $585 billion in 2016. As a result of the con-
tinuing shortfall, over the next decade, the national debt—the total
amount owed by the U.S. government—is projected to balloon from
its current level of 78 percent of GDP to 105 percent of GDP. Such
huge amounts of debt are unprecedented for the United States
during a time of economic prosperity.
Does it matter? To some economists and policymakers, the trend
spells disaster, dragging down economic growth and potentially
leading to a full-blown debt crisis before too long. These deficit
fundamentalists see the failure of the Simpson-Bowles plan (a 2010
proposal to sharply cut deficits) as a major missed opportunity and
argue that policymakers should make tackling the national debt a
top priority. On the other side, deficit dismissers say the United
States can ignore fiscal constraints entirely given low interest rates
(which make borrowing cheap), the eagerness of investors in global
capital markets to buy U.S. debt (which makes borrowing easy),
and the absence of high inflation (which means the Federal Reserve
can keep interest rates low).
JASON FURMAN is Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at the Harvard Kennedy
School of Government. He served as Chair of the White House Council of Economic
Advisers from 2013 to 2017.
LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS is President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University Profes-
sor of Economics at Harvard University. He served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from
1999 to 2001 and Director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010.
Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?
Budget buster: Trump after signing a tax bill, Washington, D.C., December 2017
The deficit dismissers have a point. Long-term structural declines in

interest rates mean that policymakers should reconsider the traditional
fiscal approach that has often wrong-headedly limited worthwhile
investments in such areas as education, health care, and infrastructure.
Yet many remain fixated on cutting spending, especially on entitlement
programs such as Social Security and Medicaid. That is a mistake.
Politicians and policymakers should focus on urgent social problems,
not deficits.
But they shouldn’t ignore fiscal constraints entirely. The deficit
fundamentalists are right that the debt cannot be allowed to grow
forever. And the government cannot set budget policy without any
limiting principles or guides as to what is and what is not possible
or desirable.
There is another policy approach that neither prioritizes cutting
deficits nor dismisses them. Unlike in the past, budgeters need not
make reducing projected deficits a priority. But they should ensure
J O NAT HA N E R N ST / R E U T E R S
that, except during downturns, when fiscal stimulus is required, new

spending and tax cuts do not add to the debt. This middle course
would tolerate large and growing deficits without making a major
effort to reduce them—at least for the foreseeable future. But it would
also stop the policy trend of the last two years, which will otherwise
continue to pile up debt.
March/April 2019 83
Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers The CSS Point
Policymakers must also recognize that maintaining existing public

services, let alone meeting new needs, will, over time, require higher
revenues. Today’s large deficits derive more from falling revenues than
rising entitlement spending. More spending is not, by itself, some-
thing to be afraid of. The United States needs to invest in solutions to
its fundamental challenges: finding jobs for the millions of Americans
who have given up hope of finding them, providing health insurance
for the millions who still lack it, and extending opportunities to the
children left behind by an inadequate educational system.
THE TRUTH ABOUT DEFICITS

Economic textbooks teach that government deficits raise interest rates,
crowd out private investment, and leave everyone poorer. Cutting
deficits, on the other hand, reduces interest rates, spurring productive
investment. Those forces may have been important in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, when long-term real interest rates (nominal interest
rates minus the rate of inflation) averaged around four percent and stock
market valuations were much lower than they are today. The deficit
reduction efforts of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton
contributed to the investment-led boom in the 1990s.
Today, however, the situation is very different. Although govern-
ment debt as a share of GDP has risen far higher, long-term real
interest rates on government debt have fallen much lower. As shown
in the table, in 2000, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that
by 2010, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would be six percent. The same
ten-year forecast in 2018 put the figure for 2028 at 105 percent.
Real interest rates on ten-year government bonds, meanwhile, fell
from 4.3 percent in 2000 to an average of 0.8 percent last year.
Those low rates haven’t been manufactured by the Federal Reserve,
nor are they just the result of the financial crisis. They preceded
the crisis and appear to be rooted in a set of deeper forces, includ-
ing lower investment demand, higher savings rates, and widening
inequality. Interest rates may well rise a bit over the next several
years, but financial markets expect them to end up far below where
they stood in the 1980s and 1990s. Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell
has noted that the Fed’s current 2.375 percent interest rate is close
to the neutral rate, at which the economy grows at a sustainable
pace, and financial markets expect that the federal funds rate will
not rise any further.
Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?
Low interest rates mean that governments can sustain higher levels
of debt, since their financing costs are lower. Although the national debt
represents a far larger percentage of GDP than in recent decades, the
U.S. government currently pays around the same proportion of GDP in
interest on its debt, adjusted for
inflation, as it has on average
since World War II. The cost of The Dog That Didn’t Bark
deficits to the Treasury is the Ten-Year Projected Debt and Ten-
degree to which the rate of in- Year Interest Rate, 2000 and 2018
terest paid on the debt exceeds 2000 2018
inflation. By this standard, the
Debt-to-GDP ratio pro-
resources the United States jected for ten years later
6% 105%
needs to devote to interest pay-
ments are also around their his- Real interest rate on
4.3% 0.8%
torical average as a share of the ten-year government bonds
economy. Although both real SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office; U.S. Department of the
Treasury; authors’ calculations.
and nominal interest rates are
set to rise in the coming de-
cade, interest payments on the debt are projected to remain well below
the share reached in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when deficit reduc-
tion topped the economic agenda.
Government deficits also seem to be hurting the economy less than
they used to. Textbook economic theory holds that high levels of gov-
ernment debt make it more expensive for companies to borrow. But
these days, interest rates are low, stock market prices are high relative
to company earnings, and major companies hold large amounts of
cash on their balance sheets. No one seriously argues that the cost of
capital is holding back businesses from investing. Cutting the deficit,
then, is unlikely to spur much private investment.
Moreover, the lower interest rates that would result from smaller
deficits would not be an unambiguously good thing. Many economists
and policymakers, including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
and the economist Martin Feldstein, worry that interest rates are
already too low. Cheap borrowing, they argue, with some merit, has
led investors to put their money in unproductive ventures, created
financial bubbles, and left central bankers with less leeway to cut rates
in response to the next recession. If the United States cut its deficits
by three percent of GDP, enough to stabilize the national debt, interest
rates would fall even further.
March/April 2019 85
Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers The CSS Point
Some commentators worry that rising deficits don’t just slowly eat
away at economic growth, as the textbooks warn; they could lead to a
fiscal crisis in which the United States loses access to credit markets,
sparking an economic meltdown. There is precious little economic
theory or historical evidence to justify this fear. Few, if any, fiscal crises
have taken place in countries that borrow in their own currencies and
print their own money. In Japan, for example, the national debt has
exceeded 100 percent of GDP for almost two decades. But interest
rates on long-term government debt remain near zero, and real inter-
est rates are well below zero. Even in Italy, which does not borrow in
its own currency or set its own monetary policy and, according to the
markets, faces a substantial risk of defaulting, long-term real interest
rates are less than two percent, despite high levels of debt and the
government’s plans for major new spending.
The eurozone debt crisis at the start of this decade is often held up
as a cautionary tale about the perils of fiscal excess. But stagnant
growth (made worse by government spending cuts in the face of a
recession) was as much the cause of the eurozone’s debt problems as
profligate spending. And countries such as those in the eurozone,
which borrow in currencies they do not control, face a far higher risk
of debt crises than countries such as the United States, which have
their own currencies. Countries with their own currencies can always
have their central bank buy government debt or print money to repay
it; countries without them can’t.
Higher levels of debt do have downsides. They could make it harder
for governments to summon the political will to stimulate the economy
in a downturn. But saying that a country would be better off with
lower debt is not the same as saying that it would be better off lowering
its debt. The risks associated with high debt levels are small relative
to the harm cutting deficits would do.
It’s true that future generations will have to pay the interest on
today’s debt, but at current rates, even a 50-percentage-point increase
in the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would raise real interest payments as
a share of GDP by just 0.5 percentage points. That would bring those
payments closer to the top of their historical range, but not into
uncharted territory.
Deficits, then, should not cause policymakers much concern, at least for
now. But some economists adopt an even more radical view. Advocates
of what is known as modern monetary theory (MMT), such as Stephanie
Kelton, an economist and former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’

presidential campaign, have been widely interpreted as arguing that
governments that borrow in their own currencies have no reason to con-
cern themselves with budget constraints. Taxes should be set based not
on spending levels but on macroeconomic conditions, and deficit fi-
nancing has no effect on interest rates. Some politicians have invoked
those positions to suggest that the government need not worry about
debt at all. (Kelton and other MMT supporters claim that this is a mis-
interpretation of their theory, but it’s not clear what their true argu-
ments are, and most of the political supporters of MMT have used it as
a justification for ignoring government debt entirely.)
This goes too far. When the economy is held back by lack of demand
during a downturn, modern monetary theory gives similar answers to
those provided by more mainstream Keynesian theory—that is, that
more spending or lower taxes will have little effect on interest rates.
But the modern monetarist approach is a poor guide to policy in normal
economic times, when it would prescribe large tax hikes to control
inflation—not exactly the policy its advocates highlight.
In truth, no one knows the benefits and costs of different debt
levels—75 percent of GDP, 100 percent of GDP, or even 150 percent of
GDP. According to the best projections, the United States is on course
to exceed these figures over the next 30 years. Although the U.S.
government will remain solvent for the foreseeable future, it would be
imprudent to allow the debt-to-GDP ratio to rise forever in an uncertain
world. Trying to make this situation sustainable without adjusting
fiscal policy or raising interest rates, as recommended by some advocates
of modern monetary theory, is a recipe for hyperinflation.
HOW WE GOT HERE

There is a widely held misconception that the deficit has risen primarily
because government programs have grown more generous. Not so.
Deficits have ballooned because a series of tax cuts have dramatically
reduced government revenue below past projections and historical
levels. The tax cuts passed by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald
Trump totaled three percent of GDP—much more than the projected
increases in entitlement spending over the next 30 years. Those cuts
meant that in 2018, the federal government took in revenue equiva-
lent to just 16 percent of GDP, the lowest level in half a century, except
for a few brief periods in the aftermath of recessions. Without the Bush
The ofCSS
Who’s Afraid BudgetPoint
Deficits?
and Trump tax cuts (and the interest payments on the debt that
went with them), last year’s federal budget would have come close to
balancing. As things stand, however, the Congressional Budget Office
projects that revenue over the next five years will continue to aver-
age less than 17 percent of GDP, a percentage point lower than under
President Ronald Reagan.
Today’s revenue levels are even lower relative to in the past than
these share-of-GDP figures imply. If tax policy is left unchanged,
government revenue should rise as a
share of GDP. In part, this is because of
what economists call “real bracket creep.”
The United States has more
Society has decided that it is fair to tax of a revenue problem than
people making, say, $1 million at a higher an entitlement problem.
rate than those making, say, $50,000.
Over time, economic growth means more people earn higher incomes,
adjusted for inflation, and so more people pay higher tax rates.
More serious than leading to inadequate revenue is the way that tax
cuts in the last 25 years have misallocated resources. They have wors-
ened income inequality and, at best, have done very little for eco-
nomic growth. The most recent tax cut, in 2017, will cost $1.9 trillion
over ten years, but it boosted growth only slightly, if at all, while shift-
ing the distribution of income toward the wealthy and reducing the
number of people with health insurance.
Look abroad, and it becomes obvious that the United States has
more of a revenue problem than an entitlement problem. U.S. spend-
ing on social programs ranks among the lowest in 35 advanced econo-
mies, yet the country has the highest deficit relative to its GDP in the
group. That is because the United States brings in the fifth-lowest
total revenue as a share of GDP among those 35 countries.
The idea that higher spending, particularly on entitlements, is to
blame for rising deficits stems from a combination of faulty numbers
and faulty analysis. Total U.S. government spending, excluding inter-
est payments, amounts to 19 percent of GDP, up only slightly from its
average of 18 percent between 1960 and 2000. Social Security and
Medicare spending are set to rise by more than this over the coming
decades, but that rise will be at least partially offset by other spending
reductions and will do less to increase the deficit in terms of present
value, which accounts for the current value of future spending and
borrowing, than the tax cuts passed in the last two and a half decades.
March/April 2019 89
What’s more, looking at shares of GDP is a bad way to understand the

underlying causes of deficits and how they might shrink. Entitlement
costs have risen not because the programs have become more generous
but largely because the population as a whole has aged, a fact that is mostly
the result of falling birthrates. As retirees’ share of the population grows,
so does spending on Social Security and Medicare. That is not making
government spending more generous to the elderly, and there is no rea-
son why retirees should bear most of the burden of lower birthrates.
One might argue that the rise in entitlement spending caused by
longer life spans represents an increase in the generosity of Social
Security and Medicare, since people are collecting benefits for a lon-
ger period of time. But that is the wrong way to look at it. By 2025,
the standard retirement age for Social Security will complete its rise
from 65 to 67, reducing the time that most people will collect benefits.
Many lower-income Americans, moreover, are dying younger than
they used to. That disturbing trend means that poorer retirees are
collecting less in Social Security payments than before.
There’s another reason that shares of GDP make for a bad way to
measure how much the government does: the things the government
buys cost much more in relative terms than they used to. Over the last
30 years, the cost of both a day in a hospital and a year in college has
risen by a factor of more than 200 relative to the price of a television
set. It’s also getting more expensive for the United States to maintain
its global military advantage as potential adversaries, such as China,
Iran, and Russia, boost their military spending.
At a more abstract level, rising inequality also pushes up the cost of
achieving any given policy goal. Most people acknowledge that the
government has some role to play in redistributing income, even
though they disagree on how large that role should be. For any given
amount of redistribution, more inequality means more spending.
DO NO HARM
Although politicians shouldn’t make the debt their top priority, they
also shouldn’t act as if it doesn’t matter at all. Large mismatches be-
tween revenue and spending will have to be fixed at some point. All
else being equal, it would be better to do so before the amounts in-
volved get out of hand. And since economists aren’t sure just how
costly large deficits are, it would be prudent to keep government debt
in check in case they turn out to be more harmful than expected.
The ofCSS
Deficits?
Even setting aside these macroeconomic considerations, politicians

should remember that running budget deficits does not replace the need
to raise revenue or cut spending; it merely defers it. Sooner or later, gov-
ernment spending has to be paid for. It is hard to budget rationally and
decide what expenditures and tax cuts are worthwhile when one obfus-
cates the ultimate cost of these policies. Policymakers won’t be able to
argue against a poorly designed but well-intentioned spending program
or middle-class tax cut without any limiting principles for fiscal policy.
The right budget strategy must balance several competing consid-
erations: it should get as close as possible to the most economically
efficient policy while remaining understandable and politically sus-
tainable. The optimal policy from an economic standpoint would be
to gradually phase in spending cuts or tax increases at a rate that
would prevent perpetual growth in the national debt as a share of the
economy but would avoid doing serious harm to economic demand
along the way. Such an approach, however, would be complicated and
difficult to understand. Nuance doesn’t sell.
A requirement that the federal government balance its budget or begin
paying down the debt is easier to grasp but would impose far more deficit
reduction than the economy needs or could bear. Such measures are also
politically unsustainable. Even if policymakers passed such legislation to-
morrow, they could not bind their successors to it. Clinton oversaw four
balanced budgets and bequeathed a declining national debt to Bush, but a
decade after Clinton left office, the debt was higher than when he arrived.
A simple approach to fiscal policy that would prove understand-
able, sustainable, and economically reasonable would be to focus on
important investments but do no harm. In short, when you are in a
hole, stop digging. That means that instead of passing unfunded leg-
islation, Congress should pay for new measures with either spending
cuts or extra revenues, except during recessions, when fiscal stimulus
will be essential given the increased constraints on monetary policy
now. This approach would provide a ready way to prioritize: if some-
thing is truly worth doing, it should be worth paying for. Such a course
would also strike a reasonable balance between the harms of extra
debt and the harms of deficit reduction. The deficit would continue
climbing to unprecedented levels. But no longer would the United
States be pursuing the reckless fiscal policies of the last two years,
which, if continued, would add even more debt, even faster, while
driving up inequality and failing to support growth.
March/April 2019 91
A lot of details would need to be worked out. Analysts will have to

decide whether to exclude from their deficit calculations certain kinds of
spending—such as infrastructure spending—that represent investments
rather than current consumption. One
critical question is whether analysts will
Politicians should not use dynamic scoring, an approach that ac-
let large deficits deter counts for how a new policy will affect the
them from addressing economy when calculating what it will
the United States’ cost. Advocates of dynamic scoring argue
that it provides more accurate cost esti-
fundamental challenges. mates, but critics point out that getting
the numbers right is tricky, so it’s easy to
bake in overly optimistic assumptions and thus get almost any result you
want. In truth, dynamic scoring is a useful tool, as long as it’s done right.
Dynamic scoring is usually limited to tax debates. That’s a mistake,
as nontax policies can also have significant budgetary effects. A wide
range of experts believe that investments in tax enforcement pay off at
a rate of $5 or more for every $1 spent. Although official scorekeepers
gave only minimal credit to the cost-control measures in the Affordable
Care Act, thanks in large part to those measures, cumulative Medicare
and Medicaid spending in the decade after the ACA was passed is likely
to end up coming in about $1 trillion below forecasts made at the time.
As policymakers set budgets in the coming years, a lot will depend
on what interest rates do. Financial markets do not expect the in-
creases in interest rates that budget forecasters have priced in. If the
markets prove right, that will strengthen the case against deficit
reduction. If, on the other hand, interest rates start to rise well above
what even the budget forecasters expect, then, as in the early 1990s,
more active efforts to cut the deficit could make sense.
Even if interest rates remain low, however, the do-no-harm approach
won’t be sustainable forever. How long the United States will be able
maintain its growing national debt will depend on whether deficits
come in above or below current projections. Even so, the national debt
presents just one of many problems the United States faces—and not
the most pressing.
WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Much more pressing are the problems of languishing labor-force partici-
pation rates, slow economic growth, persistent poverty, a lack of access to
The ofCSS
Deficits?
health insurance, and global climate change. Politicians should not let
large deficits deter them from addressing these fundamental challenges.
A do-no-harm approach would allow large and growing deficits for a
long time, but it would put some constraints on the most ambitious
political agendas. Progressives have proposed Medicare for all, free col-
lege, a federal jobs guarantee, and a massive green infrastructure pro-
gram. The merits of each of these proposals are up for debate. But each
idea responds to a real need that will take resources to address. Some
29 million Americans still do not have health insurance. College is un-
affordable for far too many. Millions of working-age Americans have
given up even looking for work. Global warming cannot be ignored.
Add in the widely shared desire for more investments in education and
infrastructure and the likelihood that defense spending will keep rising,
and the federal government will clearly have to spend a lot more.
Congress can fund some new programs by trimming lower-priority
spending elsewhere. But this will be difficult. Take health care. There
is substantial scope to slow the growth of both public and private
health spending. But this will require addressing the health-care sys-
tem as a whole, not just cutting payments or reforming public health
programs. That’s because public health-care spending has shrunk rela-
tive to private spending in recent years as the government has found
more effective ways to reduce payments and improve efficiency.
Beyond entitlements, everyone has a list of favorite examples of waste-
ful government spending: farm programs, corporate welfare, and so on.
But the dirty secret is that these programs are mostly small, so making
them more efficient would not save much money. Enacting serious cuts
to spending is much more difficult than most people acknowledge.
One program the federal government should not cut is Social Se-
curity. The gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor is
growing, and reducing benefits to retirees could exacerbate that trend.
Cutting Social Security would also weaken economic demand far
more than cutting most other programs would, as its beneficiaries
tend to spend the money rather than save it. If policymakers reform
Social Security and Medicare, they should do so to make the pro-
grams more effective, not to reduce the debt.
The truth is the federal government needs to raise more revenue.
Even if the United States made no new investments and cut Social
Security benefits enough to eliminate half of the long-term gap be-
tween the program’s revenues and its expenditures (an unwise policy),
March/April 2019 93
it would save only about one-third of what is needed to keep the debt
from growing relative to the economy. That is why the Simpson-Bowles
Commission also proposed raising revenue to 21 percent of GDP, a step
that would require a $9 trillion tax increase over the next decade.
Congress can raise some extra revenue in ways many Americans
would consider fair, such as by imposing higher taxes on the richest
households. It should also raise revenue with another round of corpo-
rate tax reform. For example, it can make expensing permanent (ex-
pensing allows companies to immediately deduct the cost of new
investments from their taxable income) while raising corporate tax
rates or taxing firms for the carbon they emit. Economists regard such
reforms as economically efficient because they make new investments
cheaper while taxing windfall gains and past investments. But tapping
the top few percent of households and raising corporate taxes won’t be
enough. Ultimately, all Americans will have to pay a little more to
support the kind of society they say they want.
ENDING THE DEBT DELUSION

The economics of deficits have changed. A better appreciation of the
sources and consequences of government debt, and of the options to
address it, should lead policymakers away from many of the old deficit-
and entitlement-focused orthodoxies—but not to wholesale aban-
donment of fiscal constraints.
Deficit fundamentalists argue that they are championing a noble
and underappreciated cause. In some ways, they are; deficit reduction
is never a political winner. But if they turn out to be right, economists
and policymakers will know soon enough. The financial markets give
immediate feedback about the seriousness of the budget deficit. If the
debt becomes a problem, interest rates will rise, putting financial and
political pressure on policymakers to accomplish what fiscal funda-
mentalists have long wanted. But even if that happens, it is not likely
to cost so much that it would be worth paying a definite cost today to
prevent the small chance of a problem in the future.
Policymakers will always know when the market is worried about
the deficit. But no alarm bells ring when the government fails to rebuild
decaying infrastructure, properly fund preschools, or provide access
to health care. The results of that kind of neglect show up only later—
but the human cost is often far larger. It’s time for Washington to put
away its debt obsession and focus on bigger things.∂
No Country for Strongmen

How India’s Democracy Constrains Modi
Ruchir Sharma
L
ike most national elections in India, the one coming this spring
will be decided in the mofussil. Originally a colonial term for
any town outside the commercial capitals of the British Raj,
mofussil now refers to the provincial areas beyond the burgeoning
megacities of Mumbai and New Delhi, that is, to the rural and impov-
erished stretches where two out of three Indians live.
Come April or May, the inhabitants of these rural towns will vote
in what is shaping up to be an unexpectedly tight race pitting the
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi against the Indian National Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi.
Until a year ago, Modi looked like the sure winner. He had sidelined
all rivals in the BJP and overshadowed Gandhi and the rest of the
opposition. He was running the most centralized administration India
had seen in decades, with decisions large and small funneled through
the prime minister’s office. The BJP and its allies went from governing
six of India’s 29 states in 2014 to holding 21 by early 2018. So firm
seemed Modi’s grip on power that many Indian liberals began drawing
parallels to the slide toward one-man rule in Vladimir Putin’s Russia
and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.
A series of surprising setbacks late last year have dissipated this
aura of invincibility. In three key state elections in December, many
voters in the mofussil turned against the BJP. Modi’s odds of beating the
Congress party and its allies at the national level now seem no better
than even. This is exactly how Indian voters like their leaders: on the
edge and fearing for their jobs. No other major democracy tosses out
its ruling party as often as India does. Ever since the country became
RUCHIR SHARMA is Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist at Morgan
Stanley Investment Management and the author of Democracy on the Road: A 25-Year
Journey Through India (Allen Lane, 2019), from which this essay is adapted.
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a true multiparty democracy, in the 1970s, two out of three govern-

ments at the central and state levels have lost their bids for reelection.
In many ways, India is less a country than a mosaic of states divided
by hundreds of languages and thousands of castes and subcastes, many
of them fiercely loyal to their own regional parties and leaders. The
BJP managed to overcome these divisions in 2014, when voters were
eager for change following years of corruption scandals and double-
digit inflation under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of Congress.
Even then, the BJP won just 31 percent of the popular vote and was able
to win a majority of seats in Parliament only thanks to a badly frag-
mented opposition. Now, opposition parties appear to be uniting
against Modi in many of the largest and most politically critical states,
just as they have banded together against ascendant national leaders
in the past. Modi’s reelection bid will hinge on whether he can cobble
together coalitions of his own to face this front, state by state, each
with unique local dynamics.
THE ROOTS OF MODI’S RISE

I got to see how national politics plays out in the mofussil by spending
childhood summers with my grandparents in Bijnor, a provincial town
in western Uttar Pradesh. Commonly known as UP, Uttar Pradesh is
the most populous and one of the least developed states. It has been
said that all roads to national power in New Delhi run through UP, and
many Indian politicians try to get a head start by launching their
bids for power there. Two of the last three Indian prime ministers—
including Modi—have chosen to represent parliamentary constituencies
in UP, whether they lived there or not. All of India is passionate about
politics, but nowhere are people more obsessed than in UP—perhaps
owing to the depth of its caste loyalties and its poverty, which make
voters particularly dependent on their political leaders for protection
and survival.
During my visits in the late 1970s and 1980s, I would watch my
grandfather and his friends, all upper-caste members of the Bijnor
community, gather around the television and hurl Hindi epithets at
the nightly news, much of which was state propaganda for the Con-
gress party. Congress had led India to independence in 1947 and had
held power ever since. But by the late 1970s, voters were growing
frustrated with the increasingly imperious rule of Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi, and they voted her out of office in 1977.
March/April 2019 97
Ruchir Sharma
Upper-caste Hindus, in particular, vilified Congress for “coddling”

Muslims, who made up 20 percent of the population in UP, nearly
twice the national average. They also attacked Congress for reserving
fixed quotas of government jobs and college admissions for those
marginalized by an ancient social order that ranks every Hindu into
one of several thousand castes.
The Congress party had designed much of its welfare system to lift
up the lowest caste, the Dalits, but change occurred at a glacial pace.
Well into the 1980s, it was routine among the upper castes to address
Dalits with a string of abuse or to refuse them access to schools,
temples, and other public spaces. Anger at this mistreatment fueled
the rise of challengers to the Congress party’s rule, including dozens
of regional parties based on caste, religion, or tribe. One of the most
prominent regional leaders, Kumari Mayawati, a fiery champion of
the Dalits in UP, began her ascent in Bijnor, much to the dismay of
local Brahmans, and eventually became the region’s chief minister, the
Indian equivalent of a U.S. governor.
An even bigger challenge to Congress came from Hindu national-
ists, who united under the umbrella of the BJP after Indira Gandhi led
Congress to a comeback win in 1980. In contrast to the secular and
diverse nation extolled by Congress, BJP leaders envisioned India as a
society governed by Hindu values and the Hindi language. Although
the party was a melting pot for many shades of Hindu nationalism,
including moderate strands that eschewed anti-Muslim rhetoric, I can
remember listening to hard-core BJP supporters in Bijnor chanting a
Hindi limerick that translates as “Muslims are crooks; they have heads
like dogs and ears like cats.”
In Bijnor and elsewhere, the BJP’s message resonated, and in 1998,
the party formed its first stable national government under the mod-
erate statesman Atal Bihari Vajpayee. That same year, I convened a
group of writers and editors to cover major national and state elec-
tions on the campaign trail. As a writer and investor, I believed one
had to get out and talk to voters in the mofussil to have any chance of
accurately forecasting elections. Two decades and 27 trips later, our
caravan has grown to include about 20 journalists, who have published
commentary and analysis in The Wall Street Journal, the Financial
Times, The Times of India, and many other outlets. In all, we have vis-
ited 15 states, including the ten largest and most politically signifi-
cant, and this has given the group an intimate feel for how Indian
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Among the believers: at a Hindu nationalist rally in Gauhati, India, January 2018
democracy works on the ground. We have met with Modi twice and
witnessed from the rally grounds his reelection as chief minister of
Gujarat in 2007 and 2012 and his national victory in 2014.
Over the same period, we watched the Congress party slide from
dominance to irrelevance in one major state after another, sidelined
by the BJP and regional parties. In UP, for example, Congress has fallen
to a distant fourth among the leading parties and has seen its share of
the popular vote drop from more than 40 percent in 1984 to less than
ten percent in 2017.
“MODI WHO?”
Many commentators feared that the BJP’s meteoric rise under Modi
portended a descent into an intolerant, increasingly ethnonationalist
tyranny of the Hindu majority. After the BJP won state elections in UP in
2017, Modi appointed the Hindu monk and right-wing firebrand Yogi
Adityanath as the state’s chief minister. When we met Adityanath
during the campaign, he greeted us in his temple dressed all in saffron,
the sacred color of Hinduism. Sitting in his temple, also decorated in
A N U PAM NAT H / AP
saffron, Adityanath spoke a pure form of Hindi, with no trace of the

usual Anglicisms, so close to the ancient language of Sanskrit that
many of us could barely understand him. On the campaign trail, he
embraced an unapologetic politics of Hindu supremacy, warning that
March/April 2019 99
Ruchir Sharma
UP must not become “another Kashmir”—a place where, in his telling,

Muslims ruled and Hindus lived in fear. For liberal observers, his
appointment to the state’s highest office was a stunning example of
the creeping normalization of Hindu extremism under Modi.
But a more complex picture of the prime minister’s tenure emerges
from our travels, particularly in states outside the northern “cow belt”
around UP, where Hindi speakers and Hindu conservatism dominate.
In the country’s south, which has long embraced a more moderate Hin-
duism, Modi’s nationalist message reso-
There are too many Indias nates far less. During a 2016 election
trip to the southern state of Tamil Nadu,
for the entire population to many voters dismissed our questions
be held in thrall to any about the prime minister as irrelevant;
single vision or figure. one responded, “Modi who?” At a rally
last year in the neighboring state of
Karnataka, we watched as Modi re-
ceived an enthusiastic response when he greeted the crowd with a few
words in the local language, Kannada. Then, he switched back to Hindi,
with a Kannada translator. Suddenly, his charisma seemed to disappear,
and the crowd went silent. Alarmists who fear that India is succumbing
to strongman rule miss the fact that there are still too many Indias for
the entire population to be held in thrall to any single vision or figure.
If anything genuinely unites Indian voters, it is hostility toward
whoever happens to be in office. It wasn’t always this way: in post-
independence India, voters returned the incumbent—usually a
Congress party politician—to power in 90 percent of state or national
elections. But ever since Indira Gandhi imposed a controversial
state of emergency in 1975, inspiring the opposition to unite and
topple her two years later, voters have unseated their leaders with
astonishing regularity.
This anti-incumbent bias is partly the result of India’s fragmented
party system. In most states, dozens of parties compete, and the win-
ners often find themselves scrambling for allies to help them form a
government. Tiny shifts in the vote, or in the allegiance of one small
coalition partner, can make or break a government. The whole system
is almost designed to encourage change and make it easy for voters
and rival parties to throw out the ruling party.
The discontent of Indian voters is also a reaction to chronic economic
mismanagement. The country became a democracy when it was still
Ruchir Sharma
staggeringly poor, with newborn government institutions that could

not meet the needs and demands of the impoverished masses. In the
early decades, Congress was able to hold on to power mainly because
voters were thankful that the party had led India to independence
from the United Kingdom, not because it was delivering economic
progress. Congress’ socialist vision relegated India to the so-called
Hindu rate of growth, a measly 3.5 percent annually, too slow to lift a
booming population out of poverty. Once Congress’ monopoly was
broken, voters never hesitated to express their economic dissatisfac-
tion at the ballot box.
And yet the links between the country’s politics and its economics are
not entirely clear-cut. After limping along under strong and stable Con-
gress governments until the 1980s, the economy picked up speed under
the fragile coalition governments that followed. Still, with the exception
of a brief period late in the last decade, voters showed little willingness
to reward their leaders based on strong economic performance alone.
My analysis of the economic data, available back to 1980, shows that
even when chief ministers presided over a state GDP growth rate above
eight percent—which usually puts an economy into the “miracle” class—
their chances of being reelected were still only 50–50. This is not because
voters do not care about jobs or a stable income. It’s that progress often
fails to reach them. Many voters in the mofussil don’t feel a dramatic lift
even when fast economic growth boosts the Mumbai stock market, but
those enjoying the rise assume that everyone is feeling the good times.
In response, many politicians have tried to buy voter loyalty by
offering welfare giveaways rather than relying on rapid economic
growth. In more advanced economies, the main ideological divide
usually concerns the roles of the state and the market in distributing
wealth. But in India, everyone is a statist. The economic debate is
largely about how the state can best help the poor: by developing
roads and other infrastructure, by distributing welfare benefits, or by
doing a bit of everything. Candidates vie to promise voters the longest
and most generous list of government giveaways, from free medical
care to rice and diesel subsidies to tax cuts for everyone from marriage-
hall owners to cumin-seed buyers.
Modi is now playing the same game. On the campaign trail in 2014, he
sounded like a free marketeer, promising “maximum governance,
minimum government” and bitterly criticizing Congress-sponsored
welfare programs as an insult to the poor, who, he said, wanted “jobs,
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not handouts.” But lately, he has been ramping up spending on the

same Congress programs he criticized, including a 2005 guarantee
that every rural Indian would get 100 days of paid labor a year. But it’s
not clear that welfare promises are any more a guarantee of victory
than economic growth is. Voters who do not qualify for benefits are
always resentful, and those who do are often furious because the dys-
functional Indian state fails to deliver on the promises.
Corruption acts as another incumbent killer, although its exact
effects are difficult to gauge. India provides no public funding for
elections, and political campaigns have become private enterprises.
To compete, candidates have little choice but to violate the official
spending cap, which sits at just $70,000 to $100,000 per parliamen-
tary candidate. We have covered state elections in which candidates
exceeded those limits by a factor of 50 or more.
To keep the cash flowing, many Indian politicians wind up surrounding
themselves with relatives and well-connected private businesspeople.
Voters, for their part, know that there are hardly any “pure” candidates:
the cleaner ones spend the dark money on their campaigns; the dirtier
ones put a share in their own pockets. Rarely does an incumbent serve
out a term without facing corruption charges—and really serious ones
can bring leaders down.
Still, the rise of “money politics” in Indian elections is easily exagger-
ated. Private funding is on the rise but flows heavily toward those in
office, who often outspend the opposition by five times or more. If
money were the decisive factor, the ruling party would win most of
the time, and yet it doesn’t. Candidates need to raise enough money
to compete, but they have to pass a host of other tests—above all,
those that revolve around community identities, including caste,
religion, tribe, and language.
FAMILY, CASTE, THEN COUNTRY

The worst abuses of the caste system—such as the exclusion of Dalits
from public places—have continued to slowly fade with time. But
community identities remain strong. In the mofussil, marriage across
caste lines is still frowned on, and voters look mainly to leaders from
their own group for protection and help. This means that parties can-
not win if they do not get the community equation right. In each
constituency and state, they need to select candidates who appeal to a
complex mix of subcastes, religions, and languages.
March/April 2019 103

Ruchir Sharma
In some states, the “dominant” caste or religious community

amounts to just ten to 20 percent of the electorate, as is the case in UP
and the neighboring state of Bihar. The elections in these states often
amount to contests for the affection of the three biggest voting blocs:
Muslims, Dalits, and Yadavs (a midlevel caste). Yet the Dalits and the
Yadavs of UP are from different subcastes than the Dalits and the Yadavs
of Bihar, and they do not see themselves as members of kindred po-
litical communities. Mayawati is the unquestioned champion of the
Dalits in UP, but not in Bihar, whereas popular Yadav leaders in UP
cannot draw a crowd in Bihar.
As a result, the alliances required to win any state involve entirely
different sets of caste and religious communities, mixed in varying
proportions and led by different regional bigwigs. Multiply this
confusion by 29 states, and one can begin to see why it is almost
impossible to speak of an Indian election as a “national” event.
The power of community also shines through in the dynasties that
are omnipresent in Indian politics. The nationwide cult of adoration
that once surrounded the Gandhi family lives on inside the Congress
party, which has embraced the dynasty’s latest scion, Rahul Gandhi,
as its undisputed leader. For years, Congress supporters have also
hailed Rahul’s younger sister, Priyanka, as the second coming of her
grandmother Indira.
The BJP, meanwhile, is bitterly critical of Congress’ nepotism, and
Modi constantly mocks the Gandhis as “entitled” political royalty,
even though his own party has well-entrenched political dynasties,
too. Still, some change may be afoot. More and more politicians are
rising to power on the argument that their lack of family ties protects
them from the temptation to profit from office. Modi, the bachelor
prime minister, has made uncorrupted singlehood a centerpiece of his
political persona.
THE MYTH OF THE INDIAN NATION

India’s complex polity makes it impossible for any one leader to push
a reform agenda as aggressively as leaders in China have in the past,
commandeering land for development, opening borders to trade,
shuttering state factories, and killing off millions of redundant jobs.
Since the 1980s, several Indian prime ministers have pursued ele-
ments of free-market reform, but only when faced with some sort of
crisis. None of them made a serious attempt to reform the bloated
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and incompetent central bureaucracy, even though frustration with

bureaucrats fuels the permanent revolt against politicians.
Yet the picture isn’t all gloomy. At the level of individual states, the
obstacles to economic reform are less daunting. Dynamic chief minis-
ters have helped spark strong runs of economic growth by tailoring
reforms to the needs of their state. As chief minister of the coastal
state of Gujarat, Modi encouraged an export manufacturing boom in
part by building roads and ports; Nitish Kumar transformed land-
locked Bihar in part by reining in its rampant crime. The combined
effect of such breakout states has been strong enough to keep the
economy as a whole growing at a pace of six to seven percent—a
respectable showing for a developing country.
India’s diversity is also a source of political resilience, as strong sub-
national identities provide a check on ethnic and religious nationalism.
Many Indians still see themselves as Bengalis, Gujaratis, or Tamils first
and Indians second. Best of luck to anyone who offends this ethnic
and regional pride. In the early 1980s,
after Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv called Many Indians still see
the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh a
“buffoon,” the popular film star N. T. themselves as Bengalis,
Rama Rao capitalized on this insult to Gujaratis, or Tamils first
“Telugu pride” (Telugu is the principal and Indians second.
language spoken in Andhra Pradesh)
by forming a regional party that quickly
rose to power in the state—demonstrating, in Rama Rao’s words, that
in India, “the center is a myth and the state is a reality.”
Ever since Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in 1975, no
prime minister has been able to gain political momentum without trig-
gering fears of creeping authoritarianism and inspiring the fragmented
opposition to unite. This pattern brought down Indira in 1977, Rajiv in
1989, and the first BJP prime minister, Vajpayee, in 2004. The same
dynamic may repeat itself in this year’s election: if the opposition,
scattered and squabbling in 2014, manages to unite against Modi in a
majority of the states in 2019, the BJP could lose a sizable chunk of its
seats in Parliament even if it once again wins a plurality of the vote.
The BJP knows this well and will try to derail budding opposition
alliances by casting them as cynical and unprincipled coalitions
whose only common interest is power. Ironically, Indira and Rajiv
Gandhi, once the BJP’s archenemies, used a similar line of attack to

Ruchir Sharma
divide and undermine opponents of entrenched Congress party rule.

Now back in the opposition under Rajiv’s son, Rahul, Congress will
take inspiration from the 1960s socialist leader and Congress critic
Ram Manohar Lohia, who supposedly quipped that “the Indian gov-
ernment is like a piece of flatbread that needs to be flipped on the
griddle or it will burn.”
The stakes are high. The BJP and Congress offer two starkly diver-
gent political visions: the former aspiring to build one India, the latter
celebrating the reality of many Indias. But even if voters buck the
historical trend and return Modi to the prime minister’s office this
spring, he will likely be left with a reduced majority. The BJP’s vision
will remain aspirational, as India’s complex ecosystem of identities
will continue to act as a powerful break on a descent into outright
ethnonationalism. At a time when democracy is said to be in retreat
around the world, it is still thriving in India.∂
The Kurdish Awakening

Unity, Betrayal, and the Future of the
Middle East
Henri J. Barkey
W
“ e’ve been fighting for a long time in Syria,” said U.S.
President Donald Trump in the last days of 2018. “Now
it’s time for our troops to come back home.” The presi-
dent’s surprise call for a rapid withdrawal of the nearly 2,000 U.S.
troops stationed in Syria drew widespread criticism from members of
the U.S. foreign policy establishment. But it came as an even greater
shock to the United States’ main partner in the fight against the
Islamic State (or ISIS), the Syrian Kurds. For weeks prior to the
announcement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been
threatening to invade areas of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish
militants. The only thing stopping him was the presence of U.S.
troops. Removing them would leave the Kurds deeply exposed. “If
[the Americans] will leave,” warned one Syrian Kurd, “we will curse
them as traitors.”
Details about the U.S. withdrawal from Syria remain sketchy. But
whatever Washington ultimately decides to do, Trump’s announce-
ment marked a cruel turn for Kurds across the Middle East. Back in
mid-2017, the Kurds had been enjoying a renaissance. Syrian Kurds,
allied with the world’s only superpower, had played the central role in
largely defeating ISIS on the battlefield and had seized the group’s
capital, Raqqa. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish
militia, controlled large swaths of Syrian territory and looked set to
become a significant actor in negotiations to end the country’s civil
war. Turkish Kurds, although besieged at home, were basking in the
glow of the accomplishments of their Syrian counterparts, with whom
HENRI J. BARKEY is Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor of International Relations
at Lehigh University and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations.

Henri J. Barkey
they are closely aligned. And in Iraq, the body that rules the country’s
Kurdish region—the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG—was at
the height of its powers, preparing for a September 2017 referendum
on independence.
By the end of 2018, many of the Kurds’ dreams appeared to be in
tatters. After the overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds voted for
independence in the KRG’s referendum, the Iraqi government,
backed by Iran and Turkey, invaded Iraqi Kurdistan and conquered
some 40 percent of its territory. Overnight, the KRG lost not only
nearly half of its land but much of its international influence, too.
The Turkish Kurds, despite gaining seats in parliament in the June
2018 elections, had endured relentless assaults from Erdogan and
his government throughout the year, including a renewed military
campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a left-wing
separatist group. In Syria, Turkey invaded the Kurdish-controlled
town of Afrin in March 2018, displacing the YPG and some 200,000
local Kurds. Then, in December, the Syrian Kurds learned that
their American protectors might soon abandon them altogether.
These setbacks, however, belie a larger trend—one that will shape
the Middle East in the years ahead. Across the region, Kurds are gain-
ing self-confidence, pushing for long-denied rights, and, most impor-
tant, collaborating with one another across national boundaries and
throughout the diaspora. To a greater extent than at any previous point
in history, Kurds in the four traditionally distinct parts of Kurdistan—
in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey—are starting down the road of becom-
ing a single Kurdish nation. Significant barriers to unity remain,
including linguistic divisions and the presence of at least two strong
states, Iran and Turkey, with an overriding interest in thwarting any
form of pan-Kurdism. Yet recent events have initiated a process of
Kurdish nation building that will, in the long run, prove difficult to
contain. Even if there is never a single, unified, independent Kurd-
istan, the Kurdish national awakening has begun. The Middle East’s
states may fear the Kurdish awakening, but it is beyond their power
to stop it.
THE LOST CAUSE

Around 30 million Kurds currently live in Greater Kurdistan, a contigu-
ous region stretching across southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran,
northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Kurdish tribes interacted with
The CSS Awakening
The Kurdish Point
This land is our land: Kurdish peshmerga forces in Makhmur, Iraq, August 2014
the Arab, Persian, and Turkic empires over the centuries, some-
times cooperating with them and sometimes rebelling against them.
Modern Kurdish nationalism has its roots in the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire after World War I. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres,
signed between the Allies and the defeated Ottomans, called for an
independence referendum in the Kurdish-majority areas of modern-
day Turkey. Yet following Turkey’s war of independence, the new
Turkish government renegotiated with the Allies. This resulted in
the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which guaranteed Turkish sovereignty
over what could have potentially been an independent Kurdistan.
Kurdish demands for independence, however, did not go away.
Throughout the twentieth century, Kurdish revolts, often backed by
rival states, erupted in nearly every country that had a significant
Kurdish population. Turkey put down Kurdish rebellions in 1925,
1930, and 1937. Then, in the mid-1980s, the PKK launched an armed
YOUSSEF BOUDLAL / REUTERS
insurgency in Turkey that has continued off and on until the present
day. In Iran in 1946, Kurds backed by the Soviet Union established the
first genuine Kurdish government, the independent Republic of
Mahabad, which lasted for one year before collapsing after Moscow
withdrew its support. Iraqi Kurds have also frequently revolted against
their central government. Supported by the shah of Iran, they fought
two wars against Baghdad during the 1960s and 1970s, only to be

Henri J. Barkey
defeated in 1975 after the shah struck a deal with the Iraqi strongman
Saddam Hussein, abandoning the Kurds to their fate.
This agitation has meant that for each of the four states with a large
Kurdish minority, suppressing Kurdish nationalism has been a paramount
policy objective. The new Turkish state under President Kemal Ataturk
banned the use of the Kurdish language in 1924 and over time intro-
duced draconian rule in Kurdish areas, burning villages, displacing
people, and confiscating their property. (Although U.S. intelligence
was always confident that Turkey could handle any challenge posed by
the Kurds, a 1971 CIA report conceded that Turkish policies, especially
those preventing the use of the Kurdish language, were at the root of
Kurdish unrest.) Iran similarly banned Kurdish dialects in the 1930s.
In Syria, the central government not only prohibited the teaching and
learning of Kurdish but also placed restrictions on Kurdish landown-
ership. And beginning in the 1960s, Damascus revoked the citizenship
of tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds, rendering them stateless. All
across the Middle East, Kurdish areas were economically neglected
and marginalized.
In the face of this repression, the Kurds have succeeded in preserv-
ing and even strengthening their identity across generations. As the
Kurdish scholar Hamit Bozarslan has observed, Kurds have been
treated as a minority by the governments of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and
Turkey, but they do not see themselves as one. They are a majority in
their homeland, Kurdistan, which only through an accident of geopo-
litical history has been rendered an appendage of other states. And it
is the Middle East’s modern state system that has, historically, been
the main obstacle to Kurdish national aspirations. A prescient 1960
intelligence report by the CIA argued that the Kurds of Iran and Iraq
had all the necessary elements for autonomy—military strength, lead-
ership, and the possibility of material support from an outside power,
the Soviet Union. “Only the relative stability of parent governments,”
the report noted, “stands in the way of active Kurdish separatism.”
TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK

For most of the twentieth century, the only possible path to Kurdish
autonomy (or independence, for that matter) ran through state fail-
ure. And in effect, this is exactly what has transpired over the past two
decades. If the Kurds today have a glimmer of hope in Iraq and Syria,
it is because of the collapse of authority in Baghdad and Damascus. In
Henri J. Barkey
particular, the actions of the United States—its support of the Kurds

following the Persian Gulf War, its 2003 overthrow of Saddam and
subsequent occupation of Iraq, and its more recent efforts to combat
ISIS in Syria—have created the conditions for the revival of Kurdish
political aspirations. Washington, unintentionally and in service of its
own strategic needs, has midwifed Kurdish nationalism.
American military and political engagement with the Kurds began
in earnest with the 1990–91 Gulf War. After the Iraqi army was
evicted from Kuwait, it turned its guns on the Kurds and Shiites who
had responded to U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s call to rise up
against Baghdad.
Faced with the possibility of a humanitarian crisis, the United
States, with support from France and the United Kingdom, declared
a no-fly zone over the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. Protected by
the no-fly zone, the Iraqi Kurds were able to carve out regional au-
tonomy, founding the KRG in 1992. Iraqi Kurdistan became a bastion
of pro-American sentiment in the country, especially after the United
States’ invasion in 2003, promoting further U.S.-Kurdish coopera-
tion. Kurdish forces allied with U.S. troops in the initial war against
Saddam, and in the ensuing years, Iraqi Kurdistan provided an anchor
of stability as the rest of the country descended into civil war.
The founding of the KRG provided an important psychological
boost to the Kurds, not just in Iraq but across the rest of the Middle
East, too. It demonstrated that Kurds could govern themselves and
secure international recognition. It also began to reshape Kurdish
relations with other states. Although Turkey has traditionally dis-
approved of Kurdish demands for autonomy, the Turkish govern-
ment under Erdogan chose not to confront the KRG but to build
political and economic links with it instead. The landlocked Iraqi
Kurds needed a channel for diplomacy and commerce—especially
oil exports—and Ankara was happy to provide one. In 2010, Turkey
opened a consulate in the KRG’s capital, Erbil. Then, in 2012, the
KRG and Turkey signed a deal to construct an oil pipeline from Iraqi
Kurdistan to the Mediterranean. By 2018, some 400,000 barrels of
KRG oil were reaching the Turkish port of Ceyhan every day. Ankara
has provided an economic lifeline to the KRG, granting it the breath-
ing room to consolidate itself in Iraq. For a time, Erdogan also
profited domestically, as Turkish Kurds close to the KRG’s president,
Masoud Barzani, began voting for Erdogan’s party in Turkish elections.
The CSS Awakening
The Kurdish Point
Confident of his Kurdish bona fides, in 2009, Erdogan launched a

domestic peace process with the PKK.
Yet soon, another U.S. action was to unintentionally change the
Kurds’ position in the Middle East. In 2014, the Obama administra-
tion began a bombing campaign to prevent Kobani, a Syrian Kurdish
town on the Turkish border, from falling to ISIS. At the time, ISIS had
just swept through northern Iraq and Syria, capturing large stretches
of territory, including Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. Washington’s
decision to protect Kobani elicited frenzied objections from Erdogan,
since the United States would be directly supporting the YPG, which
had close ties with the PKK in Turkey. The U.S. partnership with the
YPG was a battlefield success, and the Kurds’ eventual victory at Kobani
became a turning point in the fight against ISIS. But this very success
began to ring alarm bells in Ankara.
For Erdogan, a U.S.-YPG alliance represented a game changer for
the region. What the Turkish president feared most was the emer-
gence of a second KRG, this one in Syria. After all, the KRG itself was
the product of a U.S. intervention that led to a civil war and the
breakdown of central authority in
Baghdad, culminating in the creation
of a federal system in Iraq, with the
Washington, unintentionally
KRG as a constituent element. With and in service of its own
Syria already consumed by civil war, strategic needs, has midwifed
Ankara believed that Washington was Kurdish nationalism.
on the verge of repeating what it had
done in Iraq—that is, transforming
Syria into a federal state in which the Kurds would gain the right to
govern themselves. Erdogan could not assent to federal arrangements
in two neighboring countries, much less to a Syrian-Kurdish one
closely linked to the PKK. In 2014, Erdogan abandoned his negotia-
tions with the PKK and began a policy of outright conflict with both
the Turkish and the Syrian Kurds. He sought to delegitimize all
Kurdish political activity by associating it with the PKK, arresting
large numbers of Kurdish activists and politicians.
But if the United States inadvertently disrupted Kurdish-Turkish
relations, U.S. policy in Iraq and Syria, taken as a whole, has earned
the Kurds an unprecedented degree of international legitimacy.
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have all ex-
tended diplomatic recognition to the KRG, as well as providing it

Henri J. Barkey
with economic and other forms of support. And the Syrian Kurds,
previously ignored by the outside world, have been able to raise
their global profile thanks to their role in the fight against ISIS. This
recognition has come not only from Western powers. In a draft
proposal for a new Syrian constitution, put forward in 2017 through
the Astana peace process, Russia suggested two important concessions
to the Kurds: dropping the word “Arab” from the name Syrian Arab
Republic and creating a “culturally autonomous” region in the coun-
try’s northeast, where children would be educated in both Arabic
and Kurdish. These concessions were rejected by Damascus, and
there is no guarantee that they will ever be granted. But their inclu-
sion in the Russian proposal demonstrated that despite the Syrian
Kurds’ precarious position, outside powers are beginning to recognize
them as an autonomous force to be reckoned with.
THE KURDISH RENAISSANCE

Kurds mobilized throughout the twentieth century to win cultural
autonomy and some degree of self-rule from central governments.
For nearly 100 years, rebellions and resistance constituted the back-
drop of ordinary Kurdish life. Now, this is changing, as Kurds have
acquired governing experience—not just in the KRG but also in numer-
ous municipalities in Syria and Turkey. This, in turn, has caused Kurdish
identity to begin to coalesce across national boundaries.
So far, the Kurds’ experience in power has been fraught with prob-
lems. The KRG, for instance, is on the path to becoming a petrostate,
dependent on oil sales and beset by corruption, patronage, and the
outsize power of its two leading political families, the Barzanis and
the Talabanis. The political wing of the YPG, the Democratic Union
Party, has succeeded in efficiently providing services in the areas of
Syria that it controls, but it has also constructed a one-party proto-state.
And in Turkey, although representatives of the left-wing, Kurdish-
dominated Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won 102 municipalities
in the July 2016 elections, Erdogan has since removed 94 of them from
office. He has vowed to act similarly after the next round of municipal
elections this March. Future HDP success may even motivate Erdogan
to have the party shut down by the Constitutional Court, as Turkey’s
generals did to the HDP’s predecessors.
But even if Kurdish self-government has not been an unalloyed
success, it has been a boon for Kurdish culture and language across the
The CSS Awakening
The Kurdish Point
region. This is especially true in Iraqi Kurdistan, which boasts its own
Kurdish-language institutions, including schools and media organiza-
tions. Despite challenges such as the existence of two distinct Kurdish
dialects, which roughly correspond to the KRG’s political divisions—
Kurmanji is spoken in areas dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, whereas Sorani is spoken in those run by the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan—the KRG has established a rich Kurdish cultural environ-
ment in the territory it controls. There are now hundreds of Kurdish
television channels, websites, news agencies, and other cultural products,
such as novels and movies. And in Syria, where for decades Damascus
banned even private education in Kurdish, the Democratic Union
Party has formally introduced Kurdish-language education in the areas
under its control. After nearly a century of attempting to prevent the
dissemination of Kurdish language and culture, central governments
have now decisively lost that battle.
Iraq’s Kurdish-language renaissance has in turn stimulated a renewal
of Kurdish self-awareness in transnational social media and diaspora
communities. The Kurdish diaspora is especially strong in Europe,
to which over one million Kurds have immigrated over the past six
decades—initially as guest workers and then as refugees fleeing repres-
sion. Free to organize and collaborate with other civil society groups,
Europe’s Kurds have raised public awareness of Kurdish issues and
put pressure on national governments in Germany, France, and the
Netherlands—as well as on the EU as a whole—to change their policies
toward Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In this, they have been aided by
the rise of Kurdish-language social media.
The flourishing of Kurdish has extended even to Iran and Turkey,
where the Kurds have relatively little power. During Erdogan’s brief
opening to the Kurds between 2009 and 2014, there was a prolifera-
tion of Kurdish-language institutes, publications, and private schools.
The resulting euphoria did not last long; by the end of 2017, almost all
of these had been eliminated by Ankara, which went as far as system-
atically taking down all signs in Kurdish, traffic signals as well as signs
for schools and municipal buildings. But not everything has been lost.
Some Turkish universities still allow students to study Kurdish, and
the Turkish state has created a TV channel dedicated to official broad-
casts in Kurdish. In Iran, meanwhile, the government has, since 2015,
allowed optional high school and university Kurdish-language classes
in the country’s Kurdish-majority regions.

Henri J. Barkey
MAKING A NATION
The increasing fluidity of physical boundaries between Kurds, the cre-
ation of Kurdish-run governments such as the KRG, the emergence of
strong diaspora communities (especially in Europe), and the rise of
Kurdish-language social media and cultural products—all have com-
bined to strengthen pan-Kurdish identity. Today, Kurds from Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the diaspora are all engaged in a common
conversation. They do not speak in unison, but the days of Kurd-on-
Kurd political violence, which flared up in Iraq during the 1990s, are
gone, in large part because the Kurdish public will not tolerate it. The
Kurds have acquired all the attributes of a nation, except sovereignty.
This newfound unity is reflected in the emergence of pan-Kurdish
military units. Turkish Kurds have fought with the YPG in Syria, just
as Syrian and Turkish Kurds have been integrated into the armed
forces of the KRG. Diaspora Kurds have also volunteered to fight,
particularly with the YPG. The PKK commands armed forces in Iraq,
Turkey, and Syria and in 2004 created an affiliate in Iran. The erosion
of intra-Kurdish boundaries was greatly accelerated by ISIS’ advance
through Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014, which imperiled Kurds
in both countries and fostered pan-ethnic solidarity. Faced with a
genuine existential peril, the Kurds put their own fractious politics
aside and appeared as one. And the more that they do so, the more
they will begin to reshape the politics of the Middle East.
In both Iraq and Syria, the fragility of central governments provides
Kurds with an opportunity for self-rule that is still unthinkable in Iran
and Turkey. This process is much further along in Iraq, where the
KRG’s autonomy is protected by the constitution. Yet the KRG is still
vulnerable, as Baghdad’s reaction to the disastrous 2017 independence
referendum demonstrated. In Syria, the Kurds may have an opportu-
nity to reach a deal with the Assad regime that would grant them a
degree of regional autonomy. Such a result is far from guaranteed,
however, and a U.S. withdrawal from the country could leave the Syrian
Kurds at the mercy of Damascus and Ankara. Even so, any Syrian or
Turkish campaign to eliminate the YPG, however bloody, would engen-
der a backlash among Kurds across the Middle East. Nothing builds
national consciousness like a David taking on a Goliath.
In Turkey, the Kurds have made a great deal of progress over the
past decade, despite the recent deterioration in their relations with
the central government. Erdogan’s efforts to sabotage the HDP’s electoral
The CSS Awakening
The Kurdish Point
chances—imprisoning candidates, imposing media blackouts, and ha-

rassing Kurdish voters—have not prevented the party from entering
the Turkish parliament in three successive elections. (Many HDP pol-
iticians, including the party’s leader, Selahattin Demirtas, are even
now languishing in jail.) The new Turkish constitution, passed by ref-
erendum in April 2017, has transformed Turkey into a presidential
system and neutered its parliament, so the HDP’s influence, despite its
significant number of deputies, is greatly limited.
Nonetheless, the fact that the party came in third in the June 2018
elections, behind only the ruling party and the main opposition party,
is an indication that the Kurdish issue has been institutionalized in
Turkish politics. The HDP’s success will encourage the mobilization of
Kurdish civil society and, eventually, the development of Kurdish ties
with others in the Turkish opposition. And the proliferation of Kurdish
organizations in Europe may help to move European attitudes toward
Turkey in a more pro-Kurdish direction. It is the Turkish Kurds who,
although divided between a military wing (the PKK) and a political
wing (the HDP), are in the best position to assume a leadership role
for Kurds across the region. This is because they, unlike the other
Kurdish communities, are part of a country embedded in Western
institutions. Even if Turkey’s practices diverge from Western norms,
Turkish Kurds have benefited from exposure to the values and prin-
ciples associated with the West.
The case of the Iranian Kurds is the most opaque, given Tehran’s
strained relations with the outside world and the secretive nature of
the regime itself. Yet events in other parts of Kurdistan are influencing
developments in Iran’s Kurdish regions. Iran has always pursued a
multipronged policy toward the Kurds. Domestically, it has repressed
them, including through the liberal use of capital punishment against
activists. At the same time, it has forged ties with the KRG in a successful
effort to control Iranian Kurdish groups residing in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Yet as Iran finds itself overstretched in the region, its leaders worried
about regime stability and the country’s worsening economy, the cen-
tral government may come to see the Kurds as an even greater threat.
Iranian Kurds have had little experience with self-rule, having lived for
decades under a government that interferes in all aspects of daily life.
But Iran, like Syria, is a brittle state. Change will start at the center.
The more pan-Kurdish identity and confidence grow, the more likely
it is that Iranian Kurds will be prepared for instability in Tehran.

Henri J. Barkey
Finally, the United States remains the single most important actor
when it comes to determining the future of the Kurds, particularly
in Iraq and Syria. Trump may be ending the U.S. partnership with
the YPG, but the Syrian Kurds have nonetheless benefited from the
relationship, as they were previously considered by outside powers
to be the least important Kurdish population in the region. Now they
are on the map: hours after Trump announced the United States’
withdrawal from Syria, a spokesperson for the French foreign ministry
claimed that France would “ensure the security” of the Syrian Kurds.
Yet Washington’s move will force the Syrian Kurds to negotiate
with Damascus earlier than they had planned to, and from a position
of relative weakness. A full U.S. withdrawal, moreover, could cause
a destabilizing scramble among regional powers in Syria, with disas-
trous results for the Kurds.
Concerned about these repercussions, U.S. officials, including
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John
Bolton, have warned Turkey not to intervene against the Kurds in
northern Syria. Having stumbled into the Middle East’s perpetual
Kurdish conundrum, the United States is finding it hard to extricate
itself. Washington will have to employ all its persuasive powers to
ensure that the Kurds are not crushed by Ankara, Damascus, and
other regional powers. That, in turn, will require a degree of interest
and policy coherence not previously evident in the Trump adminis-
tration. But to the extent that the United States values democracy,
human rights, and minority rights, it should support Kurds across the
Middle East within the existing nation-state system. Even if Trump
is unwilling to expend much political capital to support the Kurds,
there are other centers of power and influence in the United States,
such as media and civil society organizations, that can do so.
Whatever happens in the near future, however, there can be no
going back to the status quo that obtained only a few decades ago,
before the United States’ interventions in the region set the Kurds
on a fundamentally new path. Despite frequent setbacks, continued
repression, and over a century without a homeland, the Kurds are
finally emerging as a unified people. A Kurdish state may be a long
way off, but if one ever does emerge, there will be a nation there to
populate it.∂
The New Containment

Handling Russia, China, and Iran
Michael Mandelbaum
T
he quarter century following the Cold War was the most peace-
ful in modern history. The world’s strongest powers did not
fight one another or even think much about doing so. They did
not, on the whole, prepare for war, anticipate war, or conduct negotia-
tions and political maneuvers with the prospect of war looming in the
background. As U.S. global military hegemony persisted, the possibility
of developed nations fighting one another seemed ever more remote.
Then history began to change course. In the last several years, three
powers have launched active efforts to revise security arrangements in
their respective regions. Russia has invaded Crimea and other parts of
Ukraine and has tried covertly to destabilize European democracies.
China has built artificial island fortresses in international waters,
claimed vast swaths of the western Pacific, and moved to organize
Eurasia economically in ways favorable to Beijing. And the Islamic
Republic of Iran has expanded its influence over much of Iraq, Leba-
non, Syria, and Yemen and is pursuing nuclear weapons.
This new world requires a new American foreign policy. Fortunately,
the country’s own not-so-distant past can offer guidance. During the
Cold War, the United States chose to contain the Soviet Union, success-
fully deterring its military aggression and limiting its political influence
for decades. The United States should apply containment once again,
now to Russia, China, and Iran. The contemporary world is similar
enough to its mid-twentieth-century predecessor to make that old strat-
egy relevant but different enough that it needs to be modified and up-
dated. While success is not guaranteed, a new containment policy offers
the best chance to defend American interests in the twenty-first century.
MICHAEL MANDELBAUM is Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus of American Foreign
Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of The
Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (Oxford University Press, 2019), from which this essay is adapted.

Michael Mandelbaum
Now as before, the possibility of armed conflict exerts a major in-

fluence on the foreign policies of the United States and countries
throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The Cold War divided
the world into rival camps, with regions and even countries split in
two. Today, similar cleavages are developing, with each revisionist
power seeking its own sphere of influence separate from the larger
U.S.-backed global order.
Now as before, the revisionist powers are dictatorships that challenge
American values as well as American interests. They seek to overturn
political, military, and economic arrangements the United States helped
establish long ago and has supported ever since. Should Vladimir Putin’s
Russia succeed in reasserting control over parts of the former Soviet
Union, Xi Jinping’s China gain control over maritime commerce in the
western Pacific, or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Iran dominate the oil
reserves of the Persian Gulf, the United States, its allies, and the global
order they uphold would suffer a major blow.
But today’s circumstances differ from those of the past in several
important ways. During most of the Cold War, Washington con-
fronted a single powerful opponent, the Soviet Union—the leader of
the international communist movement. Now it must cope with three
separate adversaries, each largely independent of the other two. Russia
and China cooperate, but they also compete with each other. And while
both have good relations with Iran, both also have large and potentially
restive Muslim populations, giving them reason to worry about the
growth of Iranian power and influence. Cold War containment was a
single global undertaking, implemented regionally. Contemporary
containment will involve three separate regional initiatives, imple-
mented in coordination.
The Soviet Union, moreover, presented a strong ideological challenge,
devoted as it was to advancing not just Moscow’s geopolitical interests
but also its communist principles. Neither Russia nor China has such
a crusading ideology today. Russia has abandoned communism com-
pletely, and China has done so partially, retaining the notion of party
supremacy but shedding most of the economics and the messianic
zeal. And although the Islamic Republic represents a cause and not
just a stretch of territory, the potential appeal of its ideology is largely
limited to the Muslim world and, primarily, its Shiite minority.
None of today’s revisionist powers possesses the Soviet Union’s
fearsome military capabilities. Russia is a shrunken version of its older
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The New Point
Containment
Eye in the sky: a U.S. Navy helicopter in the South China Sea, October 2015
self militarily, and Iran lacks formidable modern military forces. China’s
economic growth may ultimately allow it to match the United States in
all strategic dimensions and pose a true peer threat, but to date, Beijing
is concentrating on developing forces to exclude the United States
from the western Pacific, not to project power globally. Moreover, the
initiatives each has launched so far—Russia’s seizure of Crimea and
Middle East meddling, China’s island building, Iran’s regional subver-
sion—have been limited probes rather than all-out assaults on the
existing order.
Lastly, the Soviet Union was largely detached from the U.S.-centered
global economy during the Cold War, whereas today’s revisionist pow-
ers are very much a part of it. Russia and Iran have relatively small
economies and export mostly energy, but China has the world’s second-
largest economy, with deep, wide, and growing connections to coun-
U . S . N AV Y / R E U T E R S
tries everywhere.
Economic interdependence will complicate containment. China,
for example, may be a political and military rival, but it is also a cru-
cial economic partner. The United States depends on China to finance

Michael Mandelbaum
its deficits. China depends on the United States to buy its exports.
Containment in Asia will thus require other policies as well, because
although a Chinese military collapse would enhance Asian security, a
Chinese economic collapse would bring economic disaster.
Together, these differences make today’s containment a less urgent
challenge than its Cold War predecessor. The United States does not
have to deal with a single mortal threat from a country committed to
remaking the entire world in its own image. It must address three
serious but lesser challenges, mounted by countries seeking not heaven
on earth but greater regional power and autonomy. But if today’s chal-
lenges are less epic, they are far more complicated. The old contain-
ment was simple, if not easy. The new containment will have to blend
a variety of policies, carefully coordinated with one another in design
and execution. This will tax the ingenuity and flexibility of the United
States and its allies.
STRONGER TOGETHER
As during the Cold War, containment today requires American military
deployments abroad. In Europe, ground troops are needed to deter
Russian aggression. The Putin regime has already sent forces into
Georgia and Ukraine. The United States is committed to protecting
its NATO allies. These include the Baltic states, tiny countries on Russia’s
border. By defending them, the United States could encounter some
of the same difficulties it did defending West Berlin, including, in the
worst case, having to decide whether to bring nuclear weapons into
play rather than accept military defeat.
East Asia requires a robust U.S. naval presence to fend off China’s
campaign to dominate the western Pacific. The United States is com-
mitted to protecting allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
and maintaining open sea-lanes, and it conducts what it calls “freedom-
of-navigation operations” in international waters newly claimed by
China to make clear that the rest of the world does not accept Chinese
claims and Chinese dominance there.
And in the Middle East, American naval and air forces are needed
to safeguard shipments of Persian Gulf oil to Europe and Asia and to
support a successful rollback of the Iranian nuclear program, should
that become necessary. American troops on the ground are not re-
quired; it is local forces that must check Iranian efforts at regional
subversion (which are carried out by local militias).
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The New Point
Containment
Diplomatically, Washington needs to maintain or assemble broad

coalitions of local powers to oppose each revisionist challenge. In
Europe, NATO was created to carry out this very mission and so should
be the pillar of the United States’ strategy there. In Asia and the
Middle East, the “hub and spoke” pattern of American Cold War al-
liances still exists, even as regional powers have begun to collaborate
among themselves.
Working with partners exploits Washington’s greatest strength: its
ability to attract allies and create powerful coalitions against isolated
opponents. Coordinating with other countries also endows American
foreign policy with a legitimacy it would otherwise lack, showing that
the United States is not simply acting for itself but defending broad
principles of international order that many others support.
The dependence of the revisionists on access to the global economy
gives the United States and its coalition partners a potential source of
leverage. Washington and its allies have tried to exploit this through
sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, tariffs on China for its
trade practices, and sanctions on Iran for its nuclear weapons program.
But interdependence cuts both ways. Russia has tried to pressure
Ukraine by restricting Ukrainian access to Russian energy. China has
placed targeted embargoes on Japan and Norway to express displeasure
with specific Japanese and Norwegian policies. Moreover, economic
instruments have at best a mixed record in achieving political goals; the
broader the sanctioning coalition is, the greater its impact will be.
MAKING IT OFFICIAL
The prospect of a twenty-first-century triple containment strategy
raises several questions. Since the United States is already doing much
of what is required, how much change in American foreign policy is
needed? Is it necessary or feasible to confront all three revisionist
powers at once? And how does all this end?
As for the first, explicitly committing the United States to contain-
ment would build on many existing policies while reframing them as
part of a coherent national strategy rather than the products of inertia
or inattention. A public commitment to containment would enhance
the credibility of American deterrence and lower the chance of oppor-
tunistic attacks by opponents hoping for easy gains (as happened in
Korea in 1950 and Iraq in 1990). That, in turn, would reassure actual
and potential allies and increase their willingness to join the effort.

Michael Mandelbaum
Adopting containment as a strategic frame would also help restrain

Washington’s occasional impulses to do more (try to transform other
societies) or less (retreat from global engagement altogether).
As for confronting all three at once, geopolitical logic and historical
experience suggest that reducing the number of threats is the best
course, as the United States did by joining with the Soviet Union to
defeat the Nazis and then aligning with Mao Zedong’s China to defeat
the Soviet Union. Post-Soviet Russia would have been a natural partner
for the West. But Moscow was needlessly alienated from its logical
geopolitical partnership by NATO expansion, which brought foreign
armies to its doorstep over its objections. At this point, all three revi-
sionist regimes rely for domestic support on nationalist hostility to the
United States specifically and Western democracies more generally
and reject being part of a U.S.-led coalition. Fortunately, Russia is
much weaker than the Soviet Union, China is restrained by both de-
terrence and the knowledge that military conflict would damage its
economy, and Iran is a regional power. So the United States can afford
to pursue the containment of all three simultaneously (so long as it
does so as part of robust coalitions).
Cold War containment was an open-ended policy with a hoped-for
eventual outcome. The same will be true for the new version: the
policy should continue as long as the threats it is intended to counter
continue, and ideally it will end similarly. Constructive regime change,
for example, especially the advent of democracy, would alter the foreign
policy orientations of the revisionist powers. Such a change would
have to come about through internal processes and is unlikely to happen
anytime soon. Still, none of the regimes can be confident of its lon-
gevity; repeated outbreaks of political turbulence over the years have
shown that each faces significant domestic opposition, maintains itself
in power through coercion, and fears its people rather than trusts
them. Situations like that can shift rapidly. A well-executed policy of
containment could increase the chances of disruption by creating an
external context that would encourage it. But when or, indeed, if it
would bear fruit is impossible to predict.
BEWARE OF FREE RIDERS

The biggest obstacles to a new policy of containment come, ironically,
not from the powers being contained but from the countries doing the
containing. The United States needs to relearn how to manage dura-
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The New Point
Containment
ble coalitions of allies and persuade its own citizenry that the exercise
of global leadership is still worth the effort required.
Coalitions are difficult to manage in the best of circumstances. It
was hard to hold the Western alliance together during the Cold War,
even though it faced a single powerful threat. Building and main-
taining comparable coalitions today, confronted by diverse smaller
threats, will be more difficult still. In
Europe, although all countries are wary
of Russia, some are more so than others.
Coalitions are difficult
Those closest to Russia’s borders most to manage in the best of
strongly support an enhanced Western circumstances.
military presence. Years of crisis over
Europe’s common currency, meanwhile, have taken a political toll,
increased intra-European tensions, and made cooperation of all
kinds more difficult. The continuing Brexit drama will only com-
pound the problems.
In Asia, the Philippines and South Korea have sometimes taken a
more benign view of Chinese power than other countries in the region.
And among those agreeing on the need to check Chinese ambitions
(including Australia, India, Indonesia, and Japan), developing common
policies is difficult because they are an amorphous, heterogeneous group.
In the Middle East, crucial American allies, such as Qatar (which
hosts a U.S. air base) and Saudi Arabia, are sharply at odds. The gov-
ernment of Turkey, a member of NATO, identifies with the Muslim
Brotherhood, which Egypt and Saudi Arabia regard as a mortal enemy.
Ironically, the one unproblematic member of the anti-Iran coalition is
Israel, a country that for decades was anathematized as the root of all
the problems in the Middle East but that is now recognized as a de-
pendable counterweight to Persian power.
All coalitions encounter free-rider problems, and the dominant
members usually pay more than their fair share of the costs involved.
So it will be with the new containment. The imbalance will be most
glaring in Europe, where a tradition of letting Washington carry much
of the burden of collective defense has persisted for too long; it origi-
nated when U.S. allies were weak and poor but continued even after
they became strong and rich. During the Cold War, every American
president tried, without much success, to get European countries to
pay more for NATO, but none pushed the issue hard because the prior-
ity was to maintain a common front against the Soviet threat. There

Michael Mandelbaum
may be a lower tolerance for such free-riding today, as U.S. President

Donald Trump’s comments make clear.
The Asian countries wary of China have increased their spending
on defense. Still, the United States is destined to take the lead in op-
posing China because the most pressing threat the People’s Republic
presents is a maritime one—one that requires major naval forces to
contest, of the kind that only the United States commands.
In the Middle East, Israel has capable armed forces. Saudi Arabia
has purchased expensive military hardware from the United States
but has not demonstrated the capacity to use it effectively. Turkey has
a formidable military, but the present Turkish government cannot be
counted on to use it to contain Iran.
WILL AMERICA LEAD?

The weakest link in the chain may be the most powerful country itself.
There are reasons to expect the American public to support a leading
role in the containment of Russia, China, and Iran. The United States
has a long history with such a foreign policy. The approach has geopo-
litical logic behind it, promising to protect American interests in crucial
parts of the world at a reasonable price. But there are also reasons for
skepticism. Today’s threats appear less urgent, coping with them will
be more complicated, and the country’s attitude toward foreign en-
tanglements has understandably soured over the last two decades.
The United States was pulled into both world wars by external attacks,
and Americans gave their support to a foreign policy of global reach
during the Cold War because they were persuaded it would head off
yet another world war. After the Soviet collapse, many of the Cold
War arrangements persisted through inertia and gained support because
they seemed to entail little expense or risk. Now that the expenses and
risks of such a policy have increased, many Americans may reconsider
their support.
The skepticism has deepened because of the county’s recent misad-
ventures abroad. The interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya
turned out poorly, and the public has little taste for more. This view
has much to recommend it. But it need not threaten the prospects of
a new containment, because that course is quite different from the
failed crusades of recent decades. Those involved efforts to transform
the internal politics and economies of weak states. Containment in-
volves the opposite, checking the external conduct of strong states. If
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The New Point
Containment
national leaders can appreciate and explain the difference, they may
be able to bring the public along.
The resurgence of populism, finally, makes any such project more
difficult. The essence of populism is hostility to elites, and the design
and conduct of foreign policy are elite activities. The foreign policy
establishment favors a robust American role in the world. That may
be a good enough reason for antiestablishment rebels, including the
populist in chief now residing in the White House, to oppose one.
So the future direction of American foreign policy is unclear. Wash-
ington might forgo leading coalitions to contain the three revisionist
powers, in which case their strength will increase. Emboldened by the
American abdication, they may grow aggressive and try to coerce their
neighbors. Those neighbors currently rely on the American nuclear
arsenal to protect them; if they come to doubt the credibility of Amer-
ican security guarantees, they may follow Israel and opt to develop or
acquire their own arsenals in order to protect themselves. An American
retreat would thus make the world more dangerous and nuclear pro-
liferation more likely.
Thanks to the size, geography, and power of the United States,
Americans for many generations have been able to pay less attention to
American foreign policy than have the citizens of other countries,
whose lives and fortunes that policy has more immediately and directly
affected. Should the country turn decisively away from its global role
and allow the revisionist challenges to advance unchecked, however,
Americans’ happy detachment from the world beyond their borders
may disappear. And by the time they realize what they need to protect,
it may be too late to do so without great difficulty and high cost.∂

Educate to Liberate
Open Societies Need Open Minds
Carla Norrlof
A
populist wave is sweeping the Western world. In Austria,
Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the United States, populist parties
and candidates have entered the government. In France,
Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,
they have won record levels of support and reshaped the political
landscape. What makes these victories so disturbing is the charac-
teristic that unites all populists: their rejection of liberal values. If the
world once seemed to be moving inexorably toward greater political
and economic freedom, human dignity, tolerance, equality, nondis-
crimination, open markets, and international cooperation, all are
now under threat. That is bad enough, but the decline of liberalism
will have consequences beyond a few individual countries. Because
the countries that uphold the liberal international order, especially
the United States, are turning against liberalism, they risk under-
mining the order they built, ushering in a more antagonistic and
dangerous world.
Politicians and pundits have suggested many different responses to
the populist phenomenon: reducing inequality, protecting major in-
dustries from international trade, curbing immigration. But these are
all indirect solutions. The best way to counter the populist trend is to
address the underlying problem head-on, by fostering more liberal
attitudes. There is a lot of evidence that the best way to promote lib-
eral values is by giving more people more education. In every place
where populism is surging, the main determinant of whether someone
holds liberal values is his or her level of education. Higher education
emphasizes equality, tolerance, and critical thinking; those without
access to it are far more likely to oppose liberal values and practices.
CARLA NORRLOF is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.
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Since the 1990s, American college graduates have held more lib-
eral positions than nongraduates on a wide range of issues. But
simply sending more people to college is only the first step. To
truly instill liberal values throughout society, universities will also
have to live up to those values themselves—rooting out discrimina-
tion, overturning traditional academic hierarchies, and breaking up
networks of power and patronage that too often keep the connected
in and the deserving out.
THE ILLIBERAL THREAT

In the seven decades after World War II, the United States created
and then sustained the liberal international order, a system character-
ized by individual freedom, open markets, and fairly peaceful interna-
tional relations. It was upheld by an interlocking network of institutions
and alliances and undergirded by the United States’ brute military
force. All 12 U.S. presidents during this era, from Harry Truman to
Barack Obama, supported the order.
The system was built on the principles of economic and political
freedom. Secure property rights and unrestricted flows of goods,
services, and capital have formed its economic backbone. Its found-
ers wanted to free people from government oppression, coercion,
and discrimination. So Western governments have focused on the
need to combat human rights abuses and promote democracy. But
they have spent far less time worrying about ethnic and religious
discrimination, especially in developed countries. That is a mistake.
If left to fester, such discrimination poses a serious threat to the
liberal international order. It undermines the principle of equality
and allows illiberal populists to surf into office, where they weaken
democracy and the order itself.
No one exemplifies that trend better than U.S. President Donald
Trump. Trump’s hostility to liberalism goes way back. Long before he
started campaigning, Trump pushed the racist conspiracy theory that
Obama was born outside the United States. During his campaign
kickoff, in 2015, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and promised
to build a wall along the United States’ southern border. He later
shared inaccurate and racist crime statistics on Twitter and called for
a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
Trump doesn’t just reject liberal values; he rejects the liberal order,
too. On the campaign trail, he called NATO “obsolete,” suggested he

Carla Norrlof
might abandon U.S. allies in East Asia, and threatened to withdraw

the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement,
the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Like his fellow right-wing populists in Europe, Trump looks at the
postwar foreign policy consensus with disdain and advocates instead
that countries shut their borders to foreign goods, clamp down on
press freedom, curb immigration, and preserve traditional ethnic, re-
ligious, and gender hierarchies.
Since taking office, Trump has made good on many of his prom-
ises. Within his first week, he issued an executive order suspending
the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90
days. Since then, he has shunned mul-
tilateralism by withdrawing the United
Trump doesn’t just reject States from the Trans-Pacific Partner-
liberal values; he rejects the ship and the Paris climate agreement,
liberal order, too. launched a trade war, crippled the
World Trade Organization by blocking
the appointment of new judges to its Dispute Settlement Body, failed
to act after Saudi Arabia murdered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
and imposed punitive secondary sanctions on European companies
doing business with Iran after withdrawing the United States from
the Iran nuclear deal. Most worrying for the global economy, the
Trump administration has drafted a new trade bill, the United States
Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, that would allow the president to raise
tariffs unilaterally. That would blow up the world trading system by
violating two of the World Trade Organization’s basic principles: non-
discrimination (the idea that the same tariffs apply to everyone, un-
less free-trade agreements supersede them) and tariff binding (the
understanding that tariffs will not exceed pre-agreed maximums).
Trump has also followed through on his rejection of liberal values.
He has expressed a wish that the United States take in more immi-
grants from countries such as Norway rather than from Africa; pushed
Congress to build a wall on the southern border; failed to distance
himself from white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia;
and instituted, and then reversed, a policy of separating immigrant
children from their parents.
In area after area, the United States has started to abandon the
liberal values it once touted. If this continues, the liberal international
order will face a grim future. Openness to foreign goods and people
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The old college try: at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, November 2015
will be replaced by discriminatory trade and immigration practices. If

the Trump administration continues to undermine the global trading
system, American workers will be the biggest losers. More expensive
imports will hurt household budgets, and as sales fall, companies will
lay off workers. Retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods will hurt exporters,
too. If a trade war gets out of control, the dollar could lose its position
as the global reserve currency. That would cost the United States the
vast benefits in trade, finance, and security it currently derives from
its status as the world’s banker. As the U.S. economy suffers, Wash-
ington will have to spend a larger share of GDP on the military. And if
the Trump administration continues to alienate U.S. allies, they may
form rival power blocs to compete with the United States rather than
cooperate with it. That would usher in a more unpredictable, treach-
erous world order.
Making matters worse, other countries are following Trump’s lead
S HA N NO N STAP L E T O N / R E U T E R S
in turning their backs on liberalism. They are moving away from an

emphasis on identities people can achieve through ingenuity and
hard work to ones they can’t or won’t change, such as skin color or
religion. The result will be a less meritocratic, more discriminatory
world. That will have profound consequences for the liberal interna-
tional order, because a country that is preoccupied with racial and
religious hierarchies is more likely to close its borders to foreign capital,

Carla Norrlof
goods, and people and to downplay the role of collective action in

achieving national security. Such countries are more likely to think in
zero-sum terms.
IT’S IDENTITY, STUPID

Trump’s attacks on the liberal order have centered on economic glob-
alization. Because in his campaign, Trump so effectively harnessed
the resentment Americans felt toward foreign goods and workers,
many commentators have explained his success—and the broader
populist phenomenon—as a backlash against globalization. But the
populist trend is not easily accounted for by economics. In the
United States, the gap between rich and poor has been rising since
the 1970s without a populist backlash until now.
Economic dislocation did account for some of Trump’s appeal,
but his support can be much better explained by education and race.
Nationally, voters without college degrees backed Trump by eight
points, while those with degrees voted for his opponent, Hillary
Clinton, by nine points. That was a major change from the previous
presidential election, when there was little difference between the two
groups. Among white voters, the gap was even wider: whites without
a college education went for Trump by a 39-point margin; those with
a college education voted for him by just a four-point margin.
The only demographic factor that mattered more than education
was race. White voters went for Trump by a 20-point margin. Non-
whites went for Clinton by 53 points. Income did not have the same
predictive power as education. Lower-income voters (those with an-
nual incomes below $50,000) favored Clinton by a 12-point margin.
Middle-income voters (those who earned between $50,000 and
$99,999) favored Trump by a three-point margin. And upper-income
voters split evenly between the two.
Even in places that were struggling economically, identity often
overrode economics. In the Rust Belt, for example, where voters had
every reason to revolt over their economic lot, it was white Americans
who voted for Trump, not poor Americans. Lower-income voters in
the Midwest chose Clinton over Trump by a six-point margin. Mid-
dle-income voters and upper-income voters favored Trump by a
12-point margin and an eight-point margin, respectively. Although in
recent years, the median income among whites in the Midwest has
grown slightly faster than the median income of all other ethnic
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groups in the region (except Asians), white voters supported Trump

over Clinton by an 18-point margin, while nonwhite voters supported
Clinton over Trump by a 54-point margin. Midwestern white voters
were slightly more likely to support Trump than whites in the country
as a whole (by two points), and Midwestern nonwhite voters were
slightly more likely to support Clinton than their national counter-
parts (by one point). Moreover, financial hardship is difficult to disen-
tangle from concerns about identity. A salary cut or a job loss can
cause someone to cling more tightly to other forms of social differen-
tiation, such as race or nationality.
Education has proved important in elections outside the United
States, as well. In the 2018 Swedish election, for example, 35 per-
cent of voters without a high school degree and 27 percent of those
with only a high school degree supported the populist right-wing
Sweden Democrats, compared with just nine percent of those with
a college degree. The political scientist Anders Sannerstedt has
shown that the link between education and populism persists even
when income is accounted for. In France, President Emmanuel Ma-
cron defeated the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in 2017 by
winning in highly educated districts. He won 84 percent of the vote
in the top ten percent of townships by education level. In the bot-
tom decile, he won only 53 percent. After the 2017 Dutch general
election, a survey by the Financial Times showed that education lev-
els correlated negatively with support for Geert Wilders’ far-right
Party for Freedom. A separate Financial Times survey showed the same
was true of support for Brexit in the United Kingdom. A similar
trend is emerging in Germany, although education is a less clear
predictor of populist support there.
Some academics have argued that the populist wave reflects voters’
concerns about eroding national sovereignty. In Trump’s case, this
shows up in his opposition to illegal immigration. In the United King-
dom, supporters of Brexit wanted to “take back control” of their country.
But concerns about sovereignty are often really about race or nation-
ality. Just as Europeans’ discontent with the EU often manifests itself
in xenophobia—think of the stereotypes of spendthrift Greeks and
austere Germans—it is impossible to miss the racial overtones in the
U.S. immigration debate. When destitute emigrants from Scandinavian
countries moved to the United States in the late nineteenth century,
the blue-eyed visitors were largely welcomed. Today, Trump rejects

Carla Norrlof
Mexican immigrants as dangerous and sneers at African immigrants

from what he reportedly called “shithole countries.”
In short, the best way to understand the rise of right-wing popu-
lism is as a rejection of liberal values. And the best way to fight it is
not to search for economic answers or to try to assuage voters’ concerns
about sovereignty but to instill those liberal values as widely as possible
throughout society.
EDUCATION’S EFFECTS
That means focusing on education. Although the educational divide
started to matter in national politics only recently, researchers have
long found that the more educated a person is, the more likely he or
she is to adopt liberal social views.
What accounts for that correlation is less apparent. Some argue
that more liberals go to college in the first place, although there isn’t
much evidence for that. Others emphasize education’s direct role in
teaching rational thinking and changing attitudes. What’s clear is that
higher education militates against simplistic thinking, undermines
stereotypes, opens people up to other points of view, and encourages
them to tolerate social differences.
In the United States, according to polls by the Pew Research Cen-
ter, a college education increasingly correlates with sympathy for the
Democratic Party. According to those polls, in 1994, 39 percent of
those with a four-year college degree identified with or leaned toward
the Democratic Party, and 54 percent identified with or leaned toward
the Republican Party. Today, those figures are reversed. Given the
Democratic Party’s growing association with liberal values, the parti-
san effect of education goes some way toward demonstrating universi-
ties’ liberalizing effect.
Attending college does more than increase people’s tendency to
affiliate with the Democratic Party. It also makes people more likely
to tolerate different political views. College-educated liberals have
warmer attitudes toward conservatives than non-college-educated lib-
erals do. The same is true of conservatives’ attitudes toward liberals.
More education could possibly ease the current crisis of polarization.
On top of its liberalizing effect, higher education also seems to lead
people to support the economic policies, such as free trade and high
levels of immigration, that form the foundation of the global economic
order. There’s also some evidence of a correlation between higher
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Liberate
education and direct support for the liberal international order. In a

2013 survey of nine countries (not including the United States), peo-
ple with college educations were between 24 percentage points (in
Turkey) and ten percentage points (in the United Kingdom) more
likely to support the UN than those without college degrees. Regardless
of whether overall support was high, as in Germany, or low, as in
Pakistan, the educational divide persisted.
It’s possible that’s in part because a college education equips
people for jobs that aren’t subject to competition from foreign
workers, immigrants, or robots, so college graduates have less rea-
son to oppose international flows of goods and people. But that
would not explain why graduates hold more liberal positions in
areas unrelated to the financial benefits of the liberal international
order, such as freedom of speech, which, according to polling by
Gallup, is supported by 73 percent of American college students
but only 56 percent of all American adults.
Given education’s liberalizing effect, the first step in promoting
liberal values should be expanding access to education. Countries
should dedicate more resources to their universities and give more
people access to them. The U.S. government spends less than one
percent of GDP on higher education, putting the United States 21st on
that score within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development in 2015. It lagged behind not only European countries,
such as Norway (1.7 percent), but also emerging economies, such as
Costa Rica (1.6 percent) and Turkey (1.2 percent). The United States
makes up for its lack of public spending by having the highest level of
private spending on higher education. But it still ranks only fifth in terms
of the share of adults with college degrees. (Canada, where in 2017, 57
percent of adults had attended college, ranks first.)
FIXING HIGHER EDUCATION

Sending more people to college is important, but the influence of
higher education matters beyond the raw number of students. Since
elites in almost every section of society have college degrees, univer-
sities have an outsize effect on culture, politics, the economy, science,
and public policy.
Throughout history, education has promoted liberal attitudes, but it
hasn’t done so consistently. Independent thought and deference to au-
thority have always coexisted uneasily in higher learning. From Plato’s

Carla Norrlof
philosopher kings, to the emergence of higher education under the

influence of Christianity in the eleventh century, to the Enlighten-
ment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to today, entrenched
hierarchies and stale dogmas have always interfered with the search
for truth.
To cultivate an enlightened society, higher education needs to get
serious about upholding liberal values. Many institutions of higher
learning pledge to act as vanguards of liberalism in their mission
statements. Beneath the surface, however, they look very different.
For starters, although almost all universities in Canada and the
United States commit themselves to nondiscrimination, the acad-
emy is rummaging in the dark when it comes to understanding and
fighting for it. Explicit racism and religious intolerance are now
thankfully rare. But many people with higher levels of education
show other racist tendencies, particularly toward blacks, such as
making negative assumptions about them, discounting their exper-
tise, excluding them from professional opportunities, and retaliating
against them. Even when universities recognize the problem, rigid
hierarchies can prevent them from holding people accountable. In
some ways, the system is set up for failure. Universities and profes-
sional associations rely on fellow academics to adjudicate grievances.
But it’s absurd to ask peers who may be seeking a research connec-
tion, publishing opportunities, or a job with the alleged perpetrator
to determine wrongdoing.
Problems also arise because discrimination is rarely public; rather,
it takes place behind the scenes, making it hard to document. Most
administrative activities in academic departments, such as assess-
ments of scholarly work and the decisions of hiring and promotion
committees, operate under codes of strict confidentiality, further
complicating efforts to document bias. If academics truly want to
fight discrimination, they shouldn’t look for a smoking gun; they
should ask whether a similar person from a different race or religion
would have suffered similarly.
Universities are also stiflingly hierarchical. Senior administrators
reflexively stand by those below them, so academics who allow dis-
crimination to persist are usually supported all the way up the chain.
And they can easily take cover under the principle of academic freedom,
which often comes into conflict with that of freedom from discrimina-
tion. There’s an easy fix for this: hold senior administrators accountable
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whenever lower-level officials fail to prevent discrimination.

Finally, universities must put an end to the clubby attitude that
excludes far too many people from professional opportunities. Ex-
clusive networks, especially those within predominantly ethnically
or religiously homogeneous groups, subvert norms of equal treat-
ment and opportunity. They encourage their members to close ranks
when challenged, making it nearly impossible to end discriminatory
practices. Even scholars who are not trying to circle the wagons have
a hard time imagining someone they know, like, and respect acting
in a discriminatory way.
Things are moving in the right direction. Within the American Po-
litical Science Association, the leading professional organization of
academic political scientists, for example, minority representation is
far higher among those under 24 (34 percent) than it is among those
over 75 (five percent). But there is still a long way to go. Lack of inclu-
sion is not just a generational problem, and institutions cannot police
diversity into existence. Academics, senior administrators, professional
associations, and journal editors, however, can all do more to encour-
age it, by holding minorities to the same standards as everyone else.
By broadening access to higher education and living up to the
liberal values in which they claim to believe, universities have a
chance to help save those values in society at large. That will play a
crucial role in preserving the liberal international order. It’s not
enough for citizens and policymakers to defend democracy and eco-
nomic openness. The order cannot survive in societies that allow
discrimination to go unchecked.∂

Less Than Zero

Can Carbon-Removal Technologies Curb
Climate Change?
M
ost Americans used to think about climate change—to the
extent that they thought about it at all—as an abstract
threat in a distant future. But more and more are now see-
ing it for what it is: a costly, human-made disaster unfolding before
their very eyes. A wave of increasingly destructive hurricanes, heat
spells, and wildfires has ravaged communities across the United
States, and both scientists and citizens are able to connect these ex-
treme events to a warming earth. Seven in ten Americans agree that
global warming is happening, according to a 2018 study conducted by
the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. About six in
ten think it is mostly caused by human activity and is already chang-
ing the weather. Four in ten say they have personally experienced its
impact. And seven in ten say the United States should enact measures
to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including prices and limits on carbon
dioxide pollution, no matter what other countries do.
When it comes to generating support for climate policy, a war-
ranted sense of alarm is only half the battle. And the other half—a
shared belief that the problem is solvable—is lagging far behind. The
newfound sense of urgency is at risk of being swamped by collective
despair. A scant six percent of Americans, according to the Yale study,
believe that the world “can and will” effectively address climate change.
With carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels having risen by an esti-
mated 2.7 percent in 2018 and atmospheric concentrations of carbon
FRED KRUPP is President of the Environmental Defense Fund.
NATHANIEL KEOHANE is Senior Vice President for Climate at the Environmental

Defense Fund.
ERIC POOLEY is Senior Vice President for Strategy and Communications at the Environ-
mental Defense Fund.
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dioxide, which will determine the ultimate extent of warming, at their

highest level in some three million years, such pessimism may seem
justified—especially with a climate change denier in the White House.
But it is not too late to solve the global climate crisis. A decade of
extraordinary innovation has made the greening of the global econ-
omy not only feasible but also likely. The market now favors clean
energy: in many U.S. states, it is cheaper to build new renewable en-
ergy plants than to run existing coal-fired power plants. By combining
solar power with new, efficient batteries, Arizona and other sunny
states will soon be able to provide electricity at a lower cost per megawatt-
hour than new, efficient natural gas plants. Local, regional, and fed-
eral governments, as well as corporations, are making measurable
progress on reducing carbon pollution. Since 2000, 21 countries have
reduced their annual greenhouse gas emissions while growing their
economies; China is expected to see emissions peak by 2025, five years
earlier than it promised as part of the negotiations for the Paris cli-
mate agreement in 2015. At the UN climate talks held late last year in
Poland, countries agreed on rules for how to report progress on meet-
ing emission-reduction commitments, an important step in imple-
menting the Paris accord.
What’s more, an entirely new arsenal is emerging in the fight
against climate change: negative emission technologies, or NETs.
NETs are different from conventional approaches to climate mitiga-
tion in that they seek not to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases
emitted into the atmosphere but to remove carbon dioxide that’s al-
ready there. These technologies range from the old-fashioned practice
of reforestation to high-tech machines that suck carbon out of the sky
and store it underground. The window of opportunity to combat cli-
mate change has not closed—and with a push from policymakers,
NETs can keep it propped open for longer.
THE HEAT IS ON
How much time is left to avoid climate catastrophe? The truth is that
it is impossible to answer the question with precision. Scientists
know that human activity is warming the planet but still don’t fully
understand the sensitivity of the climate system to greenhouse gases.
Nor do they fully comprehend the link between average global warm-
ing and local repercussions. So far, however, most effects of climate
change have been faster and more severe than the climate models

predicted. The downside risks are enormous; the most recent predic-
tions, ever more dire.
The Paris agreement aims to limit the increase in global average tem-
peratures above preindustrial levels to well below two degrees Celsius,
and ideally to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Going above those
levels of warming would mean more disastrous impacts. Global average
temperatures have already risen by about one degree Celsius since 1880,
with two-thirds of that increase occurring after 1975. An October 2018
special report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
a body of leading scientists and policymakers from around the world,
found that unless the world implements “rapid and far-reaching”
changes to its energy and industrial systems, the earth is likely to reach
temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels sometime
between 2030 and 2052. Limiting warming to that level, the IPCC found,
would require immediate and dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide: roughly
a 45 percent reduction in the next dozen years. Even meeting the less
ambitious target of two degrees would require deep cuts in emissions by
2030 and sustained aggressive action far beyond then.
The IPCC report also warns that seemingly small global tempera-
ture increases can have enormous consequences. For example, the
half-degree difference between 1.5 degrees Celsius and two degrees
Celsius of total warming could consign twice as many people to water
scarcity, put ten million more at risk from rising sea levels, and plunge
several hundred million more people into poverty as lower yields of
key crops drive hunger across much of the developing world. At two
degrees of warming, nearly all of the planet’s coral reefs are expected
to be lost; at 1.5 degrees, ten to 30 percent could survive.
The deeper message of the IPCC report is that there is no risk-free
level of climate change. Targets such as 1.5 degrees Celsius or two
degrees Celsius are important political markers, but they shouldn’t
fool anyone into thinking that nature works so precisely. Just as the
risks are lower at 1.5 degrees Celsius than at two degrees Celsius, so
are they lower at two degrees Celsius than at 2.5 degrees Celsius. In-
deed, the latter difference would be far more destructive, since the
damages mount exponentially as temperatures rise.
To manage the enormous risks of climate change, global emissions
of greenhouse gases need to be cut sharply, and as soon as possible.
That will require transforming energy, land, transport, and industrial
systems so they emit less carbon dioxide. It will also require reducing
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short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, which stay in the at-

mosphere for only a fraction of the time that carbon dioxide does but
have a disproportionate effect on near-term warming.
Yet even that will not be enough. To stabilize the total atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the world
will have to reach net negative emissions—that is, taking more green-
house gases out of the atmosphere than are being pumped into it.
Achieving that through emission reductions alone will be extremely
difficult, since some emissions, such as of methane and nitrous oxide
from agriculture, are nearly impossible to eliminate. Countering the
emissions that are hardest to abate, and bring concentrations down to
safer levels, requires technologies that actually remove carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.
That’s where NETs come in—not as a substitute for aggressive ef-
forts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but as a complement. By
deploying technology that removes existing carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere, while accelerating cuts in emissions, the world can boost
its chances of keeping warming below two degrees and reduce the risk
of catastrophe.
Scientists and activists have tended to regard these technologies as
a fallback option, to be held in reserve in case other efforts fail. Many
fear that jumping ahead to carbon dioxide removal will distract from
the critical need to cut pollution. But the world no longer has the
luxury of waiting for emission-reduction strategies to do the job alone.
Far from being a Plan B, NETs must be a critical part of Plan A.
What’s more, embracing NETs sooner rather than later makes eco-
nomic sense. Because the marginal costs of emission reductions rise as
more emissions are cut, it will be cheaper to deploy NETs at the same
time as emission-reduction technologies rather than waiting to ex-
haust those options first. The wider the solution set, the lower the
costs. And the lower the costs, the easier it is to raise ambitions and
garner the necessary political support.
THE FUTURE IS NOW

Even though removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may
sound like the stuff of science fiction, there are already NETs that could
be deployed at scale today, according to a seminal report released by
the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in
October 2018. One category involves taking advantage of carbon

sinks—the earth’s forests and agricultural soils, which have soaked up
more carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution than has been
released from burning petroleum. To date, the growth of carbon sinks
has been inadvertent: in the United States, for example, as agriculture
shifted from the rocky soils of the Northeast to the fertile Midwest,
forests reclaimed abandoned farmland, breathing in carbon dioxide in
the process. But this natural process can be improved through better
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forest management—letting trees grow longer before they are har-

vested and helping degraded forests grow back more quickly. The
large-scale planting of trees in suitable locations around the world
could increase carbon sinks further, a process that must go hand in
hand with efforts to curb tropical deforestation and thereby continue
to contain the vast amounts of carbon already stored in the earth’s rain-
forests.
Farmland provides additional potential for negative emissions.
Around the world, conventional agricultural practices have reduced
the amount of carbon in soils, de-
creasing their fertility in the process. Removing carbon dioxide
Smarter approaches can reverse the
process. Small and large landholders from the atmosphere
alike could add agricultural waste to may sound like the stuff of
soil, maximize the time that the soil is science fiction.
covered by living plants or mulch, and
reduce tilling, which releases carbon
dioxide. All these steps would decrease the amount of carbon that is
lost from soil and increase the amount of carbon that is stored in it.
The most technologically sophisticated NET available in the near
term is known as “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,” or
BECCS. It is also the riskiest. Broadly defined, BECCS involves burn-
ing or fermenting biomass, such as trees or crops, to generate elec-
tricity or make liquid fuel; capturing the carbon dioxide produced in
the process; and sequestering it underground. It is considered a neg-
ative emission technology, and not a zero emission technology, be-
cause growing the biomass used in the process removes carbon from
the atmosphere. What makes BECCS so exciting is its potential to
remove significantly more carbon from the atmosphere than other
approaches do. But it also brings challenges. For one, it is expensive:
electricity generated from BECCS could cost twice as much as that
generated with natural gas, because biomass is an inefficient fuel
source and capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide is costly. The
technology would also require careful monitoring to ensure that the
carbon dioxide pumped underground stays there and clear rules for
legal liability in the event of leaks. But the fact that private compa-
nies have been successfully injecting carbon dioxide into depleted oil
and gas reservoirs for decades offers good evidence that permanent
storage is possible on a large scale.

More worrying are the additional climate risks that BECCS poses. If
BECCS drives demand for biomass and more of the carbon that is stored
in the forest ecosystem is released as a result, it could end up raising the
level of carbon in the atmosphere rather than reducing it. Another con-
cern is competition for land: converting farms or forests to grow energy
crops, something that the large-scale use of BECCS might require, could
drive up the cost of food, reduce agricultural production, and threaten
scarce habitats. These problems could be mitigated by using only bio-
mass waste, such as residues from logging and agriculture, but that
would reduce the potential scale. Although BECCS deserves consider-
ation as part of the arsenal, these risks mean that its contribution will
likely end up being smaller than some proponents claim.
Taking all these land-based NETs together, and factoring in the
considerable economic, practical, and behavioral hurdles to bringing
them to scale, the National Academies report concludes that by mid-
century, NETs could remove as much as five billion tons of carbon di-
oxide from the atmosphere annually. Given the significant risks
involved, that estimate is probably too bullish. Even if it were not,
that’s still only half of the ten billion tons of carbon dioxide that will
likely need to be removed each year to zero out the remaining green-
house gas emissions, even with aggressive cuts.
CLOSING THE GAP

Removing from the atmosphere the balance of the carbon dioxide nec-
essary will require perfecting technologies currently in development.
Two deserve particular mention; both are full of promise, although nei-
ther is ready for widespread use. The first is called “direct air capture”—
essentially, sucking carbon from the sky. The technology is already
being tested in Canada, Iceland, Italy, and Switzerland at pilot plants
where massive arrays of fans direct a stream of air toward a special sub-
stance that binds with the passing carbon dioxide. The substance is
then either heated or forced into a vacuum to release the carbon dioxide,
which is compressed and either stored or used as feedstocks for chemi-
cals, fuels, or cement.
These technologies are real—albeit prohibitively expensive in their
current form. As a recent study led by David Sandalow of Columbia
University’s Center on Global Energy Policy concludes, taking them
to scale means solving a variety of technological challenges to bring
down the costs. Above all, these processes are highly energy intensive,
The CSS PointZero
Less Than
so scaling them would require enormous amounts of low-carbon elec-

tricity. (A direct-air-capture facility powered by coal-fired electricity,
for example, would generate more new carbon dioxide than it would
capture.) These obstacles are serious, but the surprising progress of
the past decade suggests that they can be overcome in the next one.
The second technology, enhanced carbon mineralization, is even
further from being realized, but it is full of even more possibility. Ge-
ologists have long known that when rock from the earth’s mantle (the
layer of the earth between its crust and its core) is exposed to the air,
it binds with carbon dioxide to form carbon-containing minerals. The
massive tectonic collisions that formed the Appalachian Mountains
around 460 million years ago, for example, exposed subsurface rock to
weathering that resulted in the absorption of substantial amounts of
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That took tens of millions of
years; enhanced carbon mineralization seeks to fast-forward the pro-
cess. Scientists are exploring two ways to do this. In one approach,
rocks would be brought to the surface to bind with carbon from the air.
Such natural weathering already occurs in mine tailings, the waste left
over from certain mining operations. But mimicking this process on a
large scale—by grinding up large quantities of rock containing reactive
minerals and bringing it to the earth’s surface—would be highly en-
ergy intensive and thus costly, roughly on par with direct air capture.
Another potential approach is pumping the carbon dioxide under-
ground to meet the rock. As the National Academies report explains,
carbon-dioxide–rich fluids injected into basalt or peridotite formations
(two kinds of igneous rock that make up much of the earth’s mantle)
react with the rock, converting the dissolved carbon dioxide into solid
carbon-containing minerals. Pilot projects in Iceland and the United
States have demonstrated that this is possible. There is also evidence for
how this could work in the natural world. Peridotite usually lies deep
inside the earth, but some rock formations around the globe contain
pockets of it on the surface. For example, scientists are studying how the
surface-level peridotite in Oman’s rock formations reacts with the air and
absorbs large amounts of carbon. In theory, this approach offers nearly
unlimited scale, because suitable rock formations are widespread and
readily accessible. It would also be cheap, because it takes advantage of
chemical potential energy in the rock instead of costly energy sources.
And since the carbon dioxide is converted to solid rock, the effect is per-
manent, and it carries few of the side effects that other NETs could bring.

GETTING TO LESS
These technologies do not come cheap. The National Academy of Sci-
ences recommends as much as $1 billion annually in U.S. government
funding for research on NETs. And indeed, such funding should be an
urgent priority. But to make these technologies economically viable
and scale them rapidly, policymakers will also have to tap into a much
more powerful force: the profit motive. Putting a price on carbon
emissions creates an economic incentive for entrepreneurs to find
cheaper, faster ways to cut pollution. Valuing negative emissions—for
example, through an emission-trading system that awards credits for
carbon removal or a carbon tax that provides rebates for them—would
create an incentive for them to join the hunt for NETs.
Forty-five countries, along with ten U.S. states, have put in place
some mechanism to price carbon. But only a handful of them offer
rewards for converting land into forest, managing existing forests bet-
ter, or increasing the amount of carbon stored in agricultural soils, and
none offers incentives for other NETs. What’s needed is a carbon-
pricing system that not only charges those who emit carbon but also
pays those who remove it. Such a system would provide new revenue
streams for landowners who restored forest cover to their land and for
farmers and ranchers who increased the amount of carbon stored in
their soils. It would also reward the inventors and entrepreneurs who
developed new, better technologies to capture carbon from the air and
the investors and businesses that took them to scale. Without these
incentives, those players will stay on the sidelines. By spurring inno-
vation in lower-cost NETs, incentives would also ease the way politi-
cally for an ambitious pollution limit—which, ultimately, is necessary
for ensuring that the world meets it climate goals. Simply put, hu-
manity’s best hope is to promise that the next crop of billionaires will
be those who figure out low-cost ways to remove carbon from the sky.
The biggest hurdle for such incentives is the lack of a global market
for carbon credits. Hope on that front, however, is emerging from an
unlikely place: aviation. Currently responsible for roughly two per-
cent of global greenhouse gases, aviation’s emissions are expected to
triple or quadruple by midcentury in the absence of effective policies
to limit them. But in 2016, faced with the prospect that the EU would
start capping the emissions of flights landing in and taking off from
member states, the UN body that governs worldwide air travel, the
International Civil Aviation Organization, agreed to cap emissions
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Less Than
from international flights at 2020 levels. The airline industry sup-

ported the agreement, hoping to avoid the messy regulatory patch-
work that might result if the EU went ahead and states beyond the EU
followed suit with their own approaches.
The resulting program, called the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction
Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), requires all airlines to
start reporting emissions this year, and it will begin enforcing a cap in
2021. Once in full swing, at least 100 countries are expected to partici-
pate, covering at least three-quarters of the forecast increase in interna-
tional aviation emissions. Airlines flying between participating countries
will have two ways to comply: they can lower their emissions (for ex-
ample, by burning less fuel or switch-
ing to alternative fuels), or they can buy
emission-reduction credits from compa- Humanity’s best hope is to
nies. Because the technologies for re- promise that the next
ducing airline emissions at scale are
still a long way off, the industry will
crop of billionaires will be
mostly choose the second option, re- those who figure out
lying on carbon credits from reduc- low-cost ways to remove
tions in other sectors. It is estimated carbon from the sky.
that over the first 15 years of CORSIA,
demand for these credits will reach
between 2.5 billion and 3.0 billion tons—roughly equal to the annual
greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. power and manufacturing
sectors. With this new option to sell emission-reduction credits to
airlines, there is a good possibility that a pot of gold will await com-
panies that cut or offset their carbon emissions. In short, CORSIA could
catalyze a global carbon market that drives investment in low-carbon
fuels and technologies—including NETs.
To realize its promise, CORSIA must be implemented properly, and
there are powerful forces working to see that it is not. Some countries,
including ones negotiating on behalf of their state-owned companies,
are trying to rig the system by allowing credits from projects that do
not produce legitimate carbon reductions, such as Brazil’s effort to al-
low the sale of credits from huge hydroelectric dams in the Amazon
that have already been built and paid for (and thus do not represent
new reductions). Allowing such credits into the system could crowd
out potential rewards for genuine reductions. But there are also pow-
erful, sometimes unexpected allies who stand to gain from a global

carbon market that works. For example, some airlines are motivated
to act out of a fear that millennials, concerned about their carbon foot-
print, may eventually begin to shun air travel. The new regulations, by
creating demand for emission reductions and spurring investment in
NETs to produce jet fuel, could be the industry’s best hope of protect-
ing its reputation—and a critical step toward a broader global carbon
market that moves NETs from promising pilot projects to a game-
changing reality.
Skeptics say that NETs are too speculative and a possibility only,
perhaps, in the distant future. It is true that these innovations are not
fully understood and that not all of them will pan out. But no group
of scholars and practitioners, no matter how expert, can determine
exactly which technologies should be deployed and when. It is impos-
sible to predict what future innovations will look like, but that
shouldn’t stop the world from pursuing them, especially when the
threat is so grave. The fact remains that many NETs are ready to be
deployed at scale today, and they might make the difference between
limiting warming to two degrees and failing to do so.
Ultimately, climate change will be stopped by creating economic
incentives that unleash the innovation of the private sector—not by
waiting for the perfect technology to arrive ready-made, maybe when
it’s already too late. No one is saying that achieving all of this will be
easy, but the road to climate stability has never been that. Hard does
not mean impossible, however, and the transformative power of hu-
man ingenuity offers an endless source of hope.∂
The CSS Point
REVIEWS & RESPONSES

As millions of British men
left to fight in World War I,
thousands of scientifically,
medically, and technically
trained women jumped into
the breach.
—Elaine Weiss
The Original Hidden Figures Recent Books 171

Elaine Weiss 154
WIKIM E DIA COMMONS
E Pluribus Unum?
Stacey Y. Abrams; John Sides, Michael
Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck; Jennifer A.
Richeson; Francis Fukuyama 160
their minds and scientific skills in the

The Original service of their country. A Lab of One’s
Own, the latest book by the historian of
Hidden Figures science Patricia Fara, seeks to fill this
gap in public memory by focusing on
this last group, giving the female British
The Women Scientists Who scientists of the early twentieth century
Won the Great War their rightful due.
Fara’s welcome and novel work goes
Elaine Weiss beyond the familiar nurse-on-the-western-
front accounts of pluck and patience
that appear in many histories of the
Great War. Instead, the book meshes
A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage two coinciding centenaries: the 1918
in the First World War armistice that ended World War I and
BY PATRICIA FARA. Oxford the law that gave British women, at
University Press, 2018, 304 pp. least the older and wealthier among
them, the right to vote that same year.
I
n the center of many British towns As if conducting her own experiment,
stands a cenotaph, a memorial tomb Fara places her heroines on the examin-
honoring the native sons who gave ing table and observes their responses
their lives during World War I. Etched to these historical stimuli.
into the plinths, in between carved Both events were jolts to British
garlands and laurels, are the names and society, shaking up families, economies,
military ranks of the fallen. Additional and, as Fara reveals, laboratories. At
rows list the soldiers and sailors lost in great personal risk, female scientists
later conflicts. On Remembrance Day, took on the study of dangerous explo-
November 11, the anniversary of the sives, toxic chemicals, virulent diseases,
end of World War I, red silk poppies and the unrecognized lethal effects of
adorn the monuments in remembrance radioactivity. Simply pursuing a career
of these patriots’ sacrifices. in science was tough enough: whether
Unrecorded and unrecognized, at universities, in industry, or in the
much less inscribed in stone, is an War Office, women faced entrenched
entire class of patriots that British misogyny. Desperately needed but
society has willfully forgotten over the decidedly unwelcome, they suffered
past century: the women who gave their indignities on the job and were paid far
all for the war effort, including many less than their male coworkers. And the
who even gave their lives. Some used rationales used to shut them out might
their muscles in mines and munitions sound all too familiar to modern ears.
factories. Some brought their medical
expertise to the front. And some put BARRIERS TO ENTRY
Fara has pulled off quite a feat of
ELAINE WEISS is a journalist and the author of
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the archival archaeology. Digging through
Vote. Copyright © by Elaine Weiss. the records of universities, scientific
The CSS
The Original Point
Hidden Figures
societies, industrial establishments, students, and they were women-only

newspapers, and personal journals and schools. Classes and laboratories at
correspondence, she excavates and Cambridge and Oxford were segregated
pieces together the lives of some of the by sex, and since many male professors
first women to embark on scientific refused to lecture to female students,
studies and careers in the modern era. the task fell to female instructors, who,
Often, what emerges are just tanta- no matter how talented, were rarely
lizing snippets, frustratingly incomplete, given faculty status, let alone time or
but such are the limits of the documen- resources for research.
tary evidence. The compilation also In the rare instances that female
skews toward the socially privileged, Cambridge or Oxford students got to
who left behind a more complete paper attend a mixed-sex lecture or meeting,
trail through their carefully preserved they had to endure the hoots, mockery,
correspondence (it takes a big house and foot stamping of their outraged
to store all those family letters), their male classmates. At Cambridge, even
published and unpublished memoirs mathematical whizzes such as Philippa
(often the fruit of thoughtful leisure), Fawcett (daughter of the suffrage
and newspaper accounts (where socially movement leader Millicent Fawcett),
prominent women were more likely to who beat out all her male classmates to
pop up). Still, Fara tries hard to include take top honors, were neither allowed
women endowed with scientific talent to attend commencement ceremonies
but not to the manor born. nor given an official degree. In 1897,
At the turn of the century, the United when the Senate of the University of
Kingdom was not exactly fertile soil for Cambridge considered granting women
female scientists and mathematicians. full degrees, male students rioted in the
Higher education for women, the think- streets, hanging and mutilating effigies
ing went, was not just a waste of time; of a bicycle-riding woman—the symbol
it was a threat to the human species. of the feared female classmate. It wasn’t
Eminent physicians warned that too until 1920 that Oxford allowed women
much deep thinking would siphon a to become full members of the university
woman’s bloodflow from her reproduc- and bestowed proper diplomas on its
tive organs to her brain, harming her female graduates; Cambridge women
childbearing capacities. And with a little had to wait until 1948 to be offered a
twisting, Darwinian theories of adapta- full degree.
tion appeared to show that women had If the elite universities made life
evolved for reproduction and nest build- difficult for women, less prestigious,
ing rather than intellectual pursuits. regional “red brick” universities—such as
If a strong-willed girl nonetheless Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester—
convinced her family to let her prepare seem to have been more egalitarian and
for college, and she passed the entrance welcoming, enrolling middle-class women
exams, few opportunities were available in coeducational classrooms and labs.
to her at the most prestigious institu- Less invested in tradition, pomp, and
tions. Only two colleges at Cambridge privilege, these schools became impor-
and four at Oxford enrolled female tant training grounds for female students

Elaine Weiss
and scientists. Still, science was a perilous

a German spy ring. The physicist May
career choice for women, and Fara does Leslie conducted groundbreaking secret
an admirable job of conjuring the social, research on explosives in a government
political, and scientific attitudes that laboratory.
made theirs an uphill and obstacle- For all these breakthroughs, prewar
strewn climb. gender norms did not evaporate into
thin air. British society recoiled at the
WORKERS AND WARRIORS sight of “munitionettes” in wartime
With the outbreak of World War I factories, clad in safe and practical
came a sudden opening, especially in overalls rather than customary long
the work force. As millions of men left skirts. Many winced as nurses traded
to fight, thousands of scientifically, their starched white caps for helmets
medically, and technically trained and khaki breeches, riding motorcycles
women jumped into the breach. By to hospitals behind the lines. Women
necessity, women took over positions did what was needed, but in taking on
long considered men’s work. Doors men’s work and wearing men’s garb,
swung open; glass ceilings shattered. they were becoming irreparably “mascu-
Female chemists worked with explosives linized”—at least in the eyes of many
and poisonous gasses, female metallur- male compatriots.
gists tested steel strength for the navy, The social and the physical toll of
female engineers perfected airplane wartime work often went hand in hand.
designs, female medical researchers Women ruined their health making TNT
fought the infectious diseases decimat- explosives, their skin and eyes turning
ing troops, female physicians and nurses yellow and their internal organs green
operated at the front. There were female from exposure to the toxic chemicals
cryptologists, welders, nutritionists, involved. Dubbed “canaries” for their
physicists, statisticians, pharmaceutical strange appearance, many of these
researchers, laboratory directors, and women were shunned by neighbors and
industrial supervisors. family; more than 200 of them died,
The physician Mona Chalmers and thousands more became seriously
Watson and the botanist Helen Gwynne- and permanently ill. Fara places their
Vaughan left their clinic and lab to run predicament during four harrowing
the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, years of national upheaval in high relief,
supervising nearly 100,000 women in showcasing society’s shocking ambiva-
military support activities. The chemist lence toward their patriotic efforts.
Frances Micklethwait studied chemical It’s rather astounding that in the
weapons during the war and was among midst of a savage war, the British people
the first to analyze mustard gas, closely still mustered enough energy to rail
observing the effects of the pernicious against working women. But for many,
gas on her own skin. As an employee safeguarding patriarchal privilege and
at the state’s Censorship Office, Mabel the endangered male ego at home was
Elliott heated a letter she was inspecting as much a priority as protecting the
and found secret messages written in nation on the battlefield. The same
lemon juice; her discovery broke open male alarm and resentment cropped up
The CSS Point
in the United States during its brief

stint in the war, but the effect was milder
there, if only because the nation suffered
less from the war. #1 InTeRnAtIoNaL
SCIENCE AND SUFFRAGE
BeStSeLlEr
Measuring the war’s impact on British “A history stretching from the
women in general, and scientific women Germanic tribes who took on the Roman
in particular, is admittedly easier than Empire, right up to Angela Merkel . . .
gauging the subtler effects of demand- Comprehensive, vivid, and entertaining
ing and finally gaining the right to vote. . . . if you want to understand a country
It’s hard to weigh the role that the pro- on which much of the free world is now
tracted fight for suffrage and women’s pinning its hopes, you could do worse
civil rights played in the lives of female
than start here.”—Irish Examiner
scientists, not least because these efforts
were largely put on hold from 1914 to 1918.
Another problem is that, Fara’s lucid
writing and admirable dedication notwith-
standing, the book would have benefited
from a cleaner narrative framework. At
times, it reads like an archival dump, a
slurry of names and anecdotes in a repeti-
tive thematic stream. Time sequences
are jumbled, which robs the story of any
logical progression and a sense of societal
progress—or lack thereof.
Beyond this, Fara’s grasp of women’s
suffrage history is far less assured than
her understanding of British scientific “A must-read.”—The Economist
culture. She repeatedly dismisses the
“Hawes argues that that Germany’s history,
militant suffragists affiliated with long-ago and recent, makes it a key, if not the
Emmeline Pankhurst as mere obstruc- key, player in world leadership.”—Booklist
tionists; in fact, historians agree that it
“Sweeping and confident . . . has a
was the synergy of the Pankhurst
frightening urgency.”—Observer
militants and the law-abiding Fawcett
forces that powered the movement to “A fast-moving encapsulation of
German history. . . . Marvelously concise,
success. At one point, Fara alludes to
especially compelling as Angela Merkel
Anna Howard Shaw as a character’s is set to step down in 2021, leaving an
“American friend” without identifying uncertain vacuum in Europe.”—Kirkus
Shaw as the leader of the U.S. suffrage
movement—a woman of international Available wherever books are sold
renown at the time.
Fara’s account also fails to fully make
the case that women’s role in science
157
Elaine Weiss
catalyzed the suffrage movement. The taught women to be unapologetically

evidence for this claim is thin and loud, audacious, and ingenious.
anecdotal. Fara hints at a more funda- So when the women of Cambridge
mental link when she observes, early in found the doors to university class-
the book, “Both suspect activities for rooms and laboratories closed to them
women, science and suffrage were often in the 1880s, they didn’t whine and cry;
bracketed together by critics worried they raised the funds to build and staff
about this twin threat to long-established the Balfour Biological Laboratory for
conventions of female domesticity, Women, where generations of female
subservience, and demureness.” scientists were trained and nurtured.
The animus against women barging When distinguished female academics
into the male-ruled domains of math- were barred from representation on
ematics and science was indeed the very university committees and denied entry
same that denied women a place in the into the plush common rooms that their
public sphere and a voice in their male colleagues frequented, they founded
government. These prejudices contin- the British Federation of University
ued to shape public resentment toward Women, in 1907. When fully qualified
female war workers—many of whom female chemists tried unsuccessfully to
were also suffragists. Yet it was the join the professional Chemical Society,
decades-long fight for the vote—born in the researchers Ida Smedley Maclean
the Victorian era and carried out up and Martha Whiteley led the charge
until 1918—that laid the logistical and to pry the gates open in 1920. Female
emotional foundations for women to scientists learned from their suffragist
enter the universities and scientific sisters to expect setbacks and disap-
professions and propelled their wartime pointment but to keep their eyes on the
participation, not the other way around. prize: the campaign to elect female
The suffrage movement gave women fellows to the Royal Society, the coun-
the confidence and skills to organize, try’s most prestigious learned society,
demand change, and insist on inclusion, didn’t succeed until 1945.
to slowly chip away at the customs and
laws that kept them at home, their THE CLOCK OF EXPERIENCE
bodies encumbered by pounds of By the war’s end, women composed
petticoats, their minds caged. Three one-third of the British work force, three
generations of committed suffrage million of them in industry. Female
activists agitated and lobbied, formed scientists were lecturing to men, heading
suffrage societies in every British city research labs, and running hospitals. But
and town, published their own newspa- the direct benefits proved short-lived.
pers, put on massive conventions, and “Formerly seen as ‘saviours of the
organized giant protests with 40,000 nation,’ wartime workers were now
women marching through the streets of scorned as ‘ruthless self-seekers de-
London. The women who participated priving men and their dependents of a
in the movement learned to endure livelihood,’” Fara reports. One million
contempt and ridicule, imprisonment British men did not return from the
and torture. The suffrage movement war; those who did come home were
The CSS
The Original Point
Hidden Figures
distressed to find that women had done lessons of the suffrage movement,
so splendidly taking over their jobs. rather than the short bursts of wartime
Women “have had the time of their opportunity, are probably more useful
lives . . . swaggering about in every kind for the future. The suffrage movement
of uniform,” wrote a British commenta- trained leaders and feminist thinkers,
tor in January 1919, before admonishing organizing women of all classes to
that they would have to resume their agitate for their own rights, whereas
roles as “wives and mothers now the women’s wartime participation still took
men are coming home.” place largely on men’s terms, with men’s
And so they did. Women in industry reluctant cooperation. As today’s women
were given pink slips or reduced wages; continue to shatter glass ceilings in govern-
female scientists were sent back to teach- ment, business, and academia, the
ing school or working behind the scenes suffragists offer a legacy of organizing,
in the lab. Possessing the vote didn’t mentorship, and proud self-reliance.
help much: under the 1918 law, women Fara has composed a worthy and
under 30 were not granted suffrage at lasting tribute to these pioneering
all, as politicians feared that with so women. One wonders, of course,
many men lost in the war, giving the whether the terrain of the so-called
vote to all British women at age 21 would STEM fields has been made much
create a majority-female electorate. smoother for women during the past
Thus, many of the young women who century—or whether modern-day
had eagerly entered dangerous new female scientists, engineers, and tech-
professions and contributed to the war nology professionals will shake their
effort found themselves shut out of heads in sad recognition at the patron-
civic participation for another decade. izing and infuriating attitudes described
Yet they had learned to push, and in this book. Fara leaves this question
they did so until the law was changed to open but cautions against too much
include them, in 1928. In the words of optimism: “Before the First World War,
one of the women highlighted in A Lab suffragists could see what they were
of One’s Own, the Cambridge mathematics fighting against, but modern discrimi-
ace and suffrage organizer Ray Strachey, nation is elusive, insidious, and stub-
“It is impossible to put the clock of bornly hard to eradicate.” Female
experience backwards.” World War I scientists know how to carry on.∂
advanced the hands of that clock—by
a little. Yet 20 years later, when the
United Kingdom entered another
shattering world war, the lessons of
the last one had largely been forgotten.
Once again, women took on “men’s
work,” only to come home to mind the
kitchen after the hostilities ended.
The fight for equality in the work-
place continues to this day, as does the
quest for women’s rights. The long-lived

changed the political landscape. Face-

E Pluribus Unum? book captures examples of inequality
and makes them available for endless
replay. Twitter links the voiceless to
The Fight Over Identity newsmakers. Instagram immortalizes
Politics the faces and consequences of discrimi-
nation. Isolated cruelties are yoked into
a powerful narrative of marginalization
that spurs a common cause.
Identity Politics Strengthens These changes have encouraged
activists and political challengers to make
Democracy demands with a high level of specificity—
Stacey Y. Abrams to take the identities that dominant groups
have used to oppress them and convert
R
ecent political upheavals have them into tools of democratic justice.
reinvigorated a long-running Critics of this phenomenon, including
debate about the role of identity Francis Fukuyama (“Against Identity
in American politics—and especially Politics,” September/October 2018),
American elections. Electoral politics condemn it as the practice of “identity
have long been a lagging indicator of politics.” But Fukuyama’s criticism relies
social change. For hundreds of years, on a number of misjudgments. First,
the electorate was limited by laws that Fukuyama complains that “again and
explicitly deprived women, African again, groups have come to believe that
Americans, and other groups of the right their identities—whether national,
to vote. (Efforts to deny voting rights religious, ethnic, sexual, gender, or other-
and suppress voter turnout continue wise—are not receiving adequate recogni-
today, in less overt forms but with the tion.” In the United States, marginalized
same ill intent.) When marginalized groups have indeed come to believe
groups finally gained access to the ballot, this—because it is true. Fukuyama also
it took time for them to organize around warns that Americans are fragmenting
opposition to the specific forms of “into segments based on ever-narrower
discrimination and mistreatment that identities, threatening the possibility of
continued to plague them—and longer deliberation and collective action by
still for political parties and candidates society as a whole.” But what Fukuyama
to respond to such activism. In recent laments as “fracturing” is in reality the
decades, however, rapid demographic result of marginalized groups finally
and technological changes have acceler- overcoming centuries-long efforts to erase
ated this process, bolstering demands them from the American polity—activism
for inclusion and raising expectations in that will strengthen democratic rule, not
communities that had long been condi- threaten it.
tioned to accept a slow pace of change.
In the past decade, the U.S. electorate THE CLASS TRAP
has become younger and more ethnically Fukuyama claims that the Democratic
diverse. Meanwhile, social media has Party “has a major choice to make.” The
The ECSS Point
Pluribus Unum?
party, he writes, can continue “doubling improved status for workers but has
down on the mobilization of the identity been slow to include them in the
groups that today supply its most fervent movement’s victories.
activists: African Americans, Hispanics, The facile advice to focus solely on
professional women, the LGBT community, class ignores these complex links among
and so on.” Or it can take Fukuyama’s American notions of race, gender, and
preferred tack, focusing more on economics. As Fukuyama himself notes,
economic issues in an attempt to “win it has been difficult “to create broad
back some of the white working-class coalitions to fight for redistribution,”
voters . . . who have defected to the since “members of the working class
Republican Party in recent elections.” who also belong to higher-status iden-
Fukuyama and other critics of tity groups (such as whites in the
identity politics contend that broad United States) tend to resist making
categories such as economic class common cause with those below them,
contain multitudes and that all atten- and vice versa.” Fukuyama’s preferred
tion should focus on wide constructs strategy is also called into question by
rather than the substrates of inequality. the success that the Democratic Party
But such arguments fail to acknowledge enjoyed in 2018 by engaging in what he
that some members of any particular derides as identity politics. Last year, I
economic class have advantages not was the Democratic Party’s gubernato-
enjoyed by others in their cohort. U.S. rial nominee in Georgia and became the
history abounds with examples of first African American woman in U.S.
members of dominant groups abandon- history to be nominated for governor
ing class solidarity after concluding by a major political party. In my bid for
that opportunity is a zero-sum game. office, I intentionally and vigorously
The oppressed have often aimed their highlighted communities of color and
impotent rage at those too low on the other marginalized groups, not to the
social scale to even attempt rebellion. exclusion of others but as a recognition
This is particularly true in the catchall of their specific policy needs. My
category known as “the working class.” campaign championed reforms to
Conflict between black and white eliminate police shootings of African
laborers stretches back to the earliest Americans, protect the LGBTQ commu-
eras in U.S. history, which witnessed nity against ersatz religious freedom
tensions between African slaves and legislation, expand Medicaid to save
European indentured servants. Racism rural hospitals, and reaffirm that un-
and sexism have long tarnished the documented immigrants deserve legal
heroic story of the U.S. labor move- protections. I refused to accept the
ment—defects that contributed to the notion that the voters most affected by
rise of a segregated middle class and to these policies would invariably support
persistent pay disparities between men me simply because I was a member of a
and women, disparities exacerbated by minority group. (The truth is that when
racial differences. Indeed, the American people do not hear their causes authen-
working class has consistently relied on tically addressed by campaigns, they
people of color and women to push for generally just don’t vote at all.) My

Fukuyama and His Critics
campaign built an unprecedented fighting for inclusion—hence the need

coalition of people of color, rural whites, for a politics that respects and reflects
suburban dwellers, and young people the complicated nature of these identi-
in the Deep South by articulating an ties and the ways in which they inter-
understanding of each group’s unique sect. The basis for sustainable progress
concerns instead of trying to create a is legal protections grounded in an
false image of universality. As a result, awareness of how identity has been
in a midterm contest with a record-high used to deny opportunity. The LGBTQ
turnout of nearly four million voters, community is not included in civil
I received more votes than any Demo- rights protections, which means mem-
crat in Georgia’s history, falling a scant bers may lose their jobs or their right
54,000 votes shy of victory in a contest to housing or adoption. Antiabortion
riddled with voting irregularities that rules disproportionately harm women
benefited my opponent. of color and low-income women of
every ethnicity, affecting their economic
DIFFERENT STROKES capacity and threatening their very
Beyond electoral politics, Fukuyama and lives. Voter suppression, the most
others argue that by calling out ethnic, insidious tool to thwart the effective-
cultural, gender, or sexual differences, ness of identity politics, demands the
marginalized groups harm themselves renewal of the Voting Rights Act of
and their causes. By enumerating and 1965 and massive reforms at the state
celebrating distinctions, the argument and local levels.
goes, they give their opponents reasons When the groups most affected by
for further excluding them. But minori- these issues insist on acknowledgment
ties and the marginalized have little of their intrinsic difference, it should
choice but to fight against the particular not be viewed as divisive. Embracing
methods of discrimination employed the distinct histories and identities of
against them. The marginalized did not groups in a democracy enhances the
create identity politics: their identities complexity and capacity of the whole.
have been forced on them by dominant For example, by claiming the unique
groups, and politics is the most effective attributes of womanhood—and, for
method of revolt. women of color, the experience of
To seek redress and inclusion, the inhabiting the intersection of marginal-
first step is to identify the barriers to ized gender and race—feminists have
entry: an array of laws and informal demonstrated how those characteristics
rules to proscribe, diminish, and isolate could be leveraged to enhance the
the marginalized. The specific methods whole. Take, for example, the Family
by which the United States has excluded and Medical Leave Act, which feminists
women, Native Americans, African originally pushed for in order to guar-
Americans, immigrants, and the LGBTQ antee women’s right to give birth and
community from property ownership, still keep their jobs, but which men
educational achievement, and political have also come to rely on to take time
enfranchisement have differed; so, too, off from work to care for children or
have the most successful methods of aging parents.
The ECSS Point
Pluribus Unum?
The current demographic and developments in the United States and

social evolution toward diversity in the abroad—especially the emergence of
United States has played out alongside populist nationalism—to identity politics.
a trend toward greater economic and In Fukuyama’s telling, the rise of identity
social inequality. These parallel but politics constitutes a fall from grace. For
distinct developments are inextricably him, most of “twentieth-century politics
bound together. The entrance of the was defined by economic issues.” But in
marginalized into the workplace, the the 1960s, he writes, the civil rights,
commons, and the body politic— feminist, and other social movements
achieved through litigation and legisla- embraced identity politics. Later, he
tion—spawned reactionary limits on claims, forces on the political right
their legal standing and restrictions followed suit, adopting “language and
meant to block their complaints and framing from the left.” Fukuyama warns
prevent remedies. The natural antidote that if democratic societies continue
to this condition is not a retrenchment “fracturing into segments based on ever-
to amorphous, universal descriptors narrower identities,” the result will be
devoid of context or nuance. Instead, “state breakdown and, ultimately, failure.”
Americans must thoughtfully pursue an Identity is indeed a “master concept”
expanded, identity-conscious politics. for understanding American politics.
New, vibrant, noisy voices represent the But identity politics has a much longer
strongest tool to manage the growing history than Fukuyama describes. And in
pains of multicultural coexistence. By the United States, identity politics hasn’t
embracing identity and its prickly, led to the breakdown of democracy;
uncomfortable contours, Americans rather, it has helped democracy thrive.
will become more likely to grow as one.
ORIGIN STORY
STACEY Y. ABRAMS served as Minority In Fukuyama’s telling, identity politics
Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives
from 2011 to 2017 and was the Democratic first emerged in the second half of the
Party’s nominee in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial twentieth century. In fact, Americans have
election. been engaged in identity politics since the
founding of the republic. If the fight for
civil rights for African Americans was
Identity Politics Can Lead to fueled by identity politics, then so was
the fight to establish and ensure white
Progress
supremacy via slavery and Jim Crow. In
John Sides, Michael Tesler, and other words, identity politics isn’t behind
Lynn Vavreck only the efforts of marginalized groups to
seek redress: it also drives the efforts of
dominant groups to marginalize others.
F
rancis Fukuyama argues that Fukuyama believes identity politics
“identity politics has become a went too far when groups such as African
master concept that explains much Americans began to “assert a separate
of what is going on in global affairs.” identity” and “demand respect for [their
He attributes a variety of political members] as different from the main-

stream society.” Leaving aside whether of African Americans. This divergence

that statement correctly characterizes the sharpened during Barack Obama’s candi-
goal of such groups, it is important to dacy and presidency, as whites’ racial
acknowledge that identity politics also attitudes became more closely tied to
defined who was and who was not part of their partisan identities.
“mainstream society” in the first place. This trend might have accelerated
In Fukuyama’s telling, U.S. politics even faster than it did had major politi-
were healthier when Americans— cal leaders tried to exploit it. But Obama
especially those on the left—organized actually talked about race less than
around economic concerns that tran- other recent Democratic presidents and
scended ethnic categories. “In past eras,” frequently used rhetoric that sought to
he writes, “progressives appealed to a unify Americans of different racial
shared experience of exploitation and backgrounds. Meanwhile, Obama’s
resentment of rich capitalists.” But there Republican opponents in the presiden-
is no period in U.S. history when eco- tial elections of 2008 and 2012, John
nomics were so cleanly divorced from McCain and Mitt Romney, chose not
identity. For example, as the political to stoke racialized fears of Obama.
scientist Ira Katznelson has documented, Donald Trump was different. His
the key social welfare programs of the provocative statements about race, immi-
New Deal era were predicated on racial gration, and Islam helped define the 2016
discrimination: U.S. President Franklin election. Partly as a result, Americans’
Roosevelt relied on the support of white views on such issues became stronger
segregationists, which he won by allow- predictors of how they voted. For
ing southern states to prevent blacks example, compared with in earlier
from enjoying the New Deal’s benefits. elections, it was easier to determine how
Identity, and especially racial and ethnic people voted in 2016 based on whether
identity, has always been intrinsic to fights they wanted a pathway to citizenship for
over economic opportunity and equality. undocumented immigrants or believed
This is not to say that today’s identity that racial inequality was just a matter
politics is the same as its historical fore- of minorities “not trying hard enough.”
bears. What makes it different is how Meanwhile, economic issues achieved
tightly Americans’ views about racial, more political potency when refracted
ethic, and religious identities are now through race. As far back as the 2016
bound up with another salient American Republican primary, whether voters
identity: partisan affiliation. Well before supported Trump depended less on
2016, Democratic and Republican voters whether they were worried about losing
had begun to diverge in their views of their own jobs than it did on whether they
immigration and racial equality. Demo- were worried about whites losing jobs to
crats became more supportive of immigra- ethnic minorities.
tion and more willing to attribute racial
inequality to discrimination. Republicans WHOSE CHOICE?
became less supportive of immigration Since the election, this alignment of
and more willing to attribute racial partisanship and attitudes about race and
inequality to a lack of effort on the part immigration has grown even stronger,
The ECSS Point
Pluribus Unum?
What democracy looks like: new members of the U.S. Congress, January 2019
and it has an important implication for wants federal action on his policy agenda
Fukuyama’s argument. Fukuyama’s favored in an era of divided government and
political agenda closely resembles that of narrow congressional majorities, the real
Democratic voters and the Democratic onus is on Republicans to support his
Party. He supports remedies for police ideas. And if he wants an American
violence against minorities and the identity based on shared values and open
sexual harassment of women, endorses to all citizens—even those who hail from
birthright citizenship, and wants an what Trump reportedly called “shithole
American identity based on ideals rather countries”—then he will need at least
than on “blood and soil” nationalism. some Republicans to stand up to Trump.
The most forceful opposition to such Fukuyama may be against identity poli-
ideas has come from the Trump adminis- tics, but identity politics is also critical to
tration and its Republican allies and the success of the agenda that he supports.
supporters. Yet Fukuyama does not put History has shown that progress toward
the onus on Republicans to reject Trump. equality doesn’t come about because of
In his view, the “major choice” belongs happenstance, a sudden change of heart
BRIAN SNYD E R / REUTE RS
to the Democratic Party, which must on Capitol Hill, or the magnanimity of

decide whether to double down on dominant groups. Instead, progress comes
“the mobilization of . . . identity groups” when marginalized groups organize
or “try to win back some of the white around their shared identities. Their fight
working-class voters . . . who have is often unpopular. In one 1964 survey,
defected” to the GOP. But if Fukuyama conducted a few months after the passage

of the Civil Rights Act, of those polled, Europe, undermining the kind of civil
84 percent of southerners and 64 percent discourse essential to the maintenance
of Americans living outside the South said of liberal democracy. He also claims that
that civil rights leaders were pushing too “perhaps the worst thing about identity
fast. But pushing was their only recourse, politics as currently practiced by the
and pushing helped change the country’s left is that it has stimulated the rise of
laws and attitudes. identity politics on the right.” This is
Fukuyama wants a unifying American highly misleading. Identity politics was
identity, what he calls a “creedal national part of the American political discourse
identity.” But the country is already fairly long before liberals and leftists began to
close to having one. According to the practice it in the 1960s and 1970s. Think of
December 2016 Views of the Electorate the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party
Research, or VOTER, Survey, 93 percent in the 1850s and the white-supremacist
of Americans think that respecting U.S. Ku Klux Klan during the first half of
political institutions and laws is somewhat the twentieth century. What were such
or very important to “being American.” groups if not early practitioners of a
Far fewer believe that it’s important to be brand of white identity politics?
born in the United States (55 percent) or But other parts of Fukuyama’s argu-
to have European heritage (20 percent). ment are more persuasive, and he is
Moreover, most Americans actually right to focus on the role that identity
place identity politics at the center of plays in the health of American democ-
the American creed: the vast majority racy. Fukuyama makes one particularly
(88 percent) think that accepting people useful point in the closing passages of
of diverse racial and religious backgrounds his article:
is important to being American.
People will never stop thinking about
There is no necessary tension be-
themselves and their societies in
tween identity politics and the American identity terms. But people’s identities
creed. The question is whether identity are neither fixed nor necessarily given
politics will help Americans live up to by birth. Identity can be used to divide,
that creed. Historically, it has. but it can also be used to unify. That,
in the end, will be the remedy for the
JOHN SIDES, MICHAEL TESLER, AND LYNN
VAVRECK are political scientists and the authors
populist politics of the present.
of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign
and the Battle for the Meaning of America. What Fukuyama gets right here is the
fact that human beings have a funda-
mental need to belong—a need that their
A Creedal Identity Is Not collective identities, be they racial,
Enough ethnic, religious, regional, or national,
often satisfy. Such affiliations, which
Jennifer A. Richeson psychologists call “social identities,”
serve multiple psychological functions.
F
rancis Fukuyama argues that These include, for example, the need for
identity politics is eroding national a sense of safety, which social identities
unity in the United States and satisfy by reducing uncertainty and
The ECSS Point
Pluribus Unum?
providing norms that help people navi- politics. Hence, it is important not
gate everyday life. Some social identities only to cultivate a common American
also offer rituals and customs to aid with identity, as Fukuyama argues, but also
loss, mourning, and other significant to promote the idea of the United
challenges that occur during the course States as inclusive of multiple racial,
of one’s life. At times, identities provide ethnic, religious, and other types of
a sense of purpose and meaning and a basis identities. Indeed, Americans must
for esteem and regard that is larger than create that society.
people’s individual selves. As Fukuyama
suggests, identities efficiently satisfy the WHY DON’T WE HAVE BOTH?
human need for respect and dignity. Perhaps the main weakness of Fuku-
What Fukuyama gets wrong, however, yama’s argument is the implication that
is the idea that a single unifying identity— Americans face a binary choice when it
a “creedal” American identity—could comes to political identity: either they
alone satisfy this suite of psychological can embrace a broad creedal identity or
needs and thereby allow citizens to they can cling to narrow identities based
abandon the smaller social identities that on race, ethnicity, gender, or ideology.
people invest in and clearly value. Broad There is no reason to think that is true.
identities such as the one Fukuyama Political leaders can address the sense of
promotes are useful and unifying at psychological vulnerability triggered by
times, but they rarely meet the human shifting demographics and social change
need for individuation. That is why and also respect rightful claims for inclu-
people look to narrower bases for identi- sion and fair treatment on the part of
fication. Moreover, broad social identi- members of marginalized groups. Ameri-
ties such as national affiliations—even cans can acknowledge and, when appro-
when ostensibly based on principles that priate, celebrate the particular identities,
are hypothetically accessible to all— cultures, and histories of distinct social
often rely on the terms and norms of the groups and also pursue a unifying
dominant majority and thus end up national creed.
undermining the identity needs of There is even some evidence to
minority groups. suggest that the more identities people
Furthermore, people’s existing social maintain—and the more complex and
identities are important to them, and overlapping those identities are—the less
attempts to dissolve them would likely conflict they will have with people who
be met with severe resistance. The maintain different sets of identities.
potential loss of a group’s identity, real Greater identity complexity may serve
or imagined, is psychologically threat- as a buffer against the feelings of
ening. A powerful urge compels people humiliation and resentment that often
to defend their groups at all costs in fuel ethnonationalist movements.
the face of such threats. As Fukuyama Identifying as American does not
himself notes, a sense of loss due to the require the relinquishing of other identi-
changing racial and ethnic composition ties. In fact, it is possible to leverage those
of the United States is partly to blame identities to cultivate and deepen one’s
for the rise of right-wing identity Americanness. For instance, researchers

have found that when people highlight Fukuyama Replies

their shared experiences, even when
I
they belong to what appear to be oppos- appreciate these thoughtful com-
ing, if not adversarial, social groups, they ments on my article. But all three
experience an increase in empathy and responses, which contain a number
harmony. Rather than dividing people, of common themes, fundamentally
the act of reflecting on the marginalization miscast my thinking about identity
of one’s own social group—be it current politics. One reason for this might be
or historical—can encourage societal that the article focuses more on the kind
cohesion. of identity politics characteristic of the
In the United States, an honest contemporary progressive left, whereas
accounting and acknowledgment of what the book from which the article was
it has meant to be American could reveal adapted, Identity, focuses more on my
Americans’ shared vulnerability and central concern: the recent rise of right-
their common capacity for wrongdoing, wing nationalist populism. This develop-
as well as their resilience in the face of ment threatens liberal democracy because
mistreatment. This sentiment is echoed populist leaders seek to use the legitimacy
by the lawyer and civil rights activist they gain from democratic elections to
Bryan Stevenson, who has argued for undermine liberal institutions such as
the need to engage honestly with the courts, the media, and impartial bureauc-
history of racial injustice in the United racies. This has been happening in
States. “We can create communities in Hungary, Poland, and, above all, the
this country where people are less bur- United States. Populists’ distrust of
dened by our history of racial inequality,” “globalism” also leads them to weaken
Stevenson told an interviewer last year. the international institutions necessary
“The more we understand the depth of to manage the liberal world order.
that suffering, the more we understand I concur with the commonplace
the power of people to cope and over- judgment that the rise of populism has
come and survive.” been triggered by globalization and the
That sounds like a unifying national consequent massive increase in inequal-
creed that would allow Americans to ity in many rich countries. But if the
embrace their own identities, encourage fundamental cause were merely eco-
them to respect the identities embraced nomic, one would have expected to see
by others, and affirm shared principles of left-wing populism everywhere; instead,
equality and justice. Fukuyama appears since the 2008 financial crisis, parties on
to believe that this more complex form the left have been in decline, while the
of national identification is not possible. most energized new movements have
I think it is. It may even be the only path been anti-immigrant groups, such as the
toward a diverse nation that lives up to far-right party Alternative for Germany
its democratic principles. and the populist coalition now govern-
ing Italy. In the 2016 U.S. presidential
JENNIFER A. RICHESON is Philip R. Allen election, enough white working-class
Professor of Psychology at Yale University.
voters abandoned the Democratic Party
to put Donald Trump over the top,
The ECSS Point
Pluribus Unum?
capping a 40-year trend of shifting resonate with people who are not neces-
party loyalties. This means that there is sarily racist.
something going on in the cultural realm Another major misunderstanding of
that needs explaining, and that something my argument has to do with my view of
is concern over identity. contemporary identity movements such
as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.
BALANCING IDENTITY Of course they are rooted in real social
The concept of “identity,” as I use the injustices such as police violence and
term, builds on a universal aspect of the sexual harassment; they legitimately call
human psyche that Plato labeled thymos, for concrete policy remedies and a broad
the demand for respect for one’s inner shift in cultural norms. But people can
dignity. But there is a specifically modern walk and chew gum at the same time.
expression of thymos that emerged after Even as Americans seek to right injus-
the Protestant Reformation and that tices suffered by specific social groups,
values the inner self more highly than they need to balance their small-group
society’s laws, norms, and customs and identities with a more integrative
insists that society change its own norms identity needed to create a cohesive
to give recognition to that inner self. national democratic community. I am
The first major expression of modern not arguing, contrary to Richeson, that
identity politics was nineteenth-century this will be an adequate substitute for
European nationalism, when cultural narrower identities; rather, it will be a
groups began to demand recognition in complement to them.
the form of statehood. I believe that Liberal democracy cannot exist
much of modern Islamism is similarly without a national identity that defines
driven by identity confusion among Mus- what citizens hold in common with one
lims in modernizing societies who feel another. Given the de facto multicultural-
neither Western nor traditional and see a ism of contemporary democracies, that
particular form of politicized religion as a identity needs to be civic or creedal. That
source of community and identity. is, it needs to be based on liberal political
But is not correct to say, as John ideas that are accessible to people of dif-
Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck, ferent cultural backgrounds rather than on
and Jennifer Richeson do, that identity fixed characteristics such as race, ethnicity,
politics as I define it drove white- or religion. I thought that the United
supremacist and anti-immigrant move- States had arrived at such a creedal
ments in the nineteenth-century United identity in the wake of the civil rights
States. Racism and xenophobia have movement, but that accomplishment is
always existed. But a generation or two now being threatened by right-wing
ago, white Americans did not typically identitarians, led by Trump, who would
think of themselves as a victimized like to drag Americans backward to
minority mistreated by elites who were identities based on ethnicity and religion.
indifferent to their problems. Today,
many do, because contemporary racists WINNING VS. GOVERNING
have borrowed their framing of identity Stacey Abrams criticizes my desire to
from groups on the left, in ways that return to class as the defining target of

progressive politics, since class and race is on Republican politicians to stop

overlap strongly in the United States. defending Trump, but they will do so
But it is absurd to see white Americans only when they realize that their own
as a uniformly privileged category, as she voters are turning against him.
seems to do. A significant part of the The contemporary Middle East, like
white working class has followed the the Balkans before it, is an extreme
black working class into underclass status. example of out-of-control identity
Communities facing deindustrialization politics and what ultimately happens to
and job loss have experienced increases countries that do not invest in integrative
in crime, family breakdown, and drug national identities. The United States is
use; the Centers for Disease Control and fortunately far from that point of state
Prevention has estimated that 72,000 breakdown. But what is happening in the
Americans died in 2017 of drug over- country is part of a larger global shift
doses related to the opioid epidemic. So from a politics based on economic ideas
although part of the populist vote both to a politics based on identity. In the
in the United States and in Europe is 2018 midterm elections, Trump was
driven by racism and xenophobia, part of reportedly advised by Paul Ryan, the
it is driven by legitimate complaints that Republican Speaker of the House, to
elites—the mainstream political parties, campaign on the 2017 tax cut and eco-
the media, cultural institutions, and nomic growth; Trump chose instead to
major corporations—have failed to go the identity route by railing against
recognize these voters’ plight and have migrant caravans and birthright citizen-
stood by as this decline has occurred. ship. This is identity politics on steroids.
Abrams knows much better than I do This shift, echoed in other countries,
what is required to win an election in is not compatible with modern liberal
the contemporary United States, and I’m democracy. The latter is rooted in the
sorry that she did not succeed in her bid rights of individuals, and not the rights
for governor of Georgia. But I’m not of groups or fixed communities. And
sure that a successful electoral strategy unless the United States counters this
would necessarily translate into a sustain- trend domestically, it will continue to set
able governing strategy. The country’s a bad example for the rest of the world.∂
single greatest weakness today is the
intense polarization that has infected its
political system, a weakness that has been
exploited by authoritarian rivals such as
China and Russia. In practical terms,
overcoming polarization means devising
a posture that will win back at least part
of the white working-class vote that has
shifted from the left to the right. Peeling
away populist voters not driven by simple
racism means taking seriously some of
their concerns over cultural change and
national identity. I agree that the burden
Recent Books On Cultural Diversity: International

Theory in a World of Difference
BY CHRISTIAN REUS-SMIT .
Political and Legal Cambridge University Press, 2018, 274 pp.
G. John Ikenberry Scholars of international relations

rarely look at culture as a force in world
politics. Theorists tend to focus on power
and interests, not values. In this ambi-
The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth tious book, Reus-Smit seeks to change
BY MICHAEL MANDELBAUM . that. His first discovery is that scholars
Oxford University Press, 2019, 232 pp. acknowledge the role of cultural interac-
tions more than one might think. Samuel
M
andelbaum argues that the Huntington famously depicted a “clash
25 years after the end of the of civilizations,” and realists sometimes
Cold War were uniquely make arguments about the effects of
peaceful thanks to three forces: U.S. nationalism. Liberal and rationalist
liberal hegemony, the spread of democ- theories of politics often note how better
racy, and rising economic interdepen- cultural understanding can make coop-
dence. This was not merely a “realist eration easier. But Reus-Smit argues
peace,” that is, a momentary pause in that scholars conceive of culture as fixed
geopolitics or a reflection of U.S. unipo- rather than fluid. He also points out
larity. Around the world, there were that all the great international orders in
glimmers of a “Kantian peace,” rooted history—the Roman Empire, the Qing
in shared interests and values among dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, and early
liberal democratic states. Why did it modern Europe—evolved in heteroge-
unravel? Mandelbaum points the finger neous cultural contexts. Grappling with
at Russia’s aggression in Europe, China’s such diversity, Reus-Smit argues, is one
expansionism in Asia, and Iran’s ten- of the great tasks of order building.
dency to sow chaos in the Middle East.
Interestingly, Mandelbaum spares the The Development Century: A Global History
United States most of the blame. He EDITED BY STEPHEN J. MACEKURA
argues that although NATO expansion AND EREZ MANELA . Cambridge
did, as many suggest, antagonize Russia, University Press, 2018, 366 pp.
today’s great-power revisionism was
caused primarily by the spread of During the twentieth century, develop-
democracy. Ironically, he argues, if ment emerged as a concept and an organ-
democracy had not shown such world- ized activity in international society.
wide appeal, illiberal states would Every year, governments, international
have pursued less aggressive policies in organizations, and private foundations
response. World peace, it seems, will send money and experts abroad to
have to wait until democracy wins a promote economic growth and social
more complete victory. development. This collection of essays by
a group of prominent historians provides

Recent Books
the best portrait yet of the origins and designed to make the world safe for
evolution of international development. American capitalism. Walker offers a
The rise of Cold War–era moderniza- third interpretation: the United States
tion theory and the geopolitics of U.S. did want to spread its influence and
foreign aid are well-known stories. But the American way of life, but it did so
these authors show that international by weaving other societies into a Pax
development has a much longer history, Americana. This is the vision Walker
one that is intertwined with the emer- sees in the Life owner Henry Luce’s
gence of the modern global order. In famous 1941 call for “an American
her contribution, Amanda Kay McVety Century.” Walker provides an impres-
traces the concept to the Enlightenment sively detailed account of U.S. foreign
and the work of early political econo- policy in the early postwar decades, as
mists, such as Adam Smith. Others look the United States, in the words of
at how development was entangled with Secretary of State Dean Acheson,
nineteenth-century European empires learned how to “run the show.” Walker
and twentieth-century struggles over agrees with the historian Melvyn Leffler
decolonization and nation building. A that the United States was driven by
chapter by Manela charts the history the need to protect itself against the
of disease control and the emergence of illiberal and imperial projects that imper-
a global institutional framework for iled it. It sought “preponderance,”
development assistance. Timothy Nunan Walker says, but not “domination.”
explores the efforts of European foresters, Walker closes his story with the presi-
American nongovernmental organiza- dency of Richard Nixon, when Ameri-
tions, and Soviet engineers to develop cans feared that their century was
Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s. Taken already ending and the country was
together, these and other contributions struggling to avoid decline.
suggest that international development
is best understood not as the diffusion Constructing Global Order: Agency and
of knowledge from the West to the rest Change in World Politics
or as a manifestation of the Cold War BY AMITAV ACHARYA . Cambridge
struggle but instead as a shared language University Press, 2018, 224 pp.
and set of practices that transcend
ideological and political divides. Most scholars believe that the modern
international order was built in the West
The Rise and Decline of the American and exported to the rest of the world.
Century After all, the Westphalian state system
BY WILLIAM O. WALKER . Cornell was invented in seventeenth-century
University Press, 2018, 306 pp. Europe, and today’s order has Anglo-
American fingerprints all over it. Acharya
After World War II, the United States stresses the agency of non-Western
set about building a global order. Some actors and offers an alternative vision
historians believe this was an effort to of a decentralized global system. He
balance against Soviet power. Others argues that despite their pretensions to
view the order as a modern empire, universality, the Westphalian system and
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the liberal world order do not encom- manufacturing, which will allow compa-
pass the whole world. International nies to make products physically near
order is contested, and countries on the their customers while controlling the
receiving end of Western power often process from distant headquarters. In
push back. Regional institutions, in most countries, these giant companies
particular, provide “sites for the creation will employ fewer people than their
and diffusion” of non-Western ideas. predecessors, as machines will replace
Yet the global pluralism that Acharya assembly-line workers. They may create
describes is closer to the open, multilay- some extra jobs in the United States,
ered liberal international order than he but these will require much higher skill
suggests. levels than does the typical manufactur-
ing job today. The new behemoths will
pose serious challenges to competition
Economic, Social, and regulators and consumer watchdogs,
Environmental which may need to act to block monop-
olies and protect customers’ privacy.
Richard N. Cooper Broken Bargain: Bankers, Bailouts, and the
Struggle to Tame Wall Street
BY KATHLEEN DAY . Yale University
The Pan-Industrial Revolution: How New Press, 2019, 440 pp.
Manufacturing Titans Will Transform the
World Day tells the story of U.S. banking
BY RICHARD D’AVENI . Houghton since the beginning of the American
Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, 320 pp. republic, emphasizing the bargain that
she says was struck after the banking
I
n the United States and elsewhere, crisis of 1930–33. Under that arrange-
D’Aveni predicts, manufacturing ment, the federal government provided
will accelerate over the next decade deposit insurance (thereby limiting
and come to dominate the economy. bank runs), and in exchange, the banks
His book notes two broad trends behind accepted heavy regulation. In romping
this takeoff. The first is the increasing fashion, Day recounts the troubling
substitution of 3-D printing (an example story of the last 40 years, during which
of what is known as “additive manufac- a combination of new legislation and
turing”) for traditional assembly lines. deregulation broke that bargain. In large
This technology greatly reduces manu- part thanks to lobbying and campaign
facturers’ economies of scale but makes contributions by financial firms, Congress
production faster and allows firms to rolled back regulations. Meanwhile,
cater to ever-changing consumer tastes regulators, such as Robert Rubin, U.S.
and business requirements. The second treasury secretary during the Clinton
trend is the growth of individual manu- administration, and Alan Greenspan, a
facturing firms, which he argues will longtime chair of the Federal Reserve,
come to span many industrial sectors. embraced a philosophy of deregulation
In part, that’s also the result of additive and supported, and even encouraged,

Recent Books
the rollbacks. Some regulators, bankers, The Venture Capital State: The Silicon
state government officials, and even Valley Model in East Asia
legislators did warn of the risks, but BY ROBYN KLINGLER-VIDRA .
those in power did not heed them. Cornell University Press, 2018, 210 pp.
Carbon Capture Silicon Valley has become a model for a

BY HOWARD. J. HERZOG . MIT Press, cluster of successful business start-ups
2018, 216 pp. that later mature into firms and turn
huge profits for their original venture
If humans are to seriously mitigate capital investors. No surprise, then, that
climate change, they will have to use a many governments—45 so far—have
lot less coal, oil, and natural gas—or find attempted to replicate it. This informa-
ways to capture and store the carbon tive book examines in detail three such
dioxide that fossil fuels give off when attempts—in Hong Kong, Singapore, and
they burn. This useful little book explains Taiwan—and draws on the experiences
in simple terms the various methods of of related ventures in several other places,
capturing and then storing the carbon including Israel and Japan. Unsurpris-
dioxide emitted by power plants and ingly, Silicon Valley and its host govern-
factories and how much doing so is likely ments, the California state government
to cost. Herzog also discusses various and the U.S. federal government, have
possible ways to suck carbon dioxide legal, institutional, and cultural character-
directly out of the atmosphere, since istics that other places find hard to repli-
what’s already up there is the leading cate. Klingler-Vidra shows how Hong
cause of global warming. Right now, the Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have
main options for capturing and storing financed new ventures by giving funds
carbon dioxide are not cheap, but the and tax breaks to venture capital firms
price might well prove bearable; capture and start-ups. She says little about the
and storage would raise the cost of ultimate outcomes, such as the number
producing electricity in a modern coal- of successful firms per public dollar
fired power plant by 43 percent. (Herzog spent, but she does show that the venture
calculates that that would mean the capitalists supported by governments
typical American consumer would pay tend to invest in older, already profitable
about 25 percent more to run his or her firms rather than true start-ups.
appliances.) Herzog also describes various
programs that already capture and store A Political Economy of the United States,
carbon dioxide and the strengths and China, and India: Prosperity With Inequality
deficiencies of their different approaches. BY SHALENDRA D. SHARMA .
Given how much coal, oil, and gas the Cambridge University Press, 2018, 232 pp.
world uses, it is surprising that countries
have not already put more time and Sharma compares economic growth
money into such technologies. and inequality in the world’s three most
populous countries—China, India, and the
United States—and then draws connec-
tions to globalization and domestic politics.
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He summarizes a wealth of scholarly This illuminating, if uneven, collection

research in this compact volume. World- of essays is united by the idea that the
wide inequality has fallen over the last Star Wars movies are particularly valu-
30 years thanks to the rapid economic able in this regard. In part, that is due
growth that has slashed poverty in China to the quality of the storytelling. But
and India. But inequality has risen within Star Wars has another virtue: popularity.
each of the countries Sharma studied and Students, even those in military acad-
in many others, as well. Globalization has emies, often struggle with dry texts on
played a role in both trends. Exports have strategy and have gaps in their knowl-
created a lot of low-wage jobs in China edge of contemporary conflicts, but they
and cut prices for Americans, bringing know all about the struggles between
down global inequality (although trade has the Galactic Empire and the Rebel
done less to help the more protectionist Alliance. As the contributors show,
India). Meanwhile, the accompanying free teachers can use examples from the Star
flow of capital across borders has made its Wars movies to demonstrate the impor-
owners richer, concentrating wealth in the tance of paying attention to vulnerable
hands of a few. Local politics also shape societies (the lack of development on
inequality. In the United States, campaign Endor), the limitations of modern
contributions help determine who gets military training (Jedi training, which
elected and the policies they enact. Local separates soldiers from the people
politics also play a big role in authoritar- they serve and is far too geared toward
ian China and democratic India, where individual combat), the dangers of an
political connections and outright bribery overreliance on technology (the empire’s
dictate policy and ensure that the wealthy dependence on the Death Star), and
grow ever wealthier. common errors of grand strategy (Yoda’s
overconfidence in the Jedis’ ability to
protect the republic). These failings
Military, Scientific, and also highlight a key difference between
Technological the movies and real-life situations: without
them, the plots would have been left
with less suspense and fewer thrills.
Lawrence D. Freedman
Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the

Strategy Strikes Back: How “Star Wars” Battle of Manila
Explains Modern Military Conflict BY JAMES M. SCOT T . Norton, 2018,
EDITED BY MAX BROOKS, JOHN 640 pp.
AMBLE, ML CAVANAUGH, AND
JAYM GATES . Potomac Books, 2018, Early in 1945, U.S. General Douglas
272 pp. MacArthur, who had fled the Philippines
three years earlier, returned to wrest the
A
cademics have long mined capital, Manila, from the Japanese—just as
science fiction for insights into he had promised. Facing him were just
leadership, strategy, and conflict. over a quarter of a million soldiers, led by

Recent Books
one of Japan’s top generals, Tomoyuki began serving as soldiers rather than
Yamashita, the conqueror of Singapore. entertainers. In this fascinating history,
The Japanese were well positioned to Vuic largely lets the women speak for
thwart the American advance but had themselves. They signed up out of a
little ammunition or food. Manila itself desire for overseas adventure, to sup-
was home to one million civilians, many port the war effort, and out of sympathy
of them close to starvation, and 10,000 for lonely and fearful young men who
prisoners of war, including many Ameri- missed their families. Vuic explores the
cans. During the ferocious battle for sexual politics of frontline forces, as the
the city, which raged for 29 days, some women tried to find the appropriate
100,000 Filipino civilians died. Some codes of dress, dating, and maintaining
were killed by U.S. artillery, but most distance to avoid raising expectations
were murdered by unhinged Japanese they could not meet. The issues of race
troops who used bayonets and grenades and segregation also inevitably loom
to avenge their imminent defeat. Scott’s large in her account.
masterful reconstruction of the horror
of the battle intersperses accounts of Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon
massacres with happier moments of Service: The Untold Story of World War II
liberation. Resistance in Europe
BY GORDON CORERA . William
The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Morrow, 2018, 352 pp.
Front to the Front Lines
BY KARA DIXON VUIC . Harvard During World War II, British intelligence
University Press, 2019, 392 pp. agencies sent operatives into occupied
Europe to place some 16,000 homing
From 1918 until the end of the Vietnam pigeons carried in special containers.
War, every time young American men Most of the birds were never seen again,
were sent to fight overseas, they would in some cases lost to hawks sent by the
be joined by small groups of young Germans to intercept them. But about
women who would serve drinks and ten percent returned, enough to make
snacks, put on shows, and offer (pla- the effort worthwhile. The aim was to
tonic) friendship to the soldiers. The persuade any local people who chanced
women were chosen for their good on the birds to write messages, hope-
character and attractive appearance, fully containing intelligence on German
and their presence was meant to remind military positions and movements, on
the men of the ideal of womanhood for tiny pieces of rice paper stuffed into a
which they were fighting, raise soldiers’ canister clipped onto each pigeon’s leg.
morale by providing them with femi- As so often in wartime British intelli-
nine company, and discourage them gence, the project was handled by a
from seeking out prostitutes. By the collection of “oddballs and professors”
end of the Cold War, the practice had and suffered from bureaucratic infighting,
died out, as U.S. forces were made up but it still made a difference. Corera’s
of volunteers rather than draftees and vivid account shows how the pigeons’
feminism was on the rise. Women messages revealed daily life under the
The CSS Point
Recent Books
Nazis and valuable intelligence. Some

of the most useful information, includ- The United States
ing details of German positions and an
assessment of recent British air raids, Walter Russell Mead
came from a Belgian network known
as Leopold Vindictive, which was led
by Father Joseph Raskin, a priest with
intelligence experience from the previous Every Day Is Extra
war. In the end, Raskin was betrayed BY JOHN KERRY . Simon & Schuster,
and caught and executed by the Germans. 2018, 640 pp.
K
We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of erry will likely be remembered
Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom as the last U.S. secretary of state
BY JOEL SIMON . Columbia Global whose outlook reflected the
Reports, 2019, 189 pp. assumptions and aspirations of the post
Cold War unipolar era in world politics.
This excellent and careful book asks For Kerry, the job involved serving as a
tough questions about whether and kind of global first responder. Christmas
how governments should negotiate with 2013 found him managing a crisis in
kidnappers to get hostages released. South Sudan: “I was talking to our
Simon, who has worked for two decades embassy in Juba and the White House
at the Committee to Protect Journalists, as we tracked militias and fighters. . . .
challenges the view that paying ransoms If they reached Juba, and the fighting
simply creates incentives for more kidnap- devolved into chaos, it would be ‘Katy,
ping. His detailed history of hostage bar the door!’” Kerry’s successors are
taking includes case studies demonstrat- unlikely to follow the news in Juba as
ing the different approaches followed closely. In other ways, too, Kerry, a son
by such countries as France and Spain, of the old WASP ascendancy, seems to
which are prepared to do whatever it belong to an America that is rapidly
takes to free their citizens, and the United receding in the rearview mirror. Kerry
Kingdom and the United States, which saw U.S. power much as he saw his
generally refuse to negotiate and whose own privilege: as a call to service. His
nationals are, therefore, more likely to memoir gives a comprehensive and, in
be killed. Kidnappers’ motives vary: places, moving account of his response
some crave publicity; others just want to that call. People disagree over the
cash. Simon’s overall approach is prag- wisdom and effectiveness of U.S. foreign
matic. In addition to arguing against a policy in the Kerry years, but there can
blanket refusal to negotiate, he addresses be no serious dispute about the integ-
the value of publicity campaigns, the rity and patriotism that Kerry brought
risks involved in rescue missions, the to the job.
role of insurance companies and private
negotiators, and how the ransoms
actually get paid.

Recent Books
The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of the national government over the
of Global Leadership states, formed the foundation of the
BY IVO H. DAALDER AND JAMES M. American state. As Brookhiser shows in
LINDSAY. PublicAffairs, 2018, 256 pp. this brisk biography, Marshall’s success
was partly due to the power of his legal
Few observers of U.S. foreign policy reasoning and partly to his brilliant
have the skills and experience of Daalder management of the men who served with
and Lindsay. In their new book, they him on the Supreme Court. Marshall
lucidly, if not very originally, argue that doesn’t offer much grist for a biographer;
U.S. President Donald Trump’s leader- he led a quietly respectable private life
ship has weakened the United States’ and was as marmoreal in his public
alliances, undermined the institutions persona as George Washington. Few
on which much of U.S. security de- surviving papers reveal much of the
pends, and put American companies inner man. Brookhiser does his best
and exporters at a disadvantage. On with this unpromising material, but
the question of why so many voters Marshall would doubtless be pleased
rejected the traditional foreign policy that it is his ideas that dominate this
approach in 2016, Daalder and Lindsay biography, not his quarrels, debts, ambi-
have less to say. Their book refers to tions, or amours. The greatest blot on
U.S. overextension in the Clinton and Marshall’s record, as Brookhiser notes,
Bush administrations and notes that was his failure to confront the horrors
the Obama-era attempt to offer a more of slavery. Washington freed his slaves
limited form of American leadership when he died, in 1799. Marshall, who
proved less satisfying than many hoped, died in 1835, left his in bondage.
but such concerns occupy a marginal
place in the narrative. One hopes their The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became
next book will do more. The most an American Religion
urgent task facing students of contem- BY STEVEN R. WEISMAN . Simon &
porary U.S. foreign policy is less to Schuster, 2018, 368 pp.
deconstruct Trump’s approach than to
craft long-term strategies that will be Weisman makes a convincing case that
politically sustainable at home and the cultural and theological beliefs of
effective abroad. the nineteenth-century American
Jewish community continue to shape
John Marshall: The Man Who Made the American Jewish life today. American
Supreme Court Jews of that era, like many of their neigh-
BY RICHARD BROOKHISER . Basic bors, tended to be anticlerical, suspicious
Books, 2018, 336 pp. of institutions, and independent-minded
with respect to religion. Enthusiastically
It is thanks to John Marshall’s work as embracing the rational, liberal theology
the fourth chief justice of the United and biblical criticism then coming out
States that the constitutional doctrines of Germany, they worked to adapt an
of the Federalist Party, which espoused ancient religion to what they saw as a
strong judicial power and the supremacy new era of enlightenment. Change was
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Recent Books
not always smooth: at the 1883 grad- this book, Krauthammer’s son, Daniel,
uation of the first new rabbis from the himself a writer, assembles some of his
Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, father’s most important columns. To
guests were horrified when waiters served read (or reread) them is to be reminded
crab, shrimp, and frogs’ legs. After 1880, of how central the elder Krauthammer
the largely German American Jewish was to 30 years of American foreign
community would be overwhelmed by policy debate.
a great wave of Jews from central and
eastern Europe. But their ideas about
Judaism, including their complicated Western Europe
responses to Zionism, endured.
Andrew Moravcsik
The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great
Loves and Endeavors
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER.
EDITED BY DANIEL Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts From
KRAUTHAMMER . Crown Forum, the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern
2018, 400 pp. History
BY CATHARINE ARNOLD . St. Martin’s
Last summer, the death of Charles Press, 2018, 368 pp.
Krauthammer, a longtime columnist
P
for The Washington Post, silenced one of atients coughed up blood riddled
the most influential voices in the world with parasitic bacteria, spraying
of U.S. foreign policy. After a diving it across hospital rooms. Dying
accident left him partially paralyzed in bodies inflated with the air seeping out
1972, Krauthammer went to on graduate of their punctured lungs. Huge numbers
from Harvard Medical School, practice of otherwise healthy young people died
psychiatry, and then enter politics, work- within hours when their powerful immune
ing as a speechwriter for Vice President systems turned on them. Worldwide,
Walter Mondale. After the end of the between 50 million and 100 million people
Cold War, Krauthammer, already known perished. Among remote populations
for his hawkish foreign policy views, that lacked immunity, the mortality rate
embraced and helped define the concept often exceeded 90 percent. Cities threw
of unipolarity—the idea that the compe- the dead in mass graves—unless, as in
tition between the United States and Philadelphia, too few workers remained
the Soviet Union had been replaced by to bury them all. Scientists and govern-
a “unipolar moment,” in which the United ments were powerless to stop it. This is
States, for a limited time, had no serious no horror-movie vision of Ebola or the
rivals. Krauthammer went on to bitterly Black Death. These are stories from the
criticize what he saw as President Barack Spanish flu pandemic a century ago,
Obama’s retreat from U.S. responsibili- which claimed five times as many victims
ties and what he deemed the funda- as World War I. More scientifically
mentally irresponsible approach of rigorous accounts exist, but Arnold, a
Obama’s successor, Donald Trump. In popular historian, has assembled the

Recent Books
most terrifying eyewitness testimony. Yet he fails to provide a plausible alter-

The lessons are obvious. A pandemic native explanation for their behavior.
today might well spread even more
quickly and kill even more people. A Bite-Sized History of France:
General multipurpose vaccines—even Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War,
genetically engineered ones—are often and Enlightenment
powerless to combat diseases that mutate BY STÉPHANE HÉNAUT AND JENI
rapidly. Only a permanent global MITCHELL . New Press, 2019, 352 pp.
system that can quickly diagnose and
treat people could blunt the spread of This engaging book recounts the
such a scourge, yet governments still history of France through its food. For
underfund such programs. the French, their cuisine is a prime
source of national pride, but as Hénaut
English Nationalism: A Short History and Mitchell’s lively vignettes show, few
BY JEREMY BLACK . Hurst, 2018, French delicacies are indigenous. The
224 pp. Romans converted uncouth beer-drinking
Gauls to wine. The Frank Charlemagne
Does England have a national identity standardized French farms, decreeing
distinct from that of the United King- that every estate should grow garlic,
dom? Recent political conflict between produce honey, and much else. Return-
England and the rest of the union over ing crusaders brought plums and other
Brexit, Scottish independence, Irish exotic fruits. Schismatic popes from
unity, and other issues has made this a Italy established eggplants and Syrah
hot-button question. Black argues that wine. An Italian noblewoman turned
English nationalism is genuine: Eng- French queen, Catherine de Medicis,
lishness rests on the shared experiences brought artichokes, spinach, broccoli,
of Magna Carta, the Reformation, the sorbet, and the fork. The Turks added
Thirty Years’ War, the British Empire, coffee; the Austrians the croissant.
and World War II. Yet Black struggles Brutal slave plantations in imperial
to persuade. Memories of internal and domains satisfied sugar cravings. One
external warfare hundreds of years ago day, Louis XIV’s troops in Spain substi-
neither distinguish England from the tuted olive oil for butter, and—voilà!—
rest of the United Kingdom nor reveal mayonnaise was born. In the nineteenth
much about how media-savvy politicians, century, farmers had to graft American
a sensationalistic press, and right-wing vines onto French grape plants to save
skinheads are redefining populist nation- them from disease. Today, couscous and
alism today—something the author all pho are ubiquitous in Paris. Aside from
but admits in the last chapter, “Postscript a few cases, such as champagne, which
From a Pub.” In general, current events was perfected by Dom Pierre Pérignon,
stymie Black. In considering Brexit, he a French Benedictine monk, French
dismisses (without evidence) any cuisine is largely the fruit of globaliza-
thought that Euroskeptical voters are tion and appropriation.
ignorant or have been manipulated, or
that they are indulging in nationalism.
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The End of the French Intellectual The Islamic State in Britain:

BY SHLOMO SAND. TRANSLATED Radicalization and Resilience in an
BY DAVID F ERNBACH . Verso, 2018, Activist Network
304 pp. BY MICHAEL KENNEY . Cambridge
University Press, 2018, 298 pp.
Modern French intellectuals receive
tremendous social respect—so much This book contains an ethnographic
so that they are generally immune from study of al Muhajiroun, an outlawed
punishment even when they commit radical jihadist group in London. Kenney
common crimes, preach treason or seeks to explain how, despite intense
hatred, or speak in riddles. This book police surveillance, the group survived,
argues that in recent decades, although attracted adherents, and recruited fighters
these intellectuals’ social status has to join the war in Syria until the British
remained largely intact, the quality of government banned it in 2010. Ideologi-
their thought has ebbed. Sand is hardly cal sympathy, ties of friendship, charis-
the first to say this—and certainly not matic leaders, and youthful inexperience
the most persuasive. He is concerned led people to join the group. Once there,
with only one angle of French intellec- they learned how to be activists by watch-
tual life: the conflict between Jews and ing more experienced members, often
Muslims. He argues that a century imbibing even more dangerous ideologies
ago, anti-Semitism led many leading along the way. Tight subgroups permitted
French intellectuals to abandon the army the movement to deflect government
captain Alfred Dreyfus after he was pressure by frequently reconfiguring
falsely convicted of treason. Under the themselves and fostering ambiguity
Nazi occupation, many again failed to about their purposes. As they aged, some
defend the Jews. Today, Islamophobia is members left for more normal lives, while
common. Sand argues that the cartoons others turned to different, often more
that provoked the Charlie Hebdo shoot- radical groups. These broad conclusions
ing in 2015 trucked in tasteless ethnic are hardly new, but some readers may be
stereotypes that would have been unac- surprised by Kenney’s argument that
ceptable if directed at Jews. He has a such groups can allow young men to let
point, but he is wrong to level the same off steam, thus containing, rather than
charge at such leading French thinkers as promoting, violence. As the authorities
Alain Finkielkraut, Michel Houellebecq, stamp out these organizations, their
and Éric Zemmour. These men may be disgruntled members may pose an even
sensationalistic and perhaps even distaste- greater danger.
ful, but Sand does little to show that
they preach systematic ethnic hatred in
the manner of their anti-Dreyfusard
and pro-fascist predecessors.

Recent Books
acknowledge that Chinese influence may

Western Hemisphere have some upsides. Chinese surveillance
technology could enable Latin America
Richard Feinberg to overcome two of its biggest scourges:
official corruption and crime syndicates.
From the perspective of some Latin
Americans, these gains may warrant a
The Future of Latin America and the grudging acquiescence to Chinese power.
Caribbean in the Context of the Rise of China González, a leading Costa Rican
BY R. EVAN ELLIS . Center for economist, worries that economic ten-
Strategic and International Studies, sions between China and the United
2018, 42 pp. States could upend the international
trading system, dampen global economic
Latin America–China Trade and Investment growth, and harm Latin America’s
Amid Global Tensions: A Need to Upgrade prospects. But she also foresees plentiful
and Diversify opportunities in Chinese markets for
BY ANABEL GONZÁLEZ . Atlantic Latin American exports, such as high-end
Council, 2018, 32 pp. agricultural products. She cites Chile’s
success in exporting fresh fruit to China
E
llis warns of a possible dystopian as a promising example. The growing
future for Latin America. By Chinese middle class could also create a
2050, if current economic trends bonanza for the Latin American tourism
persist, China may use its growing industry. González argues that rather
economic power and technological than fear Chinese influence, other Latin
sophistication to co-opt Latin American American governments should follow the
business and political elites and give lead of Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru and
Chinese firms a competitive advantage. strike free-trade agreements with Beijing
The Chinese military presence in Latin in order to ensure that their companies
America is also likely to expand, espe- have access to Chinese markets. González
cially if China wins a military confronta- counsels Latin America to upgrade its
tion with the United States (over Taiwan, trade infrastructure, improve its schools,
for example). Latin America is unlikely boost its labor productivity, and enact
to produce a coherent strategy to counter good-governance reforms in order to ben-
China’s encroachments, Ellis judges, efit more fully from Chinese partnerships.
although he recommends that the United
States help strengthen the region’s regula-
tory and political institutions so they can
better protect against predatory Chinese
practices. Ellis’ description of the asym-
metric relations between a dominant
China and a subservient Latin America
recalls Marxist-leaning theorists’ critiques
of U.S.–Latin American relations in the
1960s and 1970s. Ellis, however, does
The CSS Point
Recent Books
Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Desarrollo, integración e igualdad: La

Anti-Corruption, Transparency, and respuesta de Centroamérica a la crisis de la
Integrity in Latin America and the globalización (Development, integration,
Caribbean and equality: The response of Central
BY EDUARDO ENG EL, DELIA America to the crisis of globalization)
F ERREIRA RUBIO, DANIEL BY THE UN ECONOMIC
KAUFMANN, ARMANDO LARA COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA
YAF FAR, JORG E LONDOÑO AND THE CARIBBEAN . UN Economic
SALDARRIAGA, BETH SIMONE Commission for Latin America and the
NOVECK, MARK PIETH, AND SUSAN Caribbean, 2018, 180 pp.
ROSE-ACKERMAN . Inter-American
Development Bank, 2018, 42 pp. This comprehensive, data-rich review
traces the social and economic progress
This all-star team of eight governance of Central America since 1960, with an
and anticorruption experts has produced emphasis on the last five years. The region
a powerful indictment of Latin American has enjoyed economic stability and has
institutions. The authors condemn both made significant strides toward inte-
public and private elites for “undermin- grating commerce, installing modern
ing sound policymaking and the rule of telecommunications networks, adopting
law, entrenching impunity, and diverting renewable energy, and improving its
public resources and investment away residents’ quality of life. Local firms now
from the public good.” The prosecution stretch across the region, and foreign
continues: “Though some [Latin Ameri- direct investment has accelerated. But a
can] countries . . . have been engaged in demographic explosion has eroded these
selected anti-corruption reforms for the gains. Central America’s population
last decade, these have been uneven, skyrocketed from 13 million in 1960 to
partial, and focused more on enacting nearly 50 million today. Rural poverty
laws and regulations rather than imple- remains shockingly high, especially in
mentation.” Although the report provides Guatemala and Honduras. As a result,
an invaluable compilation of state-of-the- much of the region’s foreign currency
art anticorruption initiatives, the authors comes from emigrant workers; remit-
fail to confront the inconvenient contra- tances totaled $84 billion from 2013 to
diction in their work: the very same elites 2017. The report emphasizes the need
they indict are called on to enact compre- for investment in public education,
hensive reforms that would presumably rural irrigation, and basic infrastructure,
prejudice their own interests. since lasting increases in real wages will
require strong growth in labor produc-
tivity. It also warns the United States
against deporting millions of immi-
grants, as sending so many people back
would inflame social tensions in their
home countries.

Recent Books
The Peace Corps and Latin America: In Middle East

the Last Mile of U.S. Foreign Policy
BY THOMAS J. NISLEY . Lexington
Books, 2018, 158 pp. John Waterbury
Over 230,000 Americans have served

as Peace Corps volunteers since the What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?
agency was established in the early days BY DMITRI TRENIN . Polity, 2017,
of the Kennedy administration. Nisley, 144 pp.
a former volunteer in the Dominican
T
Republic, argues that the Peace Corps, renin packs a great deal of sub-
which costs roughly $50,000 per volunteer stance into this slender volume.
per year, has provided a cost-effective In quick strokes, he paints Russia’s
way to advance U.S. foreign policy. history in the Middle East and President
Small project by small project, the Vladimir Putin’s objectives over the last
volunteers promote development in two decades. Putin has chosen the region
poor countries. Statistical evidence as the theater to reassert Russia’s global
suggests that their sustained interactions role after its 25-year absence. Russia has
with local citizens improve perceptions no grand strategy for the Middle East,
of the United States. In perhaps its but it has managed overlapping and often
most important role, the Peace Corps antagonistic coalitions with great skill. As
serves as a graduate school in foreign Trenin reminds readers, Russia unreserv-
policy, preparing volunteers for careers edly supported the United States in the
in diplomacy and international develop- wake of the 9/11 attacks, and in 2011,
ment. The White House’s enthusiasm Putin tasked Prime Minister Dmitry
for the Peace Corps has waxed and waned, Medvedev with crafting a grand bargain
Nisley finds, depending on presidential with U.S. President Barack Obama. The
preferences and perceived security effort failed, and after the Obama admin-
threats. For John F. Kennedy, the Peace istration’s disastrous intervention in Libya
Corps aligned well with his Alliance later that year, which Russia had initially
for Progress initiative, which aimed to endorsed, Putin challenged the United
promote democracy and economic States in the Middle East for the first
growth in Latin America. Richard time. Moscow still wants to strike deals
Nixon saw the Peace Corps as a haven with Washington on several specific
for those opposed to the Vietnam War issues: post-civil-war Syria, Iran’s nuclear
and reduced the number of volunteers. program, the future of Afghanistan, and
Later, Ronald Reagan expanded the the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the last,
agency’s presence in Central America Trenin shows that Putin has positioned
to counter leftist insurgencies. himself to serve as a far more honest
broker between the Israelis and the
Palestinians than has the Trump team.
The CSS Point
Recent Books
Building the Nation: Missed Opportunities each place. The survey leaves out some
in Iraq and Afghanistan important countries, but its results offer
BY HEATHER SELMA GREGG . cause for hope. Although most of the
Potomac Books, 2018, 296 pp. respondents had negative views of the
2011 uprisings that formed the Arab
Gregg believes that U.S. security needs Spring, two-thirds of them expressed
will always drive Washington to attempt optimism about the future. The vast
to salvage failed or fragile states. So the majority wanted to help the less privi-
United States needs to understand why leged. They respected their families
it failed to build nations in Afghanistan more than any other institution. (Their
and Iraq and how it might do better countries’ respective militaries came
elsewhere. It must focus on creating a second.) And although they reported
shared sense of national destiny, Gregg having little respect for political parties
says, which will require devolving reform or parliaments, they still wanted to
to the local level so that the people own participate in civic life. Two-thirds
the process. Gregg sees the U.S. military professed strong religious faith, but
as the right agent to achieve this. The most of them regarded religion as a
military can even make Afghan peasants personal matter. In the final chapter,
better farmers, she says. Nearly every Mathias Albert and Gertel compare
part of Gregg’s analysis contains prob- those surveyed with their German
lems. She largely ignores the literature counterparts. The two groups have
on democratic transitions and counter- similar levels of optimism, they find,
insurgency and barely mentions the role but German youth are much more
of external actors, such as Pakistan’s interested in formal politics than are
intelligence services, in supporting the young Arabs.
Taliban in Afghanistan. Worst of all,
she offers no examples of successful The Islamic State in Khorasan:
nation building by an occupying power. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the New
In the success stories Gregg does tell, Central Asian Jihad
such as Rwanda, reform came from BY ANTONIO GIUSTOZZI . Hurst,
the inside. 2018, 296 pp.
Coping With Uncertainty: Youth in the Giustozzi, together with a group of

Middle East and North Africa anonymous colleagues, spent two
EDITED BY JÖRG G ERTEL AND years interviewing members of jihadist
RALF HEXEL . Saqi Books, 2018, 400 pp. groups active in Khorasan, a region
that includes parts of Afghanistan,
This study presents the results of a 2016 Pakistan, and Central Asia. The book
survey of Arabs aged 16 to 30 in Bahrain, provides extraordinary depth and
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, detail, yet Giustozzi still manages to
Tunisia, Yemen, and the Palestinian show the forest along with the trees.
territories, as well as Syrian refugees in As its home base in Iraq and Syria
the same age group in Lebanon. The collapses, the Islamic State (or ISIS) is
organizers interviewed 1,000 people in looking for a new home. Khorasan

Recent Books
offers big advantages over Libya, supposed local color. They also lament
Yemen, or the Sahel: it is close to the “castration” of the CIA by the 1975
China, Iran, and Russia, and to U.S. Church Committee investigation into
forces based in Afghanistan. The ISIS the intelligence community, and they
affiliate known as the Islamic State in rejoice that the 9/11 attacks prompted
Khorasan receives around $300 million the rebirth of the agency as a paramili-
each year from outside donors, mostly tary force tasked with hunting the
individuals from Kuwait, Qatar, and United States’ enemies.
Saudi Arabia, but the governments of
those countries contribute, too. The
ISK wants to absorb the Taliban and Asia and Pacific
then take the fight to its external
enemies, above all Iran. The ISK’s Andrew J. Nathan
greatest hope is Iran’s fear: that the
Taliban will cut a deal with the Afghan
government that will discredit the
group among true believers, sending The RSS: A View to the Inside
recruits to the ISK. BY WALTER K. ANDERSEN AND
SHRIDHAR D. DAMLE . Penguin
Beirut Rules: The Murder of a CIA Station India, 2018, 400 pp.
Chief and Hezbollah’s War Against
T
America he Rashtriya Swayamsevak
BY F RED BURTON AND SAMUEL M. Sangh is a Hindu nationalist
KATZ . Berkley, 2018, 400 pp. organization that provides
crucial electoral support for India’s
In March 1984, Hezbollah fighters ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its
abducted William Buckley, the CIA leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
station chief in Beirut. They held him who is a former RSS cadre. The two
prisoner until June 1985, when he died organizations coordinate policy, but
of torture and neglect. Buckley, who neither calls the shots for the other.
had served in the Korean War before Andersen and Damle take an exception-
embarking on a long and distinguished ally well-informed look at the RSS,
career with the CIA, rose to the position including its relations with affiliate
of Beirut station chief after the bomb- organizations, such as India’s largest
ings of the U.S. embassy and the Marine trade union and student association,
barracks there. His nemesis was Imad and its policies on the slaughter of
Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s master hit man, cows, foreign direct investment, rela-
who was himself blown up by a car bomb tions with China, and other issues. As
in Damascus in 2008. The authors of the RSS has grown, its leadership has
this account of Buckley’s murder seek to moderated the group’s fundamentalist
honor his memory and openly thirst to ideology, denounced caste discrimina-
avenge his death. They clearly intend the tion, and tried, without much success,
story to grip the reader, but too often to bring women and non-Hindus into
they fall into annoying invocations of the ranks. The group’s core concept of
The CSS Point
Recent Books
Hindutva, or “Hinduness,” is now Brand New Art From China: A

glossed as loyalty to a vaguely defined Generation on the Rise
Indian civilization rather than adher- BY BARBARA POLLACK . I.B. Tauris,
ence to specific religious practices, a 2018, 192 pp.
revision made easier by the unsystem-
atic character of Hindu beliefs. But Chinese artists in their 20s and 30s seem
religious nationalism remains the RSS’ to have escaped the growing repression
chief mobilizing tool, and many of the in China, perhaps because the censors
organization’s local branches and affili- have no idea what to make of their work.
ates still espouse aggressive anti-Muslim As Pollack reveals, they are linked as
and socially conservative positions. much to Berlin, Miami, and New York
as to Beijing and Shanghai, and as much
Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions to the Internet, animation, and perfor-
BY BRAD GLOSSERMAN . mance as to paint and wood. They make
Georgetown University Press, 2019, fresh use of images and techniques from
272 pp. all over the world and from many differ-
ent historical periods. They do not feel
Glosserman explores Japan’s inability compelled to focus on the totalitarian
to adopt much-needed reforms during past or the enduring puzzle of what it
four recent political and economic means to be Chinese, as the first post-
shocks: the 2008 global financial crisis, Mao generation of modern Chinese
the 2009 electoral defeat of the long- artists did. But China and its problems
ruling Liberal Democratic Party by its keep tugging at them. To avoid politics
rival the Democratic Party of Japan, the is to be political; to produce unique
2010 crisis with China over the Diaoyu/ work is to join a trend; to call oneself
Senkaku Islands, and the 2011 triple “an artist from China” (as this younger
disaster of an earthquake, a tsunami, generation prefers to do) instead of “a
and a nuclear power plant meltdown. Chinese artist” is to comment on being
The country faces intractable problems: Chinese today. Along with this analysis,
a falling population, excessive government Pollack offers plenty of sharp biographi-
debt, the decline of its most important cal and aesthetic insights. The book’s
ally (the United States), and the rise of illustrations leave the reader eager for
its main rival (China). But weak leader- more contemporary Chinese art.
ship and political gridlock have made
Japan’s situation worse. Glosserman The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean
puts the ultimate blame on Japan’s War: The Untold History
culture of collectivism, harmony, and BY MONICA KIM . Princeton
fatalism. The Japanese are too comfort- University Press, 2019, 452 pp.
able to strike out on a new path, he
says. Although Prime Minister Shinzo During the Korean War, the United
Abe aims to revitalize his country, States seemed to strike a blow for
Glosserman regretfully concludes that individual liberty when it insisted on
Japan “can no longer harbor grand offering Chinese and North Korean
ambitions.” prisoners of war the opportunity to stay

Recent Books
in South Korea rather than return home group. He helped persuade Myanmar to
after the war was over. But the result accept international aid after Cyclone
was to import the ideological Cold War Nargis, mediated Cambodian-Thai talks
into POW camps. Anticommunist North over the contested Preah Vihear Temple,
Koreans tattooed themselves and wrote worked to pull ASEAN’s member states
petitions in blood demanding to be back together after a split over the South
released to fight against their former China Sea, and pushed the group to
comrades. Meanwhile, the majority of adopt a declaration of principles on
North Korean prisoners saw the U.S.- human rights. Natalegawa’s stories
led forces as colonialists and anyone constitute a primer on the dark arts of
who refused repatriation as a traitor, so diplomacy, including the value of
they protested the voluntary repatria- ambiguity, the cultivation of personal
tion policy by demonstrating, singing relationships with fellow leaders, cre-
songs, getting into shouting matches ative word and punctuation choices, the
with the guards, going on hunger strikes, profligate use of the passive voice—and
and, in one famous incident, kidnapping just showing up. As the most populous
a U.S. camp commander. American and most active member of ASEAN, Indo-
POWs in Chinese and North Korean nesia has been accused of “overactivism”
camps formed groups of self-described by other members. Natalegawa is proud
“reactionaries,” including one that called to own the label.
itself the Ku Klux Klan, to punish anyone
who seemed to accept the communists’ India and Nuclear Asia: Forces, Doctrine,
criticisms of the United States. When and Dangers
21 American POWs decided to go to China BY YOGESH JOSHI AND F RANK
instead of returning home, Americans O’DONNELL . Georgetown University
panicked over “brainwashing.” Partly as Press, 2018, 235 pp.
a result of the panic, even American
POWs who came home were suspected The authors’ language is clinical, but their
of communist contamination. message is frightening. India possesses
or is developing ballistic missiles that
Does ASEAN Matter? A View From can reach anywhere in China, shorter-
Within range missiles for potential tactical use
BY MARTY NATALEGAWA . ISEAS— against China and Pakistan, missiles
Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018, 258 pp. with multiple independently targeted
warheads, submarine-launched missiles,
Natalegawa, a former Indonesian foreign and missile defenses. Pakistan has
minister, is a strong believer in the value developed a variety of nuclear weapons
of the ten-member Association of South- and delivery vehicles intended to deter
east Asian Nations, and its often-derided even nonnuclear Indian attacks. China
process of constant meetings and decla- has merged its conventional and nuclear
rations, for dampening conflict and getting missile forces under a single command,
the attention of outside powers. He making it harder for an adversary to
gives blow-by-blow accounts of some of know what kind of warhead has been
his toughest negotiations within the launched. China and India have both
The CSS Point
Recent Books
adopted more aggressive postures near wealth, the stages of social development,
disputed sections of their shared border. and the role of women. These disputes
The two countries have announced “no laid the foundations for much of modern
first use” policies but have left them political thought. Over the course of the
ambiguous; Pakistan has no such policy eighteenth century, Europeans shifted
at all. Concepts such as “minimum from an open attitude toward Asia to
deterrence,” “limited deterrence,” the belief that only European society was
“credible deterrence,” and “full-spectrum rational, dynamic, and just. That attitude
deterrence” are tossed about with little then helped justify the colonialism of the
clarity on what they mean. Add in the following century.
near-total lack of dialogue among the
three states, and the opportunities for
miscommunication and miscalculation Africa
proliferate.
Nicolas van de Walle
Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s
Encounter With Asia
BY JÜRGEN OSTERHAMMEL.
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT SAVAGE . Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture
Princeton University Press, 2018, 696 pp. BY IVOR CHIPKIN, MARK
SWILLING, HAROON BHORAT,
For Europe, the eighteenth century was MZUKISI QOBO, SIKHULEKILE
a time of intense study of the lands to DUMA, AND LUMKILE MONDI . Wits
the east. Intrepid travelers spent years University Press, 2018, 176 pp.
and fortunes learning languages, regis-
tering facts, and coming up with gener- Cyril Ramaphosa: The Path to Power in
alizations that were as often wrong as South Africa
right. The travelers’ images of the East, BY RAY HARTLEY . Hurst, 2018, 280 pp.
Osterhammel writes in this learned
T
and engrossing account, played “a key hese two excellent books provide
rhetorical role in the domestic contro- some clues about the prospects
versies of the era.” Montesquieu, who for South African democracy.
never visited Asia, used the idea of Chipkin and his co-authors analyze the
Oriental despotism to expose the risks corruption scandals that helped bring
of Bourbon absolutism; his less well- down President Jacob Zuma in early 2018.
known royalist compatriot Abraham- They provide meticulous evidence that
Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron defended Zuma and his associates, most notably
the Bourbons by showing that Oriental the Gupta family and its business empire,
monarchies ruled through law. Every captured state institutions for personal
major philosophical dispute of the age gain. The book documents the influence
was influenced by the work of scholars peddling, rent seeking, insider trading,
of the East, on subjects as diverse as and corruption that helped turn the
the nature of civilization, the forms of Guptas’ business into one of South
government, the sources of national Africa’s largest corporate empires. In

Recent Books
the end, the justice system, key elements Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the
of the ruling African National Congress, Struggle for State Power in Nigeria
and the press resisted capture and exposed BY EBENEZER OBADARE . Zed
the scandal. The book describes an Books, 2018, 252 pp.
alarming level of corruption inside the
ANC and the state bureaucracy, but that Academics have long understood
such a book could be published at all in Nigerian politics as structured by the
South Africa is a cause for optimism. division between northern Muslims
If reform is going to happen, it will and southern Christians. This probing,
come from Cyril Ramaphosa, who well-informed account from one of the
replaced Zuma as president in 2018. In most astute observers of contemporary
this fascinating portrait of Ramaphosa, Nigeria argues that since democracy
Hartley, a veteran South African was restored in the country, in 1999,
journalist, describes the new president’s the Christian side of Nigerian politics
early years as a radical labor leader and has been marked by the rising power
then as the ANC wunderkind who led of Pentecostalism, a loose category that
the negotiations that ended apartheid. encompasses as many as a third of
After the party prevented him from Nigerians and is the country’s fastest-
becoming Nelson Mandela’s heir, in growing religious group. Obadare
favor of Thabo Mbeki, Ramaphosa left shows how Pentecostal churches have
politics for a successful business career, turned their numerical ascendancy into
taking advantage of policies that fa- political influence. Two of Nigeria’s
vored new black entrepreneurs. He four presidents since 1999, Olusegun
returned to politics in 2014 as deputy Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, were
president. Ramaphosa is no ideologue; Pentecostals, and although the current
Hartley describes him as a ruthless president, Muhammadu Buhari, is
pragmatist. But he does seem genuinely Muslim, his administration contains
animated by the original objectives of several prominent Pentecostals. Obadare
the ANC: to create a modern and effec- sees Pentecostals as a force for stability
tive state dedicated to democracy and but not democracy, as pastors typically
the fight against poverty. As president, use their pulpits to legitimate a corrupt
Ramaphosa has moved to strengthen and ineffectual elite. One consequence,
anticorruption institutions and ensure he worries, has been growing Christian-
that Zuma cannot engineer a comeback. Muslim polarization, as the Pentecostal
Hartley is more circumspect about churches have proved less accommodat-
Ramaphosa’s ability to reverse South ing of Muslims than have the establish-
Africa’s long economic decline, worry- ment Christian churches.
ing that the party bosses will sabotage
any reforms that attack their power and
limit their graft.
The CSS Point
Recent Books
African Exodus: Migration and the Future Global Governance and Local Peace:
of Europe Accountability and Performance in
BY ASFA-WOSSEN ASSERATE. International Peacebuilding
TRANSLATED BY PETER LEWIS . BY SUSANNA P. CAMPBELL .
Haus, 2018, 226 pp. Cambridge University Press, 2018,
306 pp.
In this short, snappy book, Asserate
places the recent surge in flows of Campbell examines the factors that
migrants from Africa to Europe in the lead to the success or failure of interna-
context of the centuries-long relation- tional peace-building operations. The
ship between the two continents. most important one, she argues, is how
Africans, he says, are trying to escape accountable peacemakers are to local
their dysfunctional home countries. people. Unfortunately, she reports,
Conflict, bad governance, and stagnant most peace workers answer primarily
economies leave many Africans with to the Western headquarters of the
such dismal prospects that they are international agencies for which they
willing to attempt the perilous journey. work. Rather than developing strong
Asserate does not believe that it is relationships with locals who can inform
possible to stop them—or ethical to try. them about conditions on the ground
In his view, the only practical solution and help them get things done, they
is the economic and political develop- spend most of their time fulfilling
ment of Africa, to which Europe should reporting requirements and other
now dedicate itself. Since he blames bureaucratic tasks to keep their admin-
the legacy of European colonialism for istrators happy. The book is steeped in
much of what ails African countries, the language of public administration
he believes the continent has a moral and organizational theory, and Camp-
obligation to make a massive effort on bell is cautious in her conclusions, so
behalf of Africans. Even if one does it is easy to miss how devastating her
not agree with his normative argument, account really is. She shows that the core
Asserate is clearly right that in the long organizational logic of peace-building
run, the only way to moderate illegal agencies undermines their ability to help
migrant flows from Africa is to improve the people they are trying to reach.∂
the welfare of Africans at home.
Foreign Affairs (ISSN 00157120), March/April 2019, Volume 98, Number 2. Published six times annually (January, March, May, July,
September, November) at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065. Print subscriptions: U.S., $54.95; Canada, $66.95; other
countries via air, $89.95 per year. Canadian Publication Mail–Mail # 1572121. Periodicals postage paid in New York, NY, and at
additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 324, Congers, NY 10920. From time to
time, we permit certain carefully screened companies to send our subscribers information about products or services that we believe
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FUKUYAMA & HIS CRITICS ON IDENTITY POLITICS

THE NEW NATIONALISM

The Importance of Elsewhere 20

Why Nationalism Works 27

This Is Your Brain on Nationalism 42

Building a Better Nationalism 48

Blood for Soil 61

Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits? 82

No Country for Strongmen 96

The Kurdish Awakening 107

The New Containment 123

Less Than Zero 142

REVIEWS & RESPONSES

E Pluribus Unum? 160

STEPHANIE SOLOMON Chief Revenue Officer

LISA SHIELDS, IVA ZORIC, ZACHARY HASTINGS HOOPER Media Relations

SUBSCRIP TION SERVICES: Foreign Affairs

Born to a British mother and a Ghanaian father, KWAME

After he graduated from Harvard, ROBERT SAPOLSKY

HENRI BARKEY is one of the world’s foremost experts on the

A New Americanism This Is Your Brain on Nationalism

Jill Lepore 10 Robert Sapolsky 42

The Importance of Elsewhere Building a Better Nationalism

Why Nationalism Works The Broken Bargain

False Flags Blood for Soil

the nineteenth century, had become, in

the first half of the twentieth, a monster.

Proud to be an American: at a Trump rally in Missoula, Montana, October 2018

unprecedented immigration—making any shortage of blackguards willing to

Maybe it’s too late to restore a Constitution’s advocates called themselves

nation-state,” Armitage writes, but “there’s collectivity—was raised as the banner

you ask, if I would favor such immigra- NATIONAL HISTORIES

especially blind to the forces of conser- flourished as the handmaiden of nation-

At the close of the Cold War, some

Although May never used the term,

her target was clear: the so-called

Containing multitudes: pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, December 2018

NOWHERE MEN Village equals small; globe equals enor-

any of Diogenes’ contemporaries that about this conception of identity. The

GLOBAL IDENTITY POLITICS he sang along to the work of the English

President Emmanuel Macron declared

THE NEW NATIONALISM

nationalism with other doctrines of THE NATION IS BORN

foreigners sponsored public goods should go hand in hand with a new

have managed to convince not only their

THE NEW NATIONALISM

into their opponents’ hands by taking the Orwellian-sounding System of

Similarly, in the 2016 U.S. presiden- right’s willingness to collaborate with

This strategy is unlikely to succeed

in the long run, but it is bound to do

that chimps are about 30 times as likely

to kill a chimp from a neighboring group

TURBANS TO HIPSTER BEARDS

out-group thinking, in other words, is instead on cultural kin selection, a

REVOLUTION OR REFORM? them into two groups by tossing a coin.

Yes, nationalism helped give rise to the

modern state system, served as a liberat-

In reality, the nation-state has no aligning themselves with nationalist senti-

democratic welfare states supported by