SOVEREIGNTY REDEFINED:

Liberal Nationalism, Abraham Lincoln, and the Unification of Italy (Miles Smith, July 15, 2024, Providence)

American liberals in the nineteenth century weren’t libertarians, nor were they agnostic on the relationship between the state, order, and liberty. But they did believe the state should be limited, and that it could not and should not exercise coercive authority on matters of conscience. Nations were good, so long as they gave their people true freedom.

Only liberal regimes are legitimately sovereign.

WHY COLONIZATION IS ILLEGITIMATE:

Zionism of the Founding Fathers: Israel’s creation matches the principles of statesmen who established our republic. (Joseph Prud’homme, June 27, 2024, Modern Age)

[A] significant number of founders held that religion should be integrated into the fabric of law and society, specifically at a regional or local level. They held that the people are entitled to create a religious state, with “religion” understood either in a general sense or as one specific denomination—as long as the substance of that religion was conducive to recognizing and protecting the rights of all, with the state ensuring everyone’s freedom of religious belief and practice.


Such a state must be a politically representative one and exercise authority only over a geographically compact community. These conditions, they believed, would produce a government more responsive to the concerns of all the citizenry.

Christianity, of course, was seen as especially conducive to the protection of individual rights, including the right of religious liberty. Thus Christianity was something the state could protect and promote by law without compelling individuals in ways that would violate individual conscience.

The pamphlet Worcestriensis, for example—which was written anonymously in 1776 in Massachusetts and remained influential in New England for decades—supports at once the establishment of a specific faith and the support by law of religious liberty. Even in the presence of extensive denominational diversity, this work suggests, establishment works best in compact areas due to the ease with which citizens can petition government should abuses occur, as well as the reality that living amidst difference tends to form habits that bolster support for the legal protections of religious liberty for all within the community. And indeed, in most New England states the religious establishment was at the town level.

The Constitution expressly sought to avoid any measure that could undermine state-level solicitude toward religion. All ratifiers of the Constitution knew that six states in 1789 had official religious establishments that accorded Christianity, or even a particular denomination, privileged status, often in the form of direct financial support to that faith and no other.

As President Thomas Jefferson—himself in many ways a strict separationist—stated in his second inaugural address, “religious exercises are under the direction and discipline of state or church” (emphasis added). To be sure, Jefferson would have wanted New England states to shed their religious establishments on their own. But many founders saw a state-level affiliation of faith and government as a form of morally acceptable statecraft or as a genuine and positive benefit.

Israel’s founding embodied these points central to many in the founding generation and therefore would likely have won their support.

Of course, this argument favors Palestinian statehood for all the same reasons.

YOU SAY YOU WANT A DEVOLUTION…:

The Evolution of Empire (JOHN ANDREWS, 6/21/24, Project Syndicate)

The trite answer to the question of why empires fall is that they become victims of their own success, growing too large, too corrupt, too exhausted to fend off energetic newcomers. As the Arab philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun argued in the fourteenth century, empires are like living organisms: they grow, mature, and die. […]

Almost a half-century ago, John Bagot Glubb, a British general who commanded the Jordanian army from 1939 until 1956, published a book entitled The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. His thesis was essentially the same as Ibn Khaldun’s, only with the added claim that almost all empires rise and fall over a period of roughly 250 years. Putting aside the obvious flaws in Glubb’s arithmetic (the Ottoman Empire certainly did not “end” in 1570), the core idea should not be dismissed too casually. After all, historians now give the Qing Dynasty a lifespan of 267 years, and the Mughal Empire of Das’s book began to lose territory after only two centuries.

A pessimist might point out that today’s China began with the Communist victory in 1949, and that America’s quasi-imperial power began 201 years ago with the Monroe Doctrine. Time may not be on the side of those who place their trust in America to protect democracy and “liberal Western values.”

What makes America unique is that our “Empire” has never expanded outward much–the Philipines and Cuba, Germany and Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc were all turned back to their people in short order. Instead, we have become too large to be governed effectively entirely within our own borders. We exceed optimal state size by orders of magnitude. It’s why we will devolve into a series of smaller nations though likely still bound together in a British-style commonwealth.

TRANSNATIONALISM WAS ALWAYS DOOMED:

The EU is turning into a Remainer nightmare: In a cruel twist of fate, Brussels has shed its progressive skin (Thomas Fazi, MAY 9, 2024, UnHerd)

All this clashes with the Remainers’ rainbow-tinted view of the European Union. But their vision was always predicated on a fantasy: everything that is happening across the Channel is not a betrayal of “EU values”, as they are probably telling themselves — it is an inevitable consequence of the EU’s architecture itself. Even though Remainers have always tended to view the EU as a bastion of social and workers’ rights, the reality is that the Rightward drift across the EU has its roots in the Brussels-driven assault on the post-war European social and economic model following the 2008 financial crisis. High unemployment rates, stagnant wages and austerity measures implemented in response to the crash exacerbated existing inequalities, fuelling resentment towards the political establishment. To make things worse, the EU attempted to prevent any democratic backlash to these policies by restricting the scope of democratic decision-making by democratically elected governments, focusing instead on quasi-automatic technocratic rules imposed by undemocratic bodies. The European Union effectively became a sovereign power with the authority to impose budgetary rules and structural reforms on member states — not exactly what you’d expect from the “bastion of democracy” often portrayed by Remainers.

The main geopolitical force in the world, as regards sovereignty, is centrifugal, not centripetal.

MERE TRIBALISM:

Place and the Nation (John G. Grove, Spring 2024, National Affairs)

National conservatives claim to be defenders of locality and particularity over and against the forces of globalism and universalism. Remarkably, however, neither national conservatism’s “Statement of Principles” nor its most thorough theoretical account — as articulated by Yoram Hazony — points to the guiding concept of place as a prominent element of the nation.

This absence of place stands in marked contrast to the concept’s preeminence in the thought of another notable defender of the nation against encroaching international institutions and universalist philosophy: the late Sir Roger Scruton. Scruton built his entire understanding of the nation on the concept of “home,” or a certain way of life that emerges from “the place where we are.”

This distinction calls into question national conservatism’s claim to be the “only genuine alternative” to global liberalism. It also has important implications for the way conservatives ought to understand the authority of the nation-state, specifically as it relates to federalism and locality.

In Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Hazony defines a nation as “a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language, law, or religious tradition, and a past history of joining together against common enemies and to pursue common endeavors.”

Place is absent because Nationalists are just racist. They define a nation ethnically.

WHILE WE WHINGE ABOUT ANYTHING THEY DO:

Let’s Face It: Sanctions Are Warfare by Another Name (ASSAL RAD, MARCH 19, 2024, Inkstick)

At first glance, sanctions may appear like a useful alternative to war. Proponents of sanctions will argue that they avoid putting boots on the ground, thus protecting American servicemembers, they have the power to alter the behavior of targeted states, and prevent the devastation to innocent civilians caused by conventional warfare. But a deeper analysis of sanctions shows a starkly different picture.

Though there has certainly been evidence and literature that shows the limited efficacy of sanctions and their humanitarian costs on civilians, those findings are not always accessible to the broader public and tend to have a narrower focus.

And while many may recall the horror stories of how US sanctions hurt Iraqi children and civilians in the 1990s — especially the now infamous remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stating that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were “worth it” — sanctions policy is still not part of a wider political debate among the American public.


This discrepancy is due in part to the fact that sanctions are a silent killer. They do not draw the same media attention as bombs, dead bodies, and images of cities and homes turned to rubble — as we are seeing in Gaza now. To be clear, the enormous destruction and loss of life at such a rapid pace in Gaza should be the headline of every news outlet. But while sanctions can profoundly damage an entire society, the slow death they produce often goes unnoticed.

HOW WILSON LOST WWI:

The U.S. Must Stand by and for the Kurds (Gregg Roman, 2/21/24, Real Clear World)

The Kurds, a resilient and significant ethnic group without a recognized state of their own, have long been instrumental in the fight against terrorism and the preservation of American interests in a volatile Middle East. It is time for the U.S. to honor its promises, acknowledge the historical injustices faced by the Kurds, and stand firmly in support of their aspirations for autonomy and security.

It is an appropriate moment to step back, appreciate Kurdish history, and consider our obligations to the Kurds not only in Syria but in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran as well.

The Kurds, predominantly Sunni Muslims, are the most populous ethnic group on earth without a recognized state of their own. A diverse group of some 25 to 30 million people, about half of the Kurds inhabit lands across parts of Southeast Turkey. Most rest live in northeast Syria, northern and western Iran, southwestern Armenia, and northern Iraq.

The most prominent feature of the Kurdish landscape is the rugged mountains of the eastern Taurus-Zagros Mountain range. Because of the mountains’ imposing nature, armies have had trouble conquering the area, which has allowed the Kurdish people to survive in their fastnesses throughout the centuries. Indeed, a famous Kurdish proverb says, “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.”

The proverb has proven, sadly, to be true.

The Kurds were promised a state in the wake of the First World War – that is, after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire – in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. Nevertheless, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne reneged on this promise.

Both Bushes deserrve blame too, for not recognizing the nation of Kurdistan after the Iraq wars.

THERE IS NO MYANMAR:

Rebel offensive taking toll on Myanmar military’s cohesion, soldiers say (Rebecca Tan, Yan Naing and Andrew Nachemson, February 14, 2024, Washington Post)


Accounts from Myanmar army soldiers who have surrendered or defected over the past three months reveal that the military is suffering from plunging morale and overstretched logistics amid a rebel offensive that has prompted mass surrenders. […]


Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021 after ousting the democratically elected government. When protests erupted across the country, the military responded with force, and thousands of its opponents turned to armed resistance, in some cases making common cause with ethnic rebel groups. The military has sought to crush opposition with methods so brutal and indiscriminate that U.N. investigators say they are likely war crimes.

But last year, the rebels pushed the military into its weakest position in decades by capturing towns on the edges of the country and driving the junta’s forces toward the middle, analysts say.

Investigators at Myanmar Witness, an independent nongovernmental group that verifies developments in the Myanmar war, said they used open-source information to geolocate footage of five mass surrenders and weapon seizures since October. The investigators said that their efforts have only just begun and that their findings represent “the tip of the iceberg of the military’s losses.”

Researchers at the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, a Myanmar-based think tank, are also working to verify surrenders, and Executive Director Min Zin said it is already apparent that the scale is unprecedented in the military’s history. Myanmar analysts from four other independent research institutions agreed.

“It speaks volumes about the military’s capacities that they had to accept this kind of situation,” said Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the International Crisis Group.

A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELF A NATION ARE ONE:

Sikh Americans, citing ‘transnational repression,’ vote for an independent homeland (Richa Karmarkar, 2/01/24, RNS)

Last Sunday (Jan. 28), more than 120,000 Sikhs of all ages and occupations took part in a historic referendum in San Francisco on the creation of an autonomous homeland in northwestern India. They braved hourslong lines after already long commutes, in many cases from neighboring states, to reach the polling place in the City by the Bay.

These Sikhs, almost all of them U.S. citizens and residents, were voting aspirationally for the creation of Khalistan — a hoped-for but nonexistent “land of the pure” that would stand separate from the nation of India.

Organized by Sikhs for Justice, an activist group that is banned in India, the vote was aimed at raising the profile of Sikh efforts to convince the government of India to allow Punjab, the state where the Sikhi faith was born, to secede.

There is no India

THE COLD WAR IS OVER:

I will be a first minister for all’: Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill marks historic moment for once unionist state (Rory Carroll, 3 Feb 2024, The Guardian)


The chamber’s ornate ceiling remained blue, red and gold, and Portland stone still held up the Stormont edifice, but the beaming Sinn Féin faces declared this was a historic moment for Irish nationalism.

Michelle O’Neill became Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister in a day of symbolism and pomp that restored devolved government and etched an epitaph on the tomb of what was once a unionist state.

The union endured – Northern Ireland remains part of the UK and a referendum on Irish unity is not on the horizon – but when the assembly nominated O’Neill at 2.33pm yesterday for republicans the countdown to potential unification ticked louder.

Once we faced no external threats our allies in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel had to settle their internal issues in favor of democracy.