The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Fury of Nationalism.

William Pfaff's The Wrath of Nations is a refreshing antidote to the swell of books about the end of modernity, the end of history; to the gloomy predictions of global turmoil as well as to happy tidings about millennial peace. It, too, is an end-of-the-century reflection on history, but this reassessment, of shifting political alignments and the abiding "fury of nationalism," is neither apocalyptic nor particularly comforting; it is rather a sober recitation of the plagues and virtues of the inescapable force known as nationalism.

It is not an age-old force. Pfaff doesn't let us forget that the ethnic state, ubiquitous though it may be, is in truth a fiction, an invention of the nineteenth century, as is the notion of internationalism, with both of them drawing their strength from Enlightenment ideas. The French Revolution, after all, was at once a universalist and an intensely nationalist phenomenon. More often, the two have been rivals, although internationalist ideologies are no match for the fury of nationalism. As Pfaff sees it, the political "isms" of the modern world: imperialism, fascism, communism have all succumbed to the unquenchable fires of nationalism, mainly because nationalism, he feels, is not an ideology but an outgrowth of "primordial human attachments to family, clan, and community." "It is unreasonable, considered as a general phenomenon, while natural as a specific one." Nationalist fervor persists because these primordial attachments persist:

Nationalism has about it the sweat of passion and hatred, caused by its belief in the radiant and recuperable past, producing the private readiness to kill neighbor and friend....The nationalist has his heart in his work. He is a concrete thinker. He is a limited thinker too, but he acts from the roots of being, of human society, from a given earth and clan....That is why he causes so much confusion to the man of ideas.

This suggests that the world event very much on the author's mind, the event that may well have prompted his meditations, was the savagery that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Though reluctant, with good reason, to take sides in the ongoing conflict, Pfaff does point out that what we are seeing in Serbia, as well as in some of the successor states of the former Soviet Union, is the worst of both worlds - "Totalitarian nationalism"; ruthless state control without the veneer of Marxism. Not that this is an entirely new development. What Pfaff attempts to demonstrate is that even universalist creeds, or supranational formations that purport to be liberal and democratic, are not devoid of nationalist appeal.

The ethnic and racial particularism of rightist ideologies is fairly self-evident, although Pfaff stresses the international character of both German National Socialism and Italian fascism. And we have seen often enough the champions of proletarian internationalism fall back on nationalist biases and cliches. Pfaff goes further still, and argues that behind the liberal internationalism of the evolving European community there is the pressing need to compete successfully with economic rivals; thus, he notes, "European unification is an expression or instrument of nationalism as well as a subordination or sublimation of it."

Pfaff is justified in placing special emphasis on Eastern Europe and the Balkans in his global survey of resurgent nationalism. It is here that we have witnessed, and keep witnessing, the spectacular failure of the noble Wilsonian dream. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 sanctioned the birth of independent nation states on the ruins of defeated empires, but in reality it created countries with large, restive ethnic minorities, and the region has been a hotbed of competing nationalisms ever since. The sheer size of these minorities made assimilation or even real integration impossible; their presence remained a constant source of friction. "Because the minority is where it is," Pfaff points out, "it causes the government under which its members live (and the majority population as well) to believe that it is naturally subversive of the majority order, and represents an actual or potential irredentism on the part of the country where its nationality is the majority. The concern of that country's government and public for the minorities outside its frontiers is taken as proof of this." In other words, it is a no-win situation. (The case of Hungary in this connection is especially interesting and instructive. The Treaty of Versailles, for that country, was a true disaster, resulting in the loss of close to two-thirds of its former territory. But Hungary's later alliance with Nazi Germany, which enabled it to regain some of the lost territories, ultimately led to an even greater disaster. Because its minorities were either killed off or ended up on the other side of redrawn borders, along with millions of its own nationals, of course, Hungary today is perhaps the only ethnically "pure" country in Eastern Europe; within its borders it has no national minorities to speak of. And while conservative nationalists would never openly admit it, most Hungarians nowadays consider themselves fortunate for not having that particular headache to contend with. William Pfaff would probably agree with this assessment, though he does ask rather pointedly: "What is historical Hungary without its Jews?")

While highlighting certain European models, Pfaff sticks to his premise that the nationalist renascence is a worldwide phenomenon. His ken extends far beyond Europe. He deals at length with Asian and African forms of nationalism, maintaining, however, that there, too, nationalism was a Western import, an alien intrusion in what were often insular and self-sufficient civilizations. Exposure to Western political ideas hastened the development of a national consciousness in these cultures, for it was realized soon enough that the modern world demanded nations. Ultimately, in their struggle against colonialism, they beat the West at its own game, for even the ideologically oriented liberation movements turned out to have secret nationalist agendas. (The U.S. thought it was battling communism in Vietnam; but the real enemy was Vietnamese nationalism.)

The result of all this, in Pfaff's view, is none too encouraging. Liberation and independence brought with them authoritarian rule of one type or another. In postcolonial Africa the picture is especially gloomy. Pfaff surveys the damage done by Westernized African elites who had imposed the "naive and unworkable ideas of state socialism" on tribal cultures because "such was the fashion on the European Left." He also discusses the Islamic renewal, seeing it as yet another form of quite furious nationalism. The big difference here, though, is that Islam has remained an essentially religious culture. Despite its great thinkers and scientists, it was untouched by the rationalism and theological skepticism that has shaped modern Western civilization. Islamic fundamentalism, then, is a reaction to incomplete and inadequate secular nationalism - what Pfaff calls "junk Westernization."

Yet Pfaff is no more sanguine about developments in the most advanced Western societies. He devotes an entire chapter to American nationalism, in which he presents a curious reinterpretation of American history. He speaks of a civilization in decline, of the "falsified renewal" of recent years, of a richly variegated, complicated America that is no more. He sees a society that became, though only after the Civil War, too centralized and too powerful too fast, and he even theorizes that perhaps it would have been better if the Confederacy had been allowed to remain an independent state. If that had happened, "North Americans today might be more comfortable with themselves and with the world." The author who elsewhere in his book appears to be a cautious internationalist sounds in this chapter like a very old-fashioned American patriot. Which is all the more surprising since at times he evinces a decidedly European disdain for confident American prescriptions for world order, an attitude that may be attributed to the fact that for some years now he has been observing the international scene from Paris.

But perhaps it's unreasonable to expect unwavering consistency in a book such as this. William Pfaff is a journalist, an intellectual, not a professional historian; and The Wrath of Nations is a rigorously intellectual but subjective and impressionistic examination of nationalism. The author himself labels it, rather too modestly, the "conjectures of a dilettante." But therein lies its value, and its charm. He feels free to digress, to be anecdotal, to appeal to unfashionable authority, to cite obscure sources. (Who would have thought, for instance, that a 1914 editorial in the Wabash Plain Dealer would be worth quoting in 1993?) His prose, too, is lucid, functional, nonacademic, which makes his occasional lapses into foreign-policy jargon somewhat disconcerting.

Actually, the abiding strength of nationalism elicits both subjective comment and learned analysis. Pfaff may speak admiringly of a Roman citizen's proud identification with an empire, or nostalgically of the polyglot nature of the Habsburg monarchy, or wistfully of the fast-vanishing regional characteristics of his own native country, but he also knows that the fading of a strong national consciousness can lead to national decline. It's not without it certain sense of satisfaction that he notes nationalism's inevitable triumph over "higher ideals," though it doesn't stop him from viewing with dismay nationalism's more primitive or absurd manifestations.

All this suggests a deeply pessimistic view of history; but it may not even be that. Like many conservative historians before him, Pfaff simply rejects the notion of historical progress and questions the validity of any "scientific" view of history. Yet one kind of progress needs to be stressed more - the irreplaceable progress toward genuine democracy. For what else can tame the fury of nationalsm, or enable people to give voice to legitimate national aspirations? Several years ago, after the fall of communism, the magic word was on everybody's lips. Democracy was the most obvious, the simplest, the only answer. What we are finding out, of course, is that it's also the most difficult answer.