Geopolitical Balance of Power Geopolitical Bal

Many believe we have now reached the old age, or decline, of the nation-state. Since 1945 its sovereignty has been outreached by transnational power networks, especially those of global capitalism and postmodern culture. Some postmodern historians take the argument further, asserting that this jeopardizes the certainty and rationality of modern civilization, one of whose main props is a secure, unidimensional notion of absolute political sovereignty lodged in the nation-state. In the historic heartland of modern society, the supranational European Community (EC) seems to lend especial credence to the argument that national-political sovereignty is fragmenting. Here, the actual death of the nation-state has sometimes been announced. The political scientist Philippe Schmitter has argued that, though the European situation is unique, its progress beyond the nation-state has more general relevance, since "the contemporary context systematically favors the transformation of states into either confederatii, condominii or federatii in a variety of settings." It is true that the EC is developing new political forms, somewhat reminiscent of much older political forms, as Schmitter's Latin tags imply. These force us to revise our notions of what contemporary states and their interrelations must be. Despite appearances, across most of the globe, nation-states are still maturing, or they are at least trying to do so. Europe is not the world's future. The states of the world are many an

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ic Jameson has termed "postmodern hyperspace," diffused without regard to nationality or territory, fragmented, but united by the logic of capitalist profit taking. The postwar geopolitical transformation has also been momentous, coming in two sudden spurts at the beginning and end of the Cold War. It was knife-edged: the Cold War might have destroyed us all, but did not. But war exhaustion in 1945, followed by the Cold War, made the West extraordinarily pacific in its internal relations, while the collapse of the enemy in 1989-1991 has resulted in a unique absence of any threat from outside. War between the Great Powers, and especially between the major European Powers, seems a long way off. This has reduced that aggressive mass-mobilized nationalism so destructive of the twentieth century, though it remains around the fringes of the West and in a more symbolic aggression, requiring few commitments from citizens, directed against hate figures in the less developed world. The absence of a threat is also reducing the military size of Western and some former communist regimes, an important and hopeful reduction in the strength of the nation-state. But this geopolitical transformation has gone to quite unique lengths in Europe.

Category: Government - G