GENOCIDE, WORLD ORDER, AND STATE FORMATION ABSTRACT. This paper examines the basis for the ethics of genocide: why there is a concept of genocide, and its origins. The concept is identified both as propaganda, and as part of the legitimation of nationalism. Nationalism is itself a spatial form of the legitimation of political decisions - nations limit territorial "opting out". The article lists the claims of nations, which underlie the present world order: claims to global territorial control, to inclusivity, to a monopoly of state formation and thus autonomy, and to legitimacy unlimited in time. Since these features combine to block developments which are themselves legitimate, it is concluded that a contra-nationalism is legitimate. It is argued that the concept of genocide, especially cultural genocide, was in effect created to block such measures: its validity is rejected. As illustration some examples are given of current issues of "national identity versus Europe", and possible changes in state formation process in a post-national Europe are briefly indicated. Written 1996.

The sun orbits the earth, the Pope is infallible, women belong in the kitchen, and genocide is wrong: some things are certain. Or...? Michael Freeman wrote:

"Genocide" names an unqualified evil. No-one speaks of a justifiable genocide. [1].

To start with, a metaphor which simplifies the basis for the concept "genocide". Imagine that all Mafia (and similar) gangs on earth make everyone a member of the nearest Mafia, and then announce that since they now include all humanity, they will run the world. They divide the world up into states, some for one gang and some for combinations of gangs. They demand that everyone should identify with their own Mafia. Imagine also, that almost everyone accepts this, except for a small minority (mainly religious) who are soon shot, locked up, or just treated as freaks. Imagine that all Mafia groups together, decide that the world must stay like this for ever, and that any attempt to abolish the Mafia is the most horrible crime imaginable: Mafia-ocide.

Put like this it seems a farce, yet substitute "nation" for "Mafia" and it is historically accurate. Qu'est-ce que c'est une nation? [2] Une bande nationaliste.

A good historical analogy is with the crime of regicide, one of a class of prohibitions designed to preserve the state and its system of government. In a monarchy it is forbidden to kill the king, in a democracy to overthrow democracy. Similarly, it is logical that inter-national law should try to preserve a world order of nation states. There is no specific prohibition on attempting to change the world order, but important concepts of international law have that effect. Genocide is probably the most important of these: it extends the claim to existence rights, into a claim to eternal national existence, against all opposition. Genocide is the concept which makes anti-nationalism a crime.

Genocide and a national world order

As ideology, then, nationalism supports this present world order against others. Nationalism is not a particularism, but inherently global, a universalism. The collective claims of nations relate to a global order. Most theory of the ethics of nationalism simply takes the world order as given. This applies more generally as well. For instance, in speaking of Geslechtsdifferenz:

Keine andere Differenz ist für das gesellschaftliche Schicksal einer Person von entscheiderer ...Bedeutung als die Geschlechtszugehörigkeit, keine andere Differenz trennt Menschen nachhaltiger, definitiver als diese. [3]

Fear of genocide in Europe

"Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them [indigenous peoples] of their integrity as distinct societies, or of their cultural or ethnic characteristics or identities; Any form of forced assimilation or integration by imposition of other cultures or ways of life by way of communications media, religious or educational institutions, governmental legislation, administration or other measures or means;...." [5].

In reality, the EU is extremely cautious about national cultures. It is after all a union of nation states. A future European state might act differently. It could simply reverse nationalist policies to oppose nationalism:

compulsory multilingualism

exclusion of monolinguals from employment

migration to another language region as a condition of employment

suppression of monolingual publications

compulsory education in a non-native language

multilingualism as condition of access to higher education

destruction of national symbols and national art

suppression of public display of national symbols, especially flags.

Origins

The Polish jurist Raphaël Lemkin invented the term "genocide" in a book published in 1944 - not to describe what was later called the Holocaust, but to present the grievances and claims of exiled national groups [6]. Although some of these groups called themselves "governments in exile", their status in 1940-45 was dependent on the Allies. In particular, the US and the USSR had the military power to re-allocate territory in Europe, and did, in 1945. Some nations disappeared in 1945: others might have. Lemkin's evident political concern was to establish the permanent existence rights of nations, and to redirect the horror at Nazi atrocities into support for nationalism in Europe. That is propaganda: nationalist propaganda, substituting pro-nationalism for anti-fascism.

Unfortunately it was successful propaganda. Lemkin's book was written for Anglo-American policy makers, but the term genocide spread over the whole world in a few years. In 1946 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 96-I on genocide, followed in 1948 by the Convention on Genocide, and the term has passed into general political use. It has also been subject to inflation. It was extended back into history, and extended in application, to almost any anti-national act, and to other violence [7]. In turn that caused bitter disputes about definition, for instance the Armenian genocide [8]. However in a typology of genocides, the core remains its application to nations and peoples [9]. It is true some Holocaust historiography identifies the Holocaust as a phenomenon of modernity rather than ethnicity, such as that of Baumann, Aly and Heim. In practice, however, the association with mega-scale modernity, may facilitate its use in anti-European propaganda [10].

The genocide concept is therefore embedded in nationalism: nationalism as ideology and as world order. These concepts are more familiar in political geography than in ethics [11]. Territorial aspects, and the possibility of alternative world orders, cannot be excluded from ethical considerations. A territorial effect, limitation of secession, links nationalism to a general theme of political philosophy: the legitimation of decisions.

Ethics of autonomy in nationalism

Separatists cannot base their arguments upon a right to opt out because no such right exists in democratic theory. [12].

The Southern secession led Abraham Lincoln to the clearest defence of this principle, in his First Inaugural in 1861:

If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government, is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. ... Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration ... can always... break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. ... So, viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war powers of the Government. [13]

Nationalism - the general form, not the nationalist cause of particular nations - is a veto arrangement, based on territory. It also relies on uniformity within each state - if there are no limits on what happens inside national territory, there is no point in nations. Nationalism prevents evasion of veto - evasion by distance. Any veto imposed for the territory, becomes a veto which is valid for all its inhabitants. This favours some things, and obstructs others, as does most normative political theory: nationalism is different in having a spatial element.

The basic state form of nationalism is therefore a world state, rather than the multiplicity of states usually associated with it. A national world is already in effect a single political entity, cosmopolis. There is an ethical tradition known as cosmopolitanism (for instance, concerning equal moral duties to all humans). It is often associated with a normative political version. Political cosmopolitanism includes theories of world government, world federalism, now usually based on an expansion of the UN [15]. It is wrong to contrast this with nationalism: from an anti-nationalist viewpoint it is just another pan-nationalism. Replacing polis by cosmopolis, replacing 186 nations by one nation, does not alter their inclusivity or veto effect. In practice, it would increase the "war powers of the Government". It would make the world more, not less, national.

(For this in more detail see: World-nationalism: normative globalism as pan-nationalism.)

The veto of nationalism is not undirected. By restraining non-national secession from existing nations it favours those existing nations. In this way, it favours their cultures, their language, their art, their social order, and so on. This conservatism is central to nationalism: the rights of existing states, the value of existing cultures, historical continuity, nationalist propaganda's obsession with the past - all these are obvious elements of the present world order.

Like any veto arrangement, nationalism also starts from the belief that some things ought to be vetoed. A rare example of territorial ethical division within a nation indicates the emotional forces involved: the German abortion laws. The two German states, before 1990, had very different laws. A unified (restrictive) law was adopted only in 1995. It is a political fact, that if a minority in Germany wants a return to almost unrestricted abortion, secession is probably the only way to achieve this. Yet the majority of Germans will probably never agree to divide their nation again.

Now, such cases are rare - because divided nations are themselves rare. Only two pairs of states have this century claimed to represent a singe nation: the Germanies, and the Koreas. The interest of the example, is that it demonstrates the veto effect of nations. In this case, there were two laws: usually, minorities in nations have no chance of separate legislation on any issue, not even the most trivial. In a nation state, you either accept the law of the majority, or secede - and for that you need an army.

In general, what is most remote from existing national values is most excluded within nation states. The non-territorial equivalent of nationalism would be a consensus conservatism, a belief that no change may take place until there is no strongly held objection to it.

That is, then, the effect of nations. I will now examine the claims of nations, by which that effect is legitimised, without trying to refute them in detail. The list of claims is based in part on recent articles which contain formal defences of nations in various forms [16].

The claims of nations

1] Nations together include all humans.

1a] There is no human who does not belong to a nation.

A common nationalist response is to say they are sick or evil, in effect claiming:

2] No-one can validly claim not to belong to a nation.

The usual nationalist response is that:

3] Nations are the natural units of humanity.

4] Everyone "naturally" belongs to a nation (not only by choice).

Nations are also not "natural" in the sense of convenient or logical territories. If the world had a uniform culture, but was divided for administrative convenience into 186 states, it is unlikely they would all correspond to existing nation states. Of course nations do have their own culture and language, often with great historical continuity. Does that make them logical or natural? A general nationalist claim on this matter, never stated explicitly because of the obvious fallacy, is:

5] Nations exist, therefore they should.

5a] Nations have a great historical continuity and should be continued.

"It is a social and moral fact that it is a world of nations, tribes peoples, etc., that is, that peoples perceptions of themselves and others and their judgments....are shaped, to an extent, by the existence of such groups and their membership of them." [17].

5b] Because nations have shaped the lives of those who now live in them, they should continue to exist.

5c] Because life and culture are so shaped by existing nations, it would be inconvenient to try any other arrangement.

These restrictions assume people are as immobile as trees - metaphors of roots are certainly common in nationalist propaganda. Historically, state formation by migration has declined as transport capacity increased. The existing contiguity is not natural, but fixed by nationalism. Again this is claimed to be legitimate:

5d] Migration may be restricted to preserve a pattern of location (residence) in nations.

In practice, that collective control of the world derives from another characteristic of the nationalist world order. A basic claim is:

6] Nations (peoples) have a monopoly of state formation.

6a] No entity which is not a nation (a people) may hold territory to form a state.

6b] No non-national entity may gain territory, for instance by discovery.

7] No (habitable) territory may be held by states other than nation states.

For its monopoly of state formation, nationalism invokes a special status of nations, usually based on the past and on historical continuity. This status is characterised by a claim of sacrality, prominent in nationalist propaganda:

8] Nations are sacred.

8a] Nations have a status no other group or collectivity can have.

8b] Nations deserve supreme respect, beyond that for other groups.

The most concrete evidence given for a special status of nations is historical continuity, and a historical link to a particular territory. The underlying claim here is:

9] Antiquity confers special status.

Nations claim not only existence rights and autonomy, but the claim is open-ended: nationalism claims permanence. This is currently formalised in a general prohibition, claiming:

10] Nations may not be ended, singly or collectively.

10a] No process which ends nations is legitimate.

10b] The nationalist world order may not be terminated.

10c] Nations may not be eroded without an equivalent successor.

Legitimate claims?

is a prohibition of genocide valid in itself?

is anti-nationalism legitimate?

should there be anti-nationalism?

A related inconsistency in the concept is that, if all the world population became anti-nationalist and abolished nations, they would also commit genocide, at least cultural genocide. The nationalist claims (in group 10) prohibit acts to end nations: they do not allow for consent. In fact, they exclude any legitimate dissolution. For nationalists ending nations is wrong, regardless of procedure or methods, violent or non-violent. If the other claims of nations are rejected, however, there is no basis for this view. In courts all over the world associations are dissolved every day, voluntarily or by compulsion. There is ethically no difference between dissolving a company and dissolving a nation. It is not valid simply to attach the suffix "-cide" to a collectivity or group, and then say that forbids its dissolution.

The crime of genocide is based on arbitrary (semantic) privilege. One class of entities is allowed to use the suffix "-cide", while other are not. More generally, nations have privileges in the present world order. These privileges cannot be by-passed because there is no non-national territory.

This brings me to the second ethical issue, the legitimacy of anti-nationalism. It is legitimate to end these morally arbitrary privileges of nations, even if doing so is in effect an attack on the world order. There is a parallel with aristocratic privileges: ending the privileges effectively ends the aristocracy. Like the aristocracy or monarchy, the present world order is not natural, or given, or eternal. It can decline or disappear, or be abolished. It could lose control of part of the earth to competing world orders. Two or more competing world orders could co-exist. Although it is difficult for people to think of the world without nations, it is simply not necessary for individuals to have a "cultural identity", to "identify with" an ethnic-cultural group, or to build states on that basis. It is not necessary for a state to be linked to a culture, or for the planet to be divided into such states. However, any attempt to change existing structures will meet political opposition from nationalists. This is the probable context of genocide accusations in the near future.

The third issue is the desirability of anti-nationalism. The privileges of nations are not just morally arbitrary, but seem inherently unethical. If this is so, not only are nations not legitimate, but it is necessary and good to end them. The inherent aspects are best seen from inside the nation, from the viewpoint of those who want a non-national secession, Lincoln's "discontented".

Examples of potential secession are easy to find. In many countries (for example) immigrants are discriminated on the labour market. Most people find this perfectly normal. That is itself a result of the nationalist idea that a people "own" the country they live in, and its economy: migrants, say nationalists, have less right to it. In most European states there is no majority for effective anti-discrimination legislation: migrants are imperfectly protected by the state. However, that same nation state also blocks secession, to set up a separate anti-discrimination state. This veto on secession is supported by appeals to democracy (majority decision), or to historical communitarianism (national values). It makes little difference in practice: either way migrants endure discrimination.

The French or British peoples may therefore be defined as a people, holding the territory of France or Britain, to prevent an anti-discrimination state being set up on that territory. Like the Germans who do not want unrestricted abortion, they feel strongly about the issue, and there is no realistic prospect of this attitude changing. In every nation, there are examples of such political-ethical issues. In general, a nation may be defined as a group of people holding a territory to prevent states with an ethical purpose being set up on that territory. "Group" can be replaced here with "community" or "organism" or other nationalist definitions of nation, but that does not change the purpose and effect of the nation. On German soil, there will be no specifically pro-abortion state, and no specifically anti-abortion state either, just Germany.

Nations do not give up territory, except occasionally to other nations. In this. they block formation of states with ethical purposes in a broad sense. I use this formula to avoid the term "stato etico", used by the Italian Fascists under Gentile's influence. Nations are contra-ethical: that means they obstruct the process of moral judgment and moral action, in itself. The only possible nationalist answer to this, would be the claim that nations are ethical - that nations are some sort of moral perfection, or at least perfectibility, that nations are what should be. Nationalists do believe that, anti-nationalists do not. There is no point in arguing further on the issue.

A more general question concerns the legitimacy of any general veto. I have used in this context the issue of urban density in cities in Europe. Many nations in Europe now legally forbid high densities: an emotional issue, for many people detest high density cities with rail transport systems. Especially in Eastern Europe, they are associated with totalitarianism. Could a high density city (with an advanced transport system) could be built, in a Europe of the existing nation states, against the will of their majorities? Almost certainly, no. Is this veto legitimate, even if no-one is forced to live in the new city against their will? Nationalists will say yes: moving people around to achieve a local majority is unacceptable for nationalists (claim 5d). In practice, in this case, this blocks urban innovation.

The underlying ethics

I will summarise the world of nations from this anti-nationalist position, in answer to the three ethical questions raised above.

Nation states are contra-ethical states formed with contra-ethical intentions by entities (nations) possessing an arbitrary monopoly privilege of state formation, collectively causing an illegitimate veto-maximising effect, biased against change. Measures should be taken to end them, which will be correctly categorised as genocide. The category genocide includes circumstances in which peoples disappear without physical attack on their members, defined as cultural genocide. However, the claim to legitimately prohibit genocide is itself a claim, made by nationalists. It is not valid, for it would mean neither nations nor their effects could be eroded. It is legitimate to seek to destroy nationalism. It is legitimate to seek to abolish the world order of nation states. It is legitimate to seek to abolish any nation or people, unless - as in the past - the destruction of one ethnic or national identity is followed by the imposition of another. In other words it is legitimate to seek a general dissolution of nations and peoples, and to abolish specific nations and peoples as part of that process.

This is the political context of the use of the concept of genocide. Any future erosion of the nation state in Europe will involve attacks on valued aspects of national life, not least the national languages. In reply, national culture will be used as a weapon. The value nationalists attach to culture is not only intrinsic, but instrumental. Nations produce national cultures, and these cultures reproduce the nation in time. In this way they defend it against attempts to end it. It is the legitimacy of such attempts to end nations which is at issue in Europe, not whether national culture has value.

Perhaps culture has value, but the claim that nationalists make is that this value is absolute, or at least, sufficient to make anti-national measures intrinsically wrong. This is a variant of claim 5:

5e] National cultures have value, therefore nations must exist to produce and preserve them.

Post-national Europe

Third, the process of state formation will be separated from the state formed. Nations enact their own state formation, but there is no logical reason not to externalise it. Fourth, this in turn opens the possibility of shell states - states which exist to form other (non-national) states. The "shell state" model seems the most appropriate to an anti-national state in Europe.

Fifth, there is no reason why states in formation should have inhabitants. The hypothetical maximum difference world includes all possible states - probably many more than its population. Any shell state would probably hold territory in reserve, and allocate it to states before their inhabitants are known. In nationalist political theory the purpose or goal of a state is derived from the nation that inhabits it. There is no justification for this limitation, and it would not apply to a shell state, which can wait if necessary for a territory to be inhabited. In this way, the ethical goals of states are not restricted by their inhabitants. No-one is coerced into accepting them, as "citizens" in nation states are.

These five indicators only summarise a post-national Europe: details of such changes are outside the scope of this article. Such theoretical consideration of plurality of states is usually considered part of utopian thinking, and "utopia" in turn usually indicates some sort of ideal society. That is not at issue here. The examples in this article indicate anti-national autonomy is also relevant to technological change, urban planning and transport. In nation states, even minor innovations (restrictions on urban car ownership) are often impossible. A large project like the proposed underground Swissmetro is typically described as "utopian" [21]. If this means transport innovation is incompatible with a nation state, then it is accurate: the Swiss "national vehicle" is the car.

A limited use of the word utopia may mean nothing more than a construction project. More's Utopia itself was written at a time of conscious urban design and includes design elements [22]. In another unintended description of the present world order, Gaetana Cantone writes of this period of ideal cities:

La città utopica non ha forma né luogo perché appartiene ad uno Stato ideale e potrà essere realizzata solamente dopo la messa in atto di questo Stato.

The utopian city has no form or place because it belongs to an ideal State, and can only become real after this State is set up (activated). [23]

References

[2] Ernest Renan (1882/1947) Qu'est-ce que c'est une nation? Oeuvres Complètes, pp. 887-890. (Paris: Calmann-Levy).

[3] Cornelia Klinger (1995) Über neuere Tendenzen in der Theorie der Geschlechterdifferenz Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 43, 5, pp. 801-814

[4] Pieter Drost (1959) The crime of state: penal protection for fundamental freedoms of persons and peoples. Book II: Genocide (Leyden: Sythoff).

[5] Center for World Indigenous Studies (1994) International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations (Geneva). FTP://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/FWDP/International/icrin-94.txt

[6] Raphael Lemkin (1944) Axis rule in occupied Europe (Washington, Carnegie Endowment).

[7] Michael Freeman (1995) Genocide, civilisation and modernity British Journal of Sociology 46, 2, pp. 207-223; Erik Markusen (1991) Genocide, total war and nuclear omnicide in I. Charny (ed.) Genocide: a critical bibliographical review, Vol. 2 (London, Mansell) pp. 229-263; R. J. Rummel (1994) Democide in totalitarian states: mortocracies and megamurderers in I. Charny (ed.) Genocide: a critical bibliographical review, Vol. 3 (New Brunswick, Transaction) pp. 3-40; R. J. Rummel (1995) Democracy, power, genocide and mass murder, Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (1), pp. 3-26, especially. pp. 3-4.

[8] Daniel Bermond (1995) L'affaire Bernard Lewis; Jean-Jacques Becker (1995) Génocide: du bon usage d'un mot; Yves Ternon (1995) Il s'agit bien d'un génocide!; L'Histoire, 187, avril 1995, pp. 38-44.

[9] Helen Fein (1990) Genocide: a sociological perspective, Current Sociology 38, 1, (Current Sociology Trend Report), especially. pp. 28-29.

[10] Zygmunt Baumann (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, Polity Press); Götz Aly & Susanne Heim (1993) Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg, Hoffmann & Campe).

[11] Peter Taylor (1989). Political geography: World economy, nation state and locality (Harlow: Longman). In a recent article Taylor appears to reject the idea of nationalism as global: P. Taylor (1995) Beyond containers: internationality, interstateness, interterritoriality, Progress in Human Geography 19, pp. 1-15.

[12] Lea Brilmayer (1991) Secession and Self-determination: a territorial interpretation, Yale Journal of International Law 16, pp. 177-202, p.185.

[13] Abraham Lincoln (1953/ 1861) Collected Works ,Volume IV (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press), pp. 267-8; p. 426.

[14] David Potter (1968) The South and the sectional conflict (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press), p. 39.

[15] Ken Booth (1995) Human wrongs and international relations, International Affairs, 71, 1, pp. 103-126; Richard Falk (1987) The promise of world order: essays in normative international relations (Brighton, Wheatsheaf); Richard Falk (1992) Explorations at the edge of time: the prospects for world order (Philadelphia, Temple University Press); Jacob ter Meulen (1917) Der Gedanke der internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung 1300-1800. (Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff); Wilhelmus van der Linden (1987) The international peace movement 1815-1874. (Amsterdam, Tilleul).

[16] Brilmayer, op. cit.; Avishai Margalit & Joseph Raz (1990) National Self-determination, Journal of Philosophy LXXXVII, pp. 439-461; Daniel Philpott (1995) In Defense of Self-Determination, Ethics 105, pp. 352-385; Thomas Pogge (1992) Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty, Ethics, 103, pp. 48-75; Kai Nielsen (1993) Secession: the case of Quebec, Journal of Applied Philosophy 10, 1, pp. 29-41; David Miller (1993) In defence of nationality, Journal of Applied Philosophy 10, 1, pp. 3-16; John O'Neill (1994) Should communitarians be nationalists? Journal of Applied Philosophy 11, 2, pp. 135-143; R. E. Ewin (1994) Peoples and secession Journal of Applied Philosophy 11, 2, pp. 225-231; Michael Freeman (1994) Nation-state and cosmopolis: a response to David Miller, Journal of Applied Philosophy 11, 1, pp. 79-87; R. E. Ewin (1995) Can there be a right to secede?, Philosophy, 70, 273, pp. 341-362; Dieter Thomä (1995) Multikulturalismus, Demokratie, Nation: Zur Philosophie der deutschen Einheit, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 43, 2, pp. 349-363.

[17] Margalit & Raz, op. cit., p. 440.

[18] Margalit & Raz, op. cit. p. 443.

[19] Pogge, op. cit. p. 69.

[20] Philpott, op. cit. pp. 368-369.

[21] Fred Winkler (1995) Swissmetro - bahnbrechendes Projekt oder sinnlose Utopie?, Internationales Verkehrswesen 1995, 4, pp. 203-205.

[22] William A. McClung (1994), Designing Utopia, Moreana, 31, 118/119, pp. 9-28.

[23] Gaetana Cantone (1994), Utopia urbana, utopia della storia, Arte Lombarda, 110/111, pp. 83-86, p. 84.