Nation and State Meanings

However, nation and state are not in fact quite the same thing, and the difference has dramatic consequences. State is the preferred word in formal discussion of international relations, because it is a formal, legal concept: a sovereign territorial entity. It may be true in practice that sovereignty is never absolute, but provides a conceptual bright line.

Iraq is a state, even though it currently exercises no sovereignty, but is governed by an occupation authority of other states. This condition is presumed to be temporary. Iraqi Kurdistan is not a state, even though it enjoys very considerable autonomy within its territory. Its autonomy is presumed to be, if not temporary, at least contingent, and in the long term an internal Iraq matter. That is, Iraq might emerge as a federal state, within which Kurdistan continues to enjoy some autonomy, but "invisible" and irrelevant to the international system in the same way that Texas is invisible to the international system.

Nation, however, has a more ambiguous meaning. In everyday usage we do use to mean a sovereign territorial entity, i.e., a sta

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Iraqi Kurdistan, Taiwan Pan-Arabists, Initially Scottish, Iowa California, Bosnia Herzegovina, Swedish Thai, United Kingdom, World War, Saddam Hussein, , tension nation, sovereign territorial entity, sovereign territorial, territorial entity, arab world, international system, presumed temporary, nation self-identified, recent decades, yugoslav federation, world war,
Approximate Word count = 1026
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)

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