25^th November 2015

 

Following my recent theorizing about the nation-state, I was asked a perfectly fair question, namely “What does all this have to do with the immediate “Syrian Question”?  I realised I had concentrated on the general theory and failed to spell out the particular Syrian dimension…

In Syria, the world confronts two concurrent political problems.

First, the removal of a brutal dictator whose claims to democratic legitimacy have been confirmed in “democratic elections” – just as Hitler’s claims were validated.   Assad has rejected, indeed denied, the claims by “the West” that Assad’s political legitimacy has been destroyed by the use of barrel-bombs against his own citizens: that issue remains to be resolved.  The other nation-states are split on the matter, with Russia and Iran contending that Assad remains legitimately in power and deserving of support, and other leading states attacking his regime.

Second, the prospective emergence of an aggressive “virtual state”, which ISIS seeks to establish in the Levant, starting with a physical base in Iraq and Syria.  The ISIS promoters have taken advantage of the emergence of two neighbouring “partially failed States”, and have occupied territory in both countries which neither Government can effectively control by conventional means.  These promoters are seeking to “play the nation-state game” and to assemble a virtual political entity – according to the prevailing nation-state rules.  That is the so-called “caliphate”, which is being gradually constructed, before our very eyes, just as Israel was constructed by way of the League of Nations’ Palestinian Mandate and the Zionist movement, and its legitimacy eventually recognized by the majority of global nation-states.

These two conflicts are quite separate, but they are conceptually linked.  What is the link?  It is the culture and legitimacy of the “nation-state” itself.  President Assad relies on that, for the assertion of his continuing legitimacy: he does not accept that he has been or can be legitimately removed from power by force.  Both Putin and the Iranian Government support Assad’s position, partly because to do otherwise might jeopardize their own international legitimacy.  In the other conflict, the whole strategy of the ISIS promoters is built upon the same propositions – they are merely following the political conventions by which the globe is now ruled.

And I contend that any diplomatic resolution in Syria should be grounded on the same principles.  We are where we are.  The conventions of the international community of states are relatively new, but they are powerful, and they underpin the legitimacy of the Governments of most UN member-states.  The “West” should be prepared to concede that, following an effective cease-fire, either Assad or his Party should be free to participate in new Elections, and seek a democratic mandate.  If possible, Assad should be persuaded to retire and given immunity from suit, leaving his Party to fight the new Elections.  It may even be necessary to concede a partly “federal” solution to accommodate the Kurds within Syria, as they have been accommodated within Iraq.   It will be by upholding the prevailing  conventions that the international community of states can be mobilized to defeat the virtual caliphate.  Both conflicts need to be addressed simultaneously, adopting consistent reasoning.

That is how I see a diplomatic solution emerging….

Roger Warren Evans, Swansea UK

I promised to reason my “Syrian Compromise” …

Here goes.

In the course of my lifetime, the world has become dominated the by the political institution of the “nation state”.   This has any conceptual disadvantages, because it denotes a self-contained, free-standing particle, immune to intervention from outside, and entitled to full sovereignty over its own affairs.   As a “political particle”, the nation state therefore comes with many disadvantages and dangers.  I take the view, however, that at his stage of our systemic evolution, we must accept this domination, and conduct international affairs in the language and grammar of the “nation state”.   We are where we are, and there is, in terms of international political structures, only one show in town…

It was not always thus.   When I entered my teens, in 1948, the political syntax still included “Empire”, “Colony”, “mandated Territory” (overseen by the collapsed League of Nations), and “state” (i.e. the components of federal associations such as USA, Australia, Germany) – the “nation state” was merely one institution among many.  When I was a member of the Youth Section of the UK United Nations Association in the 197/1951 period, its name was the “Council for Education in World Citizenship”.   Internationalism was the elixir of the day.  “National sovereignty” did not dominate the scene.

Paradoxically, the United Nations itself changed all that.   Its adoption of the nation-state as its principal component unit of membership, lent political standing to the self-governing “nation state”.  And when it came to dismantling the British, French, Belgian and Portuguese “empires”, they disintegrated into new “nation states”, converted from “colonies” by the choices of their residents.  This process lasted roughly thirty years (1960/1990), and “United Nations” membership ballooned correspondingly.   In that process, during my lifetime, the self-governing nation-state has emerged as the world’s “political format of choice” – whether democratic or autocratic.

That process has not yet run its course.  It has however, become axiomatic (in the new political grammar) that every nation-state must command its “own” distinctive physical “territory”, must control its distinctive part of the surface of the globe.   There is no such thing as a “virtual” nation-state – every state must have its territory (e.g. The Vatican).   It is precisely a dispute over territory that bedevils settlement of the Palestinian claims to nation-statehood; other disputes involve the carving out of new nation-states from the territory of other, established nation-states – Scotland, Catalonia, Kurdestan – and many new nation-states were carved out of the territory of the USSR, in some cases controversially (Ukraine). The Palestinians aspire to the status of self-governing “nation state”, as do the dispersed Kurdish peoples; the Scots, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the “Spanish” Catalonians, and the Polisario of Western Sahara – they are all engaged in drives to establish new, sovereign nation-states, in a range of different circumstances.

It is not surprising that the tacticians of an assertive religion like Islam should wish to join this popular world movement   They have formed an Islamic splinter-group (as yet, without a settled name) that is seeking to acquire the other attributes of statehood – territory, population, Constitution, legislative institutions, control of civil order), and then to lay claim to the privileges accorded to a nation-state, including membership of the United Nations.   Iran is an outstanding example of a nation-state that has been successfully converted, by internal action, into an Islamic state.  Drawing on Islamic history, the new group seeks now the acceptance of a “caliphate” as a self-governing nation-state, and its followers are setting about their campaign with furious and brutal gusto.

This alignment of political and religious institutions is dangerous, and should be contested.  The very “genes” of the nation-state need to be re-engineered, to allow greater flexibility of international political action.   In certain respects, the absolute powers of “governments” over nation-states require modification, so as to facilitate collective action to counter the abuse of human rights.  Greater diversity of association for nation-states should be possible.  Procedural solutions should also be found to ensure that no natural person is ever denied a convenient link of “nationality” with a relevant nation-state: personal “statelessness” is a destructive consequence of the domination of the nation-state, as a political institution.  It is important that this re-engineering should be conducted at a generic level, capable of universal application to all global political systems; otherwise, the modified genes could become even more toxic and destructive than the present haphazard “system”.

24 November 2015

 

 

My name is Roger Warren Evans.   I am returning to the E-Clouds after a break of ten years.  In 2004, as a retired lawyer, I was personally overtaken by the challenge of “justice for asylum-seekers” in the UK.  I set up a new small charity in South Wales – called Asylum Justice – to address the wrongs to which asylum-seekers were subject.  That charity absorbed my time and energies, as a volunteer, for ten years, until 2014.   Now aged 80, I have finally retired from legal practice, while the subject of global migration has come to dominate the political agenda, and asylum is part of the complex of issues raised. Asylum Justice had a very demanding agenda and workload, and it wholly displaced my blogging, which I abandoned in 2005.  I am now back, and joining WordPress as a means of re-joining the blogging community.  One of my principal concerns is how the Labour Party should prepare for the critical General Election of 2020.   But more of that anon.

Saturday evening 14 November 2015.  I am what is often called “a driven person” – not driven by any religious ideology or belief, nor fanatical about any political cause or creed – except perhaps the perfectability of man..  I am firmly convinced that, when it comes to he organization of society, humankind has the capacity to understand and “tweak” its own structures to improve its chances of survival, in the envionmental into which evolution has delivered the species.  That means that, although I am not a political fanatic, I believe that humankind, faced with he circumstances of New Year 2016 can – by political action – adjust to the requirements of human survival: my mindset is that of a political optimist.  From my spot on the globe (I was born in, and I now live in, Swansea in South Wales, UK), I approach the future as a socialist, in political terms, and a convinced democrat – I believe that in the longer run, it is only human societies that accommodate the aspirations of their peoples that will survive.

Where does that optimism come from?  I will tackle that question tomorrow..

G’nite   Roger WE

Thought for the Day… Tuesday 17 November 2015  … I have been having teething problems in my operation of “the WordPress System”… these problems are not wholly resolved…  Roger WE