Gurdur

{Note to moderators:
I am hoping that this discussion will draw some interesting comments on philosophy of the state, philosophy on nations, and the philosophy of war ---- so PLEASE do not send this poor thread off to die ignomiously amid the muck and mire of the far, foreign field of Political Discussions.
Besides which, the hoi polloi in this forum are crying out for something novel. }

Today I read an interesting excerpt from the introduction (by Prof. Michael Howard) to a new book by Philip Bobbitt, The Shield Of Achilles, on the development of warfare, the history of international relations, and international and constitutional law. You can read the excerpt itself here.

Bobbitt has quite a few theses interesting to the armchair philosopher and amateur soothsayer such as my humble self; among his theses, all well worth discussing here, are that:

¶ : The nation-state is dead, and in losing its legitimacy, will be replaced by market-states instead, which since lacking in initial felt legitimacy will lead to continual low-level armed conflict at the very least.

This particular thesis has already been foreseen by a couple of SF writers, William Gibson among them, but I'm skeptical for a number of reasons:

1. ‡ The nation as an entity has a hell of a lot of practical reasons as to why it exists -- the main one being that a single culture really does mean a way of thinking often very different to any other.
   
   Living as an Australian many years in Germany, even today I'm still surprised when I stolper over some hidden gulf in understanding, a chasm in cognition --- it's not just different ways of doing things, it really is very different ways of thinking about things --- and I'm quite skilled in cross-cutural communication, so it's not just my thickheadedness.
   I often observe the huge difference in American and British mentality; and I come far closer to Brit mentality than I would ever come to American folkways - but (owing to personal history) in some important areas, despite being blue-eyed and blonde-haired, pink-gray-brown skin with a few freckles, I have more in common with a Tanzanian Swahili than I do with a Brit ---- again a question of values, of different ways of doing things, of expectations.
   Nations are very handy ways of marking cultures, of marking history, and cultures really do make for very subtle but very large differences.
   
2. ‡ Philip Bobbitt, the author of the book and latest proponent of the thesis, is American --- and I think that's no accident.
   I've observed that some Americans can simply not understand why Europe is not a Single Place / country, but a loose collection of extremely different ones -- which sees no reason to suddenly become homogenous (or even terribly friendly to each other).
   The USA is a huge stretch of neo-European temperate good agricultural land, with excellent lack of geographical intercommunicational barriers; that makes for a very large homogenous society, and then sometimes someone from that culture would never grasp or accept that people living only 100 miles apart can have completely different languages, histories, ways of doing things, and values.
   Moreover, these huge differences have nothing to do with hostility, but instead history; and people just don't see why they should suddenly throw overboard 3,000 years of history for the sake of some theory.
   
3. ‡ in addition to the point above, both the vocal right and the vocal left inside the USA have been for years re-inventing the notion of "American" as a moral mission, not as a nationality.
   Since morals are far easier to transport, then Americans of this type often think,
   "Well, just why can't those silly people adopt what's obviously right ?"
   However, the problem is, it is not morals at question, but language, of different ways of doing things, of expectations, of history.
   We can share the same (main) morals but still have completely different worldviews.

for these reasons and more, I do not see any end to the nation-state; what is happening is collections of nations like the European Union -- but the preservation and even resurrection of nations within such blocs (see the very recent peaceful resurrection of Catalonian nationalism, or Welsh TV, for example).
I see the rise of market-states alongside nation-states, and cross-over, with consequent confusion and conflict.

Before I add more, I'ld love comments.

Clutch

Maybe this falls under your (1), but one reason for scepticism involves what Howard discusses more than anything else: the institutions required for waging war. I suppose there might be corporate armed forces in thoroughly technologically waged wars, where the soldiers think they'll stand as American troops will stand to Iraquis in the apparently ineluctable looming war. But it's hard to imagine market states putting together groups of soldiers willing to hit the ground in a hot war, and stop a bullet for... AOL/Time-Warner. One might cynically claim that that's the actual state of affairs -- but at least that's not how soldiers actually think of things. They think in terms of The Flag (and mom, and apple pie...). Which is why this might just be one aspect of what you identify in point (1).

Keith Russell

Just my $0.02 worth--

--I love Gibson's work (Mona Lisa Overdrive is a personal favourite), but the idea of the uber-market state was proposed by Frank Herbert long before Gibson--

--in a little novel called Dune.

Keith.

Gurdur

Actually it was and still is till very recently the state of affairs --- at least in some parts of the world.

See the history of mercenaries used in Africa 1960 - 1980.
Oh , and 1980-2003 in the Congo (mainly Serbian mercenaries).
Moreover, right at this minute, the diamond monopoly in Namibia has one of the best-equipped mini-armies in the world; several other diamond, mineral ore and oil companies in North and Central Africa maintain private armies. And they fight.

Furthermore, you ignore the extreme lengths to which business loyalty culture can be taken --- see modern Japanese large corporation culture, palely imitated in the USA.

At this point, if you have been a professional career armed forces person, you will inform me that mecenaries are not soldiers, and are untrustworthy little buggers.
I would say yes, but:
Mercenaries can often be trusted as long as the fighting is not too intense or above all too long (see below for development).

Private corporation armies can feel very fierce loyalty to their corporation masters - they are not mercenaries. This happens right now with the diamond and oil examples I cited.

The modern national and nationalist army is a Napoleonic French and Prussian invention.
Before that, it was all forced conscription, prison dregs and career volunteers.
The French and the Prussians were forced to go nationalist with their armies (against the ruling prejudices and fears) because of the quickly repetitive destruction of their former armies.

(Digression: for much the same reason, the Prussians invented modern Western bureaucracy; the English Civil Service was modelled after the Prussian one, and in fact the traditional English "bobby"'s helmet is modelled after a Prussian gendarme's.)

It's only when fighting is intense and long that additional motivations such as nationalism are needed.

I have no idea if Bobbitt cites the modern private business armies in his book, since I haven't read it. However, the modern corporation army, highly skilled and equipped, and highly motivated and loyal, already exists.

Gurdur

I love William Gibson. I cannot stand Dune.

I actually had another in mind, but I've forgotten which book or whom. Possibly Bruce Sterling.

Gurdur

whoops, am I getting forgetful or what ?

There's an additional part I should have put in to my reply to Clutch just above, that being:

The next objection is that with modern, highly-technologised warfare, you need very highly-trained troops, and they --- owing to their uni education - are even less likely to feel loyalty to a corporation, but to a nation.

I'ld completely disagree with this objection; where highly-trained people lack great loyalty, it's to anyone --- note the famous Cambridge (or was it Oxford ? damn) debating society event just before WW2 where the vote was carried not to fight in any war ever for anything, an event that gave Hitler rather a thrill.

Highly-trained people can be brought to feel loyalty fairly easily --- it's all a matter of overall culture, and when you use things like fear and superiority complexes (see the film Gattaca for example), you can achieve nasty and big things.

Clutch

Well, yeah. I know there's plenty of self-described mercenaries about, and they must be good enough for the job or they wouldn't get used. But my understanding of such matters was that the job they're mostly good at is repressing civilian populations. It's when the battle lines get well and truly drawn, and the probability of getting shot in anger goes up -- gut-check time -- that such armies have a way of melting away.

It may be that wars of the WWI/II type are just gone for good, but it seems to me that one of the powers of nationalism was its ability to get millions of young men to die to the last soldier, for years on end, with relatively few general mutinies.

Gurdur

You don't seem to have read fully my responses at all --- I specifically addressed that. It's an erroneous view of yours.

I assure you, corporation troops have been fighting guerillas and state troops for quite some time in northern and central Africa. And they still display fierce loyalty.

You ignore the massive French mutinies of 1917, the 1918 German revolt, and the Russian complete breakdown/mutinies of 1917.

Gurdur

Additional:

When fighting is intense and long, breakdowns in loyalty are very frequent ---- more than actual patriotism is needed, much more; such as the feeling of very real total threat.
The problem is the same for both national and corporation armies.

The Napoleonic nationalism of the French and Prussians resulted from the fear of very near total destruction of home.

Clutch

It's true that I am unaware of, eg, mercenaries in Africa doing the kinds of things to which I specifically alluded -- say, dying to the last man to defend territory. If you have actual evidence that this is a phenomenon of non-trivial frequency among them, I'd be very interested and grateful for the reference.

And I think you'll find I said "relatively few", about the mutinies -- relative, in particular, to the length of the two world wars and the number of casualties sustained. It certainly would have been wrong to claim there were none at all; against that claim, which nobody made, your examples would be compelling.