To say that we live in an age of nationalism is both a platitude and a provocation. It is a platitude because there are more nation-states in the world of today than at any other time in history. Decolonization gave birth to several score new nation-states in Africa and Asia from the 1940s to the 1970s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation released a number of "new" old nation-states from communist imprisonment across Central Europe to Central Asia. And unsatisfied nationalist movements today seek statehood from the Basque country to Palestine.
Yet nationalism also runs counter to other trends: namely, that the internet and globalization are shaping a borderless world in which multinational corporations are more powerful than governments; that transnational bodies from the European Union to the International Criminal Court are usurping powers that once belonged to sovereign states; and that new non-governmental organizations claim to represent public opinion on international questions more faithfully than democratic governments. So nationalism looks increasingly constrained functionally even as its geographical sway extends.
