Woodrow Wilson was wrong about many things, but he was a veritable hedgehog about One Big Thing: the principle of national self-determination. When it came to his dream of the League of Nations, Wilson was a utopian romantic; but on the question of how to draw national political boundaries, he was a Founding Father of what may be called National Realism.
National Realism comprehends and respects the perhaps tragic, but nevertheless undeniable, fact that most people are deeply attached to collective identities and aspirations. It accepts as both natural and important that psychological well-being would be rooted in a terroir, a set of traditions or other mythologies about who people are and where they come from, that can serve as a source of meaning and self-understanding, as well as social cohesion. It acknowledges that nationalism is a fixture of modern social and political reality.
The idea that a self-described people should have the right to determine its own collective destiny was once considered progressive. Nineteenth-century liberal nationalists like Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy and Ernest Renan in France saw in the nation-state the fullest political expression of peoplehood, a true source of law and legitimacy, a celebration of diversity, and a font of culture, art, and human flourishing. The idea of national self-determination also resonated with the American Founding and with the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed and found in Natural Law the right for one people to “dissolve the political bands which have connected it with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” For good or ill, the French Revolution had awakened modern ethnic self-awareness among European peoples, and ever since, nationalism has been the most robust political force in international affairs. Nationalism is a property of modern nation states, the same way that gravity is a property of physical matter. It is unwise to underestimate its power.
Diversity is now, supposedly, the primus inter pares of our political values. But ethnic and racial diversity, in all its colorful pageantry, is traditionally associated with empires, not republics. Diversity brings to mind Barbara Tuchman’s description of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, with its splendid processions of Royal Nigerian Constabulary, Borneo Dyak Police, turbaned and bearded Lancers of Khapurthala and Badnagar, Zaptichs from Cyprus with their tasseled fezzes and black-maned ponies, Houssas from the Gold Coast, Chinese from Hong Kong, and Malays from Singapore, all paying homage to the great monarch. Imperial Rome was an equally spectacular kaleidoscope of nations and religions. By contrast, republican Rome was merely, austerely, Roman.
As a good Progressive, Wilson understood that modern democratic government is incompatible with multi-ethnic empire. But it took the cataclysmic breakdown of the Old World empires in the meat-grinder of World War I to bring the idea of national self-determination into political focus. It would be wise to remember that that civilization-shattering conflict was blamed in large part on the lack of congruence between state and ethnic boundaries. Most of Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points, outlined 101 years ago this month, were dedicated to correcting this discrepancy on the basis of national self-determination.
E.M. Oblomov, “The Case for National Realism: Diversity is the hallmark of empires, not democracies”, City Journal, 2019-01-02.
