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We need to realize that, for the moment, nation-states are the real guarantees of preserving democracy and cultural identity, but they have become too weak to defend their interests against centers of power like China and the United States, or against threats. such as immigration or Islamism, which is why we need a new form of European patriotism, all of which historian David Engels spoke with Origo about the role of nation-states in the 21st century. The Polish historian was one of the speakers at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, the Danube Institute’s online intellectual summit series of Patriotic Talks. The interview took place last week, before the EU summit in Brussels.
How would you define the role of nation states in the 21st century?
First, I would go back to the 19th century and compare it to the situation at that time. At that time, the European states (far fewer than they are today) were huge colonial and economic empires, at the peak of scientific and technical progress, and they worked hard to resolve or at least alleviate various social polarizations. The nation-state seemed to be the ultimate goal of Western history. Today the situation is quite different. The number of states increased dramatically as their size and relative wealth decreased and also decreased; many non-European countries have long surpassed the West in terms of progress; and, finally, states that today are considered “states of civilization”, such as China, India, Brazil and even Russia, continue to reap the enormous benefits of their territory and population. At the same time, European nation states are facing a number of new challenges. On the one hand, their economic and institutional entanglement has become so tight that they rely heavily on peaceful cooperation; on the other hand, they have contracted a series of international commitments that individually limit their autonomy. Given that the return to small, independent nation-states is not only unfeasible under current circumstances, but also a geostrategic disaster, this leads us to conclude that Europe only has a political future if its states work closely together, but certainly not in the shape of the current European Union.
What is the role of nation states in Europe today?
It is clear that not only is it necessary to redefine the role of the European nation-state, but it is also necessary to reshape the European Union itself to adapt to new realities. Currently, the European Union is trying to crush nation-states to promote a globalist ideology. We would need the opposite: an EU that protects nation-states to protect the interests of Western civilization. I also tried to define this in my recent book, Renovatio Europae, where I described what such a reformed EU should look like. We need to realize that, for the moment, nation-states are the real guarantees for the preservation of democracy and cultural identity, but they have become too weak to defend their interests against centers of power such as China and the United States, or against global threats like immigration or Islamism. That is why we need a new form of European patriotism, which I have called ‘hesperialism’: my conviction refers, on the one hand, to a new European cooperation focused on the vital interests of our civilization and based on traditional values such as family, Christianity , patriotism, natural law, socialism. market economy and very limited immigration, on the other hand, respecting the autonomy of the nation states in all matters not related to the survival of Europe as a whole.
How similar is today’s European Union to the ruined Roman Republic?
Unfortunately, the similarities between the current crisis and the fall and decline of the Roman Republic are quite staggering, as I tried to present in my book “On the Road to Empire”: unemployment, mass immigration, demographic decline, poverty, education, family disintegration, materialism, materialism. public debt, democratic deficits, excessive social costs, bottlenecks in reforms, crime, emergence of parallel societies, emigration of business investment, terrorism, fundamentalism, speculation, plutocracies, loss of identity, asymmetric wars and subpoenas feeling alien to a individual in particular, all these factors are not fundamentally new things. In fact, the situation of the late Roman Republic in the current EU has such a close echo that it is deeply disturbing, even more so when we consider the consequences. The crisis of the Roman Republic provoked decades of civil war and the rise of an authoritarian state as the last means of stabilizing a fragmented society; And when I think about the situation in Western Europe, I think that a similar result may not be unlikely, quite the contrary.
What can be the way out of the current European crisis?
There are two scenarios. Even European citizens realize that the current path chosen by the politically correct left liberal elites is leading to disaster and agree to reform the European institutions along the lines of “hesperialist”, as emphasized above, which is a very little solution. probable but optimal. Or current processes then, much less likely, as Western Europe will culminate first in some kind of politically correct despotism before finding itself in the midst of a period of great unrest, when social, ethnic, cultural, religious and political divisions are already at stake. March. it cannot be covered. At least for the moment, Eastern Europe is less affected by these developments, as it has managed to preserve its traditional identity and still resists many of the political anomalies that characterize the West. If it is able to stay on this path and withstand the increasing pressure from European institutions, there is a strong chance that the East will remain relatively unscathed from the problems facing the West and may be at the center of a new form of European cooperation. in ten or twenty years. while the West may fall into chaos. The next few years will be decisive in this regard.
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