НАЦИЈА И ДРЖАВА У ВРЕМЕНУ ГЛОБАЛИЗАЦИЈЕ
Abstract
What is nationality? Is it something that was originally given to man, that is imprinted in his biological structure, that is carried in the blood; or is nationality something shaped by people during their creative social activity, something that is constantly confirmed or rearranged – something that is given or given?
Nationality is given as a possibility that, under certain conditions and circumstances, turns into self-awareness, and in order to actualize this possibility, it must rely “on a certain previously given sense of culture, on a certain common heritage, that is, actually on a certain primordialist infrastructure from from which, if the circumstances demand it, the necessary signs and symbols, political practice and ethnic feelings can be extracted”.
Although nationalism and its goal – a nation in a sovereign national state – are truly modern phenomena, it cannot be said that the advocates of nationalism “invented” the entire construction, but rather largely made it from elements of historical tradition, thus returning to history those forms of government in which nationalism developed”.
What about the nation and the state in the time of globalization? Globalization has led to the acceleration of history, traditional social structures have been destroyed. The peasantry, which was the basis of demography and economy, is declining and collapsing, almost dramatically. That alone is enough to say that the world we knew has disappeared. Even cities are not what they used to be, the way of life, communication and interests are different in today’s hypercities. The former city, the polis, is not the same as today’s megalopolis. Multi-million metropolises are not places where knowledge and spiritual experiences are exchanged, but places where individuals are swallowed up and imperceptibly disappear.
What is the future of the nation-state will determine the character of future wars, who will fight them and how they will be fought. “If the states of the twenty-first century are now more inclined to wage their wars with professional armies or even through private contractors, it is not only for technical reasons, but also because they can no longer rely on citizens to be recruited in the millions and to to die fighting for the fatherland. Men and women are ready to die (or more likely to kill) for money or for something smaller, or for something bigger, but in the original homelands of the nation, no longer for the nation-state. If people are not ready to die and kill for the national idea, for the defense of their national state, it does not mean that they are more peaceful and that they are less inclined to die or kill. They will do it for something else, perhaps with less scruples.
