After Westphalia

With the centenary of the start of World War One upon us, many are noting the similarities and differences between then and now - especially in the context of increasingly violent conflicts in the Middle East and beyond. But to understand the present we might need to look further back - to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 - credited by many with the creation of the modern, sovereign state. Why so far back? Because in the age of ISIS, the modern, sovereign state might just be coming to an end. Here's Adrian Pabst on the subject:

The secular settlement of Westphalia is predicated on subsuming all institutions and practices under the absolute sovereignty of state coercion and market commodification. This relentless expansion of bureaucratic control and capitalist accumulation has produced an unprecedented centralisation of power and concentration of wealth, which has in turn created a twin crisis of identity and inequality. So instead of a utopia of infinite progress in the direction of democracy, what is already underway is a resurgence of populism, atavistic nationalism and fascism across large parts of Europe and elsewhere - notably, in Ukraine and in Russia. 

... Among the alternatives to the sovereign power of both national states and global markets are hybrid institutions, overlapping jurisdictions, polycentric authority and forms of multi-level government or governance, which are all marked by disperse and diffuse power structures and degrees of suzerainty that are not captured by modern paradigms of national sovereignty and balance of equal powers. This applies as much to the EU as it does to great powers and their neighbours such as Russia in relation to Ukraine, Belarus or Georgia.

Indeed, it is clear that the historically recent triumph of Liberal Democracy itself was the beneficiary of American idealism writ large as imperial ambition. But as America adjusts to the new realities of a post-Westphalian era, we can anticipate a far more fluid, less fixed world of shifting borders, alliances and power politics. ISIS is only the beginning.

As for Ireland, we might just need to get back in touch with the more atavistic, less politically correct views and ambitions of our own founding fathers if we are to find the ideas and values that will help us navigate the new global realities ahead.