If we attend carefully to the implications of this argument, we will understand that this premise, of the illegitimacy of empire and anarchy within the order of sovereign states, applies just as well to the relations between sovereign states and the peoples that reside within their borders. It is clear that no state was ever founded by means of a social contract, and one may doubt whether the circulation of this fiction has been of benefit to men.²⁵ Nevertheless, it is true that those who undertake to establish a state on the basis of national freedom do unilaterally incur obligations in doing so, by nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged. Just as a parent, in bringing children into the world, undertakes an obligation to raise them, and not only those whom he favors; and just as a teacher, in setting foot in the classroom, undertakes an obligation to educate his students, and not only those who excel; and just as a storekeeper, in setting out his wares, undertakes to sell to all who can pay him and have need of his goods, and not only his townsmen; and just as a soldier, in taking up arms, undertakes to defend all who live in the land, and not only those who are supporters of a particular faction—so too does the national state have, by virtue of the exclusive powers it claims, an obligation to care for all of the citizens and residents of the territories on which it establishes itself. Such obligations are not contractual; they do not come into existence by consent, and they cannot be discarded by choice. Nor is it possible for the sovereign national state to use its unique purposes and aspirations, which are derived from the principle of national liberty, as a legitimate justification for the neglect or abuse of those who live within its bounds.

I believe that none of this is in need of proof. However, since the national state has so frequently been tarred with the accusation of its being inimical to minority populations—to the Arabs in Israel, for example—it is essential we understand that the abuse and neglect of such minority populations is itself past the limiting point of the principle of national liberty, and that it must therefore be recognized as illegitimate. This is not only for the reasons of abstract right that are usually adduced in this regard, but no less because such abuses negate the principle of national liberty itself, which is the foundation on which the political order rests.

My belief in this regard is based on the recognition that the principle of sovereignty obliges every national state to oppose empire and anarchy wherever these raise their heads.²⁶ As I have remarked, the ability of states to apply this principle outside their borders is greatly circumscribed by the limitation of their powers. But the circumstances are markedly different within the borders of the state. There, the government generally enjoys an overwhelming advantage over any other agent, so that its obligations cannot be dismissed on account of its lack of ability. Wherever imperial powers and anarchical ones have extended their tendrils into the territory of the national state, there it has the greatest obligation—because there it has the greatest ability—to root these out without hesitation. I refer here not only to such agents as have the support of foreign governments, but also to those that are of local origin, and those whose origins are as yet cloaked in shadows. In this context, one should never forget that already in Mein Kampf, years before coming to power, Hitler had promised that if Germany dealt firmly with what he called the “racial poisoning” that afflicted it, that country “must someday become lord of the earth.”²⁷ I am sure the Weimar authorities had one hundred reasons not to respond ruthlessly in Hitler’s case. But we have learned from experience that all of these considerations only serve to divert us from doing our duty, which in such cases is unambiguous.

This reasoning returns us to the relation of the national state to its minority populations. I have already said that the principle of national sovereignty cannot be indefinitely extended, and that the result, as all recognize, is that every national state must invariably contend with the presence within its borders of societies that do not—and often will not under any circumstance—see themselves as standing in the same relation to the purposes of the state as does the greater part of its population. This is to a certain extent inevitable; mankind has never known a political order in which all minority populations were satisfied with their status, and it seems that it never will. But the real question is what will be the policy of the state, which is often the single greatest factor in any such question.

Let us consider the extreme case. We know that the Nazi imperial state was directly involved in instigating violence against the Jews, and that after its initiation of a general war, it also turned to an active policy of systematic murder. But for our purposes it is more relevant to consider the Nazis’ prewar policy, which in some ways resembled the pogrom policy of imperial Russia. If we consider this policy, we see very clearly that it was the purpose of the state to withdraw its protection from the Jews. The essence of the state’s policy, as exemplified by word and deed, was the creation of a clearly delineated sphere of anarchy within the imperial state—a sphere in which, it was known, the Jews would become fair game for one and all, including, but by no means exclusively, the officials of the state. Under these conditions, the German Jews did in fact revert to a condition of political anarchy, in which any resistance, escape, refuge, or relief was not a consequence of state activity, but resulted from the efforts of private persons, or of private persons banding together to form small groups under the leadership of familiar individuals in a position to offer some slight degree of assistance or protection.

Although this is, as I say, the extreme case, it is nevertheless instructive regarding the political condition of minorities in a more general way. It is the allegiance to the nation, as opposed to the allegiance to familiar individuals, that makes the national state possible, and that in fact creates it. But the moment the individual finds that his allegiance to the state has been severed—that is, from the moment he no longer believes, whether for good reasons or for evil ones, that he can rely on the state for his protection and needs—this individual reverts to a condition of anarchy. From this moment on, he begins to act as do all other individuals in anarchy, striving to identify familiar individuals who can to one degree or another offer him protection and assist him with his needs more generally. Where there are more than a handful of such individuals, there begins a process of establishing what is in effect a feudal order within certain parts of the state—an order that presents immense opportunities both for organized crime, which assumes some of the functions of the state in return for profit; and for imperialist and anarchist opponents of the state, who find the sphere of anarchy created within the state to be an ideal grounds for recruiting adherents to their cause. Both of these developments are clear signs of the decline of the state, and, if it does not respond forcefully and correctly, will also bring about its end.

Moreover, the establishment of such a feudal order within one state tends to produce what have been called “graduates”—individuals who have learned the methods of establishing such spheres of anarchy, and of establishing an alternate order within them, and who for reasons of profit or political ideals seek out and train men of similar abilities in other states. In this way, the feudal or imperial order, once established within one state, rapidly extends itself into others, so that what perhaps seems at first to be a problem pertaining to only one nation, with the passage of time reveals itself to be a threat to the entire order of sovereign states.

Now, in the national state the problem of minority populations is directly related to the problem of anarchy. For every minority population, to the degree that it is aware of its interests and purposes, will necessarily view these in a manner that is at the very least slightly removed from the interests and purposes of the national majority. As such, every minority population is potentially fertile ground for disaffection, for the decision to forgo allegiance to the state, and therefore for the establishment of anarchy within the state. To neglect or abuse a minority population is therefore not only to behave imprudently or immorally in the narrow sense. The affection of minority populations is a necessary premise of the order of sovereign states, without which such an order cannot persist. For this reason, the imperative of ensuring the welfare and affection of minority populations is an essential and binding principle of the order of national states, in much the same way that the opposition to empire is an essential and binding principle within such an order.

There is obviously much more to be said on this subject, but I will for the moment limit myself only to this: Like the principle of opposition to empire, the principle of assuring the well-being and affection of minority populations cannot always be applied in the same manner in every case. There are minority populations whose disaffection is to a substantial degree the result of genuine abuse and neglect, in which case the national state is itself guilty of creating a sphere of anarchy within its own borders, and consequently of threatening the order of sovereign states as a whole; and there are minority populations whose disaffection is cultivated by external powers using both fear and incitement as tools to cultivate such disaffection. And of course, there are minority populations that are moved towards disaffection and anarchy by both. In some cases, the problem of disaffection must be dealt with by far greater attention to the needs of the community in question; while in other cases, there is a need for the state to apply far more rigorous measures to deprive anarchic elements of their aspirations by force. And here, too, there may be a need for both.

Determining what must be done if the national state is to fulfill its obligations under such very different circumstances will require much effort. But one would be wrong to conclude, therefore, that what is needed is to devote yet more attention to devising and juggling abstract normative categories. It is in the sphere of political prudence that we will find solutions to a problem that, perhaps more than any other, threatens to destroy the achievement of the national state and return us all to an earlier order based on an endless cycle of anarchy and empire.

Yoram Hazony is President of The Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and author of The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (Basic Books and The New Republic, 2000).

 

* To be published in the coming issue of Azure.

1. Mabat, Israel television channel 1, August 20, 2001.

2. Ha’aretz, September 14, 2001. Ben-Ami also recently pronounced that “The paradigm of Oslo no longer exists—nor does Barak’s paradigm and mine. It no longer exists…. We have to be brave enough to look at reality. All of us need to rethink things.” Kol Israel Radio, September 29, 2001.

3. Ha’aretz, September 14, 2001.

4. Regarding the efforts to disestablish the use of the term “Jewish state,” see Yoram Hazony, “Did Herzl Want a ‘Jewish’ State?” in Azure 9 (Spring 2000), pp. 37-73.

5. In referring to nationality, Mill meant a people “united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others,” based first and foremost on “identity of political antecedents, the possession of national history and the consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.” Regarding these, he argued that “Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart….” John Stuart Mill, “On Representative Government,” in H.B. Acton, ed., Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Considerations on Representative Government (London: Everyman, 1984), p. 391.

6. On the widespread acceptance of the myth that the nation is a “construct” largely invented in the past two centuries, see Anthony D. Smith, “The Myth of the ‘Modern Nation’ and the Myths of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, January 1988, pp. 1-26. For what is perhaps the archetype of this type of claim, see Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960). Best among its recent interpreters is Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of National Communities (New York: Verso, 1991).

7. See, for example, Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton, 1993), pp. 151, 170 n. 7; Jurgen Habermas, “Is There a Future for the Nation-State?” in The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, eds. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo de Grieff (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998), pp. 117-119, 160-161; Vaclav Havel, speech before the Canadian Senate and House of Commons, April 29, 1999, reprinted as “Beyond the Nation-State,” The Responsive Community (Summer 1999), pp. 26-33. One scholar who has recognized that these beliefs are leading to the reemergence of the Hapsburg empire as the institutional structure of Europe is Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1997), pp. 121-122, 200.

Perhaps the best recent essay on the national state is Roger Scruton, “In Defense of the Nation,” in The Philosopher on Dover Beach (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

8. Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, pp. 36-39.

9. An early academic formulation of this view can be found in the writings of Hans Kohn, who argued that “the essential traits of modern nationalism originated with the Hebrews,” and found their first full expression in the Calvinist and English revivals of “the nationalism of the Old Testament.” Kohn also finds important contributions to nationalism from within the ancient Greek tradition. See Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 19; Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Malabar, Fl.: Krieger, 1965), pp. 11-12. By far the best discussion to date of the impact of the Hebrew biblical model on the establishment of the English national state and its later imitators is Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, pp. 14-123; the quotation from the Elizabethan playwright John Lyly is cited there on p. 57. Hastings also draws attention to the influence of the Hebrew Bible on the development of other Christian national states, from France to Ethiopia. On Israel as an ancient national state, see Steven Grosby, “Religion and Nationality in Antiquity: The Worship of Yahweh and Ancient Israel,” Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 23:2 (1991), pp. 229-265. For a relevant discussion of the Hebrew biblical tradition and the rise of the Jewish national state in Judea during the Hasmonean period, see Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997); Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada, 1991), pp. 33, 49-50; Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), pp. 53-54.

An interesting correlate of this argument is that the national state has great difficulty establishing itself where the influence of the Bible has remained weak. The lands of Islam, for example, continue to be bedeviled by the difficulty of advancing beyond the principles of empire and anarchy. See Samuel P. Hunting­ton, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 174-179. It is interesting to compare these to a neighboring biblically inspired state such as Ethiopia. See Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, pp. 150-151.

10. Even the Mongol invasions were conducted in the belief that Genghis Khan had been divinely chosen to unite the world under one law, and that conquest was necessary in order to force recalcitrant peoples to accept the justice of his court. For a discussion of the unity of mankind as the ordering principle of imperial states, see Michael Walzer, “Nation and Universe,” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1990), vol. 11, pp. 538-542.

11. I have always thought that trial by combat, in which justice itself is reduced to a function of physical strength, is a most potent symbol of life under such an order.

12. Genesis 6:5-8:14; 11:1-9. For a discussion of biblical confrontation with the imperial state, see Yoram Hazony, The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2000).

13. To this list one can add government, tribe, people, and religion, which I refrain from directly mentioning only in the interest of clarity—since all of these can be transformed into nations under certain conditions.

14. I distinguish these from temporary institutions such as alliances, which have a will on an ad hoc basis. I also distinguish here between a religious order, which can act as a body and have a will, and a faith, which many men may share but which has no means of acting as a body. This last distinction is similar, although not perfectly so, to the difference between a nation and a people.

15. On the limitedness of the nation, see Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7.

16. See Pierre Manent, “Europe and the Nations,” lecture delivered at a colloquium organized by the University of Chicago (by Professor Nathan Tarcov) and the University of Michigan (by Professor Richard Zinman) and sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Budapest, June 1998; Jeremy Rabkin, “Is European Union Policy Eroding the Sovereignty of Non-Member States?” Chicago Journal of International Law (Fall 2000), pp. 273-290.

17. For other formulations of this argument, see Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1995), pp. 60-62; Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Cambridge, Ma.: Blackwell, 1986), p. 218.

18. Succa 55b; Genesis Rabba 66:4. See also the commentary of the Rashbam on Genesis 10:15.

19. For a discussion of how a universal right to self-determination of peoples can and should be squared with a limitation on the number of national sovereignties, see Ruth Gavison, “The Jewish State: Its Nature and Justification,” Zalman C. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Jewish Political Thought, sponsored by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, January 25, 2001.

20. Writers such as Jurgen Habermas, for example, imagine multi-national nations being constructed around a kind of “constitutional patriotism,” by which the members of various nationalities will be willing to fight in the common defense of a constitutional document in some fashion modeled after the American constitution. Habermas, “Is There a Future for the Nation-State?” p. 118. But this argument ignores the fact that the American constitution was the reflection of a substantial common culture, which was the basis for the belief that the United States were, or would soon become, a single nation—of which the American constitution was the symbol, but not the essence. With regard to “constitutional patriotism,” this is possible if the European nations united under this constitution are prepared to give up their independent national identities, and become instead a single nation such as are the Americans. I have yet to come across a European statesman or intellectual figure who is willing to commit to such a program. The idea of a patriotism that adheres to a constitution and not to a nation cannot be considered a serious possibility. Men form attachments to a people, and only thereafter to the constitutional documents that reflect the ideals of that people.

21. Mill, “On Representative Government,” pp. 392-394.

22. It is worth noticing that this sense of the absolute quality of moral norms is absent in anarchic order, where no power is capable of imposing what appears to be a universal standard in more than a very limited area. For this reason, rights recognized in the anarchic order are always local, particularistic, and customary in nature.

23. Woodrow Wilson, “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” January 8, 1918, in Arthur S. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 45 (Princeton: Princeton, 1984), pp. 538-539.

24. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp. 242-243.

25. Strangely, the extensive opposition of political thinkers to the idea of the social contract has made little impression. Here, for example, is Hume: “Nothing is a clearer proof that a theory of this kind is erroneous, than to find that it leads to paradoxes repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind, and to the practice and opinion of all nations and ages. The doctrine which founds all lawful government on an original contract… is plainly of this kind.” David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), pp. 465-487, esp. 486. See also Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society, pp. 24-29, 118-120; Benjamin Constant, “Principles of Politics,” in Biancamaria Fontant, ed., Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1988), pp. 176-178; G.F.W. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (New York: Oxford, 1967), pp. 156-167.

Roger Scruton’s argument is highly suggestive on this score as well. As he writes: “Advocates of the social contract, for example, suppose men to be gathered together by the very contract which settles their future obligations. But how were they gathered, and who did the gathering? On what basis are those unborn to be admitted to the contract? How do we distinguish those who are entitled to the contract from those who are ‘barging in’? There is no satisfactory position for the contract theorist to take, short of universalism: If the contract is open to anyone, it is open to all. Anything short of world government is therefore tainted with illegitimacy.” Scruton, “In Defense of the Nation,” p. 320.

26. For example, the state, in my estimation, has an obligation to jealously guard against the delegation of its sovereign powers to entities that are not directly answerable to its citizens. In an age in which it is becoming regrettably common for influential individuals to see renunciation of aspects of national sovereignty as a mark of enlightenment, I think a discussion is long overdue as to whether such shedding of established national powers—as opposed to the traditional method of doing business by means of short-term, ad hoc agreements—is in the long term likely to do more to preserve our freedom or to impair it.

27. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), p. 688.