Nation-States & Nationalism

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 state. But it carries an overtone of a society, a community of people who identify themselves with the nation. Since the rise of nationalism as an ideology, the belief has been strongly and widely held that nations should also be states. This has become the expected norm. Sweden and Thailand are states; we also understand them to be nations, whose people speak Swedish and Thai, and

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Iraqi Kurdistan, Taiwan Pan-Arabists, Initially Scottish, Bosnia Herzegovina, , Swedish Thai, United Kingdom, World War, Saddam Hussein, Broz Tito, tension nation, sovereign territorial entity, territorial entity, sovereign territorial, yugoslav federation, arab world, world war, recent decades, nation self-identified, swedish thai, community people,
Approximate Word count = 968
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)

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