--- On Sun, 1/2/09, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] Bruce Sterling's State of the World chat
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Sunday, 1 February, 2009, 2:33 PM
> ss wrote, [on 2/1/2009 1:02 PM]:
>
> >> 6. The Westphalian system. Why are so many great
> military powers losing
> >> a war in Afghanistan? Afghanistan isn't even a
> nation-state, yet it's
> >> defeating all comers. Why do we even pretend to
> have nations these days?
> >> Hollow states, failed states, non-states... The
> European post-state!
> >
> > ROTFL
> >
> > Sadly underinformed. Like most Americans who write on
> the subject. But in
> > 2009, it's getting better.
>
> In order that I better understand your statement, can you
> explain further?
>
> Sterling was claiming that the Westphalian System was (i) a
> form of
> consensus reality that (ii) could cause global disruption
> if it unravelled.
>
> <q>
> Let's consider seven other massive reservoirs of
> potential popular
> dread. Any one of these could erupt, shattering the fragile
> social
> compact we maintain with one another in order to believe
> things contrary
> to fact.
> </q>
>
> Do you disagree? Why? And what, exactly, is "getting
> better" in 2009?
>
> Udhay
The Westphalian system, as you may recall, is historical shorthand for the
concept of nation-states; this complex of treaties which effectively ended the
devastating 30 Years' War is considered to be an important step towards the
full formation of nation-states. The biggest single take-away for Europe was
the principle of cujus regio, ejus religio; my memory is dim, and I may have
got it back to front, but it more or less meant that the religion of a land
would follow the religion of its leader/ruler.
Besides bringing the war to an end, the treaty also marked the point of
terminal decline of two major systems of mediaeval rule, the Habsburg rule of
Spain and the Low Countries, and the Habsburg rule of the Holy Roman Empire.
Both were personal rules, where the justification of many regions being under
the same administration was that they were ruled by the same single individual,
irrespective of their other affiliations, location, past history, and so on.
This was effectively signalled to be ended by the Treaty, and the modern
nation-state, not dependent (except for poor Belgium) on the person of the
ruler but on the concept of certain geographies forming natural nations, was
inaugurated.
This is opposed to what is going on, and had gone on earlier under the
Khilafat, under Islam. There was a tension between the nation-states that can
be seen to exist in the 'Islamic' world (Iran, Turkey, Egypt - the list goes
on) and the concept of over-arching sovereignty belonging to the representative
of the Prophet designated the Caliph.
In general, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, the military power
of the world was resident in nation-states, even in conglomerate nation-states
blocs such as Soviet Russia, which could be seen as a set of vassal states
dominated by a single nation-state of the Westphalian kind.
What Sterling seems to be saying is two different things: one is that it is
inconceivable to the conventionally-educated western mind that the nation-state
should be defeated by an alternative model of organisation and deployment of
military power, but that it is what seems to be happening in Afghanistan. It is
shocking, but it may be the new reality, and 2009 will mark this reality coming
to dwell in the thinking of the 'real world', meaning more or less the
Caucasian world and the honorary Caucasians, the Japanese.
The other is that whether or not this was strictly so, there was a general
consensus that no other form could prevail in the forms of warfare prevalent,
so all who sought to impose their will on others sought to do so within the
nation-state model. This is no longer true. Now people are beginning to
recognise that other models exist, which can beat nation-states going to war.
What Shiv seems to be saying is that it's funny that it takes the West so long
to figure things out, it was evident years ago, but the West chose to ignore
it, or didn't bother to understand it (='underinformed' (sic), should have been
misinformed, in my opinion, but underinformed has an element of laziness which
perhaps Shiv preferred to burnish and push forward) but at least they seem to
be getting it at last, at long last. From that point of view, 2009 will be
better, because once they accept that there are alternative military models
outside the nation-state, they can think about how to cope with these.
My interpretation.
I shall now get the popcorn and watch Shiv demolish
(a) Bruce Sterling;
(b) Western civilisation and the Westphalian fallacy (irresistible, sorry);
(c) Udhay;
(d) Me,
not necessarily in that order.
Unlimited freedom, unlimited storage. Get it now, on
http://help.yahoo.com/l/in/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/tools/tools-08.html/
