Is the Nation-State an Idea in Crisis? | Rana Dasgupta

We thought that the nation state was infinite, [music] was very grand, and it could contain everything. Actually, it's become becoming narrower and narrower, and many states are experimenting with different kinds of [music] exclusion. Its success as an engine of, let's say, economy and military and things like that is not necessarily mirrored by its success [music] in delivering certain kind of freedoms and rights to its citizens. >> What is so different about nation state that it [music] has piqued interest of scholars, especially in the last two to three decades, including you also, sir? >> To me, the nation state system [music] is never going to be an adequate framework, for instance, to deal with the um the current Middle Eastern framework. Having an Israel that is constantly trying to reduce [music] all its neighbors to failed states simply so that it can feel secure. >> How did you find Qutb, [music] and what intrigued you to look into what he was saying? >> Many many critiques of the state or rejections of the state are also formulated in theological terms, and it's not only that strand of Islam. It's many strands also of Christianity and other religions reject [music] these radical powers that the state has. >> And so, this assumption in the daily life of people that these nation [music] states are devoid of interactions with other entities which are also nation states. >> The justification [music] for the nation state is that it delivers to its citizens uh the moral goods that we think are an inherent part of modernity. >> Before the nation state existed in the manner that it exists today, what were the debates? >> [music] >> So, modern military technology is used to give this modern state uh a monopoly on violence. It has, importantly, [music] powerful propaganda tools. So, these are primarily those of education and media. >> When you see this long arc of history of states, then empires, then nation states, where do you see the future? >> For over a century, the nation state has shaped how [music] we live, vote, and belong, promising stability, identity, [music] and progress. But today, that promise feels increasingly fragile. >> [music] >> From climate collapse to rising inequality and the growing power of corporations and data [music] systems, the world seems to be outgrowing the very structure meant to govern it. Today on Nowse, we're joined by Rana Dasgupta, author of After Nations, the making and unmaking of a world order, to trace how the nation state came [music] to define our world and why it may no longer be able to hold it together. >> [music] >> Nowse is an independent think tank media platform [music] here to minority or human rights issues for research or evidence-based conversations [music] amplify >> [clears throat] >> is a or must be learning Nowse subscribe or support it. >> So, welcome to [music] Nowse podcast, Rana Dasgupta. How are you? >> I'm very well and that's it's a very exciting terrain you've laid out and looking forward to our discussion. >> Thank you. So, one of the interesting things as I was telling you about your work that struck me, there's a lot of debate happening throughout the world about what the nation state has offered, what the nation state what are the limits of nation states in term terms of its boundedness, territoriality, in terms of where the sovereignty lies. So, in the Islamic tradition for example, because you also, you know, engage with one, you know, certain strands of that tradition. There is work of Wael Hallaq when he talks about you know, the impossible state. So, this question of nation state, whether it is a natural meta-political structure that was deterministically you know, supposed to happen in the way and manner that it has happened has had its critique not just in the Muslim tradition and the Islamic tradition in all of the major traditions in some way or manner. Uh I being coming from one side of the tradition, I'm much more aware of that. And what your work brings is that of you know, past few hundred years in which a certain way in which the political logic of organization and organizing throughout the world was arranged, that got reconfigured through certain pushbacks from intellectual thought, from people's movements. And in that way, it to restructured itself, reconfigured in you know, itself assuming an identity and impression that it is for human rights, it is for justice, it is for equality. And that is fracturing right now. We see a Gaza, we see Iran. My first question would be wherein I have found most of the people and theorists and scholars invoking the critique of nation state, but have barely been able to differentiate what differentiates the earlier forms of state, especially the empire and its logic from what modern state constitutes. What is so different about nation state that it has peaked interest of scholars especially in the last two to three decades, especially including you also, sir. >> Yeah. I mean, these are these are in some ways the question about questions about time because we are at a moment when as you say the the balance of the the distribution of power is changing very much. Um, and it's not clear that um 193 states that have their seats in the UN um, are going to uh, carry that power in the same way that they have until now. Partly because of the rise of a sort of new imperialistic uh, strain, which we see very clearly in Russia, but also to some extent uh, in the United States, Israel, um, a a a a sort of rejection of the kind of boundedness of states, but also, I think, a new dispersal of power, which we see most clearly in Big Tech. Um, Big Tech, transnational crime, there are competitors to the nation-state, uh, which are um, which which which which make the the current moment very volatile as far as political power is concerned. But, going to your question directly, I think first of all, it's important to um to to observe it in in in in response to something you just said that no, this situation is not at all natural. The situation we've lived in since the Second World War, uh, when the United States used its power and so did the Soviet Union to dismantle European empires and to create uh a a mosaic of sovereign states across the planetary surface. That is an exper- experiment that's never been tried before. Nothing like this has ever existed in the past. Um, and 60, 70, 80 years into the lifespan of many of those countries, probably the majority of those countries, uh, it's not clear that it's going to endure for centuries more. So, we are not we don't yet have the sort of 700 years of the Ottoman Empire behind us or the 2,000 years of the Chinese Empire to to be able to argue yet that the nation-state system is a is an enduring stable system. Um it it it may not be. And we we may in our lifetimes see very dramatic changes in it. This system Yeah, go on. >> No, no, please. I just wanted to uh engage with this idea. What is a nation-state? So, that we can Yeah. >> So, the the the nation-state I regard as a modern form of political power um inaugurated in Europe by by colonial powers, which used their colonial reach and the profits of empire to build uh institutions at home that were not present elsewhere. So, the denial of of of political rights, of property rights, uh etc. abroad was used to feed the building up of those rights at home. So, by the end of the 19th century um British people, for instance, at home had pretty significant um political rights. By the beginning of the 20th century, they had there was near universal suffrage. Um they had a welfare state that um supported them in their old age or during sickness or unemployment. They had a state that had invested very significantly in universal primary education. Um and all this was built up by the denial of similar rights elsewhere in the empire. So, the the kind of uh foundation of the nation-state uh in its modern form is through uh in European empires. Why is this a modern form? It's modern because um though of course there have been states for 5,000 years, even longer than that, um and though all states have certain things in common, they they centralize power, they they charge taxes, they discipline their populations, um the nation state uses modern bureaucracies and technologies to organize populations in a particularly intensive way. So, um so modern military technology is used to give this modern state a uh a monopoly on violence, to to deprive all com- competing um power sources of of the military power to to to compete with the state itself. Um it has, importantly, powerful propaganda tools. So, these are primarily those of education and media, um to create a national consciousness in the population, to to give everybody a sense of a shared national mythology, and to get and to control information on a daily basis in such a way that events are structured around the national mythos. And of course um modern uh bureaucracies that can administer taxation, um and and um and individual lives uh from from birth to death in very, very intensive ways. All these are part of the the the modern state apparatus. And we'll get on to this, but essentially, you know, it's after 1945, really, that this structure is universalized and generalized across the world. >> One of the interesting things that you uh you know, highlighted is the nature of the technology companies transcending the nation state order in a way, because of the osmotic nature of the flow of money and information and power. Uh people usually assume, I heard one of your podcast in Novara Media, and one thing that struck me, because it is so close to me, in terms of, uh you know, our readings of bounded rationalities and bounded physicalities, systems as bounded natures, the absolute assumption of nation-state. So, for example, me being a student of economics, we were taught the model of a small economy, which is a closed economy, an absolute economy in a form, a reductive version of understanding the nature of interactions within that small model. And so, this assumption in the daily life of people that these nation-states are devoid of interactions with other entities, which are also nation-states. And in a way, absolutizing the assumption of the totalitarian nature of the state, and in that propaganda, also reducing our own assumptions of the potential of acts towards our own rights. How do you see that? How do you see that as a worldview when it is not real at all? What is the nation-state system? >> Thank you. So, I think it's in it's very For me, it's very important to understand the nation-state system as a system, as a single object. So, and it is the the other face of a of the other universal system, which is the capitalist system. So, um for me, the nation-state system is the political apparatus of the capitalist system. That may not have been true during the Cold War era, because the nation-states varied quite significantly in their economic structures and policies. But today, I think it's it's more or less the case that these two systems operate together as twin arms of the same reality. So, large corporations have a lot of power, but they do not have political power to enforce laws, to enforce contracts, to create a labor force through administering an education system and all that sort of thing. These are things that states do, and states do them in close collaboration with corporations and banks and and forecast economic growth and all that sort of thing to ensure their GDP growth and their competitiveness within the capitalist system. Since the 1980s, particularly, the fact that states are so dependent on debt and on foreign capital has meant that, whether they like it or not, they are essentially forced to become capitalist agents in these kinds of ways and to create the conditions for for investment, to protect the investment of foreign companies, and all that sort of thing. Now, the reason that I think we we downplay this aspect of things, and we are taught that we live in a a national reality that's very different from the neighboring national realities and everything like that, well, it's it's partly the propaganda of of nations that that that thrives on creating a national consciousness and telling us that we have something in common with our compatriots that we do not have with everybody else in the world. Um but it's also because I think a lot of the the the models of thought and education around which um national media and education systems are are based, were created in the late late 20th century. And the late 20th century was a very exceptional period, where indeed economies were much more closed than they are today. So, you do have this this If you go back to the the sort of the late 19th century up to about the 1920s, you have another period of globalization. Um a period where there's international capital, vast expansion of international corporations and all that sort of thing. And you see in the from the First World War onwards, you see states taking powers away from corporations, taking powers away from wealthy individuals, centralizing those powers in the state so that it can uh so that it can conduct warfare. That's one major aspect of it, to be able to administer a national economy for war. And so also that it can achieve certain kind of uh developmental goals. Um for instance, energy. A lot of countries decided that energy should not simply be in the hands of private players, enriching pri- private private individuals. Energy should be a developmental uh sector that's that and and that everybody should have gas, electricity, oil, etc. So that the economy at large can grow and so that certain goods can be delivered to So, that period between the 1940s and the late 20th century was a period in which the economy was eco- national economies whether in socialist countries or in capitalist countries were run much more as a sort of social utility. Um where there was very high taxation, there was there were constraints on capital moving abroad. And the the the capitalist system or the socialist economy was run in for various nationalist goals and agendas. Since the 1980s particularly and with with gathering pace, Um those obstacles to the to the mobility of capital uh and the national nature of capital uh has somewhat evaporated. And we now live in a pretty much uh continuous capitalist zone, a planetary capitalist zone, in which um there is a lot of fiction now to the idea of national distinctiveness. However, it's important to to understand uh this is my concluding remark on your question, that national bound borders are incredibly important nonetheless to the capitalist system. They have been repurposed um as a kind of arbitrage system for capital. So, um it's very important to the capitalist system that there are some zones which have uh a very very uh rich legal environment where capital and investments are safe, where elite living is possible, um and other zones where, for instance, it's possible to wage war and steal resources from the work from the earth without too much legal oversight, um other zones where you can dump um ecological uh trash, you can put put put um you know, uh where there's not much um environmental regulation, other zones where labor regulation is not too tight. All these zones need to exist for the capitalist zone to position different functions in different national territories. So, today we have a a single capitalist zone with a single political uh apparatus called the nation-state system, which is nonetheless extremely varied in in terms of the types of environment that exist because capital needs those kind of distinctions. Sometimes in the some places it needs cheap labor, and sometime in some places it needs strong legal protections for the for for property, capital, corporations, etc. And all these things make up the mosaic of the capitalist system and the nation-state system working together. >> So, before going further uh in understanding, for example, when you're talking about this different mosaic of capitalism and capitalist society and capitalism manifesting in itself in a certain way nation-state has configured itself as a homogeneous political philosophy and political theory for much of what exists as states today. Even in the Western tradition, as you argued in the socialist tradition and the communist tradition, the ideas about these boundaries and rights and individuals are itself contested. I mean, they have reified themselves in a certain way that they inherit themselves in international law or nation-state laws, but even before that, say for example, Cold War and you know, the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment, it is not a flattened capitalism atomistic worldview. There is a flourishing of different ways in which boundaries and transnationality and nationalities understood. So, to be able to engage with that rich history, mhm again, I want to really understand before the nation-state existed in the manner that it exists today, what were the debates? From the empire itself, the logic of the interiority of the empire, as you're arguing that to stabilize the interior, you need an exterior which can be exploited, which can be, you know, extracted. So, you in a way are extracting surplus from somewhere to develop rights and justice elsewhere. But in the first instance itself if I am a king and I am or I am a capitalist, why do I need to ensure those rights in that geographical space? What is my necessity? What are the conditions in which giving justice to your own or the imagery of justice as a relation to other, you know, human beings across the globe or a planetary system, what was necessity to build something like that? >> So, I think the nation-state system until very recently, and when I say very recently, I mean the last few weeks, the nation-state system has had a an official, let's say, ideology, an official morality promoted primarily by the United States that has said that the justification for the nation-state is that it it it delivers to its citizens the moral goods that we think are an inherent part of modernity. Democracy, human rights, and certain kinds of freedoms, freedoms of thought, mobility, all these sorts of things. So, I I I I I I I I I I say that this is this is disman being dismantling being being dismantled over the last few weeks because Donald Trump is a figure who is officially and explicitly disowned many of those moral principles and has basically accepted that there is no, let's say, official morality to the nation-state system. There is no goal to the nation-state system. There is really only power, and there is no real moral distinction between one kind of power and another kind of power. China's power, Russia's power, the United States' power, it's all power and it doesn't really have a kind of moral framework. However, this liberal idea that all states tend towards democracy, they tend towards giving their their their citizens a rich set of rights, and that they achieve this through a sort of process of constant improvement which we call progress. This is itself quite a recent idea of the state. So, those ideas themselves state back not much more not much earlier than the 17th century and they're they are uh formulated most explicitly most explicitly in the 18th century, particularly in places like France and America. Um but I think it's very important to understand that to get at your question, I think it's the crucial thing is that states withheld these rights for as long as they possibly could. Britain, for instance, it it all the ideas were in place. It knew what democracy was. It It knew what all these kinds of protections were in the 17th century because they had been formulated by lots of resistance movements, peasant movements, worker movements uh in Britain uh very very early on. But it did not give universal suffrage till 1928. And it was a very long period of struggle from the 1830s to the 1920s, a period of struggle to give gradually concede more and more rights to citizens in terms of suffrage, in terms of political freedoms, freedom of expression, all that sort of thing. So, why was it that from the 17th century until probably the late 19th century, the state refused to give these rights away. And what changed? Well, my argument would be that that until the well into the 19th century, the state did not need to give these rights to citizens. The state was much more powerful than its citizenry. The citizenry was largely a a bunch of peasants who were not organized, who did not have military equipment, who did not have Many of them were illiterate. They did not have their forms of of dissemination of ideas. The state could repress those people. And the state was making money elsewhere. It was not making its money from peasant labor. It was making its money through empire. So, if the peasants all stopped work, it didn't really change the nature of elite finance. Uh British banking, British industry, British commerce and trade, these were all happening in North America. They were happening in Asia. And they weren't dependent on what farmers did in Essex or farmers did in in Kent or whatever it might be. That had changed dramatically by the 1830s or 1840s. At that point, Britain was a highly was becoming a highly industrialized country in which it depended massively on its own working classes for its profits. The The empire The world system was being reorganized around a a system of imperial extraction which fed British factories. And the British working class was absolutely crucial to those. And now it did matter what what the poor and the the working people of Britain thought. It did matter where if they if they wanted to go on strike, they could stop the factory complex. And so at that point, um Britain and other industrializing countries realized they did need to engage with the political demands of their masses. They did not need need to start conceding political rights because they could not have the whole system break down under class conflict. And more than that, they realized they needed these people to be educated, they needed them to be healthy, they needed them to turn up every morning to work on time, healthy, not sick, and able to read basic instructions and to master the basic maths and literacy necessary to work in factories and to So by the 1830s, 1840s, you have countries like Britain and then France, Belgium, Germany, the United States investing hugely in their own populations. Public education, public health care, and all these sorts of things. So that by the 1920s after the First World War, in fact, suddenly for the first time ever in history, in European history, welfare becomes a bigger expense than war itself. The nation states are basically welfare operations investing in mass populations in in return for industrial profit. So I wouldn't say it's anything inherent to states. In fact, I'd argue strongly it's not inherent to states that they are democratic. They are not wedded to any particular political system. But the industrial period imposed obligations on states towards their citizens that were very new and that gave them enormous incentives to listen to what their populations wanted and start conceding those things. So I think that Uh, can get into how this spread around the world outside, uh, the industrialized countries after World War II, but the the the sort of end of end point to this is that the West today is facing the opposite situation. It it is de-industrialized and its populations are once again becoming not very important to the generation of profit. And I think the withdrawal of democratic systems and the deliberate kind sabotaging of those systems in wealthy countries, especially in North in in the United States, um, is a factor of this long arc of industrialization, de-industrialization, and then artificial intelligence. >> One of the interesting things, uh, that you said one in one of your interviews is that the state in different parts of its history requires the distribution, redistribution of rights, wealth, and all of these things depending upon what it offers to the state in terms of its leverage. Say, for example, the Asia in the 17th century, Bengal, some authors have argued that it contributed to 24% of the GDP and the East India Company was uh, doing trade with it. And you put an interesting point about trade deficit. And that deficit itself requiring a certain way in which the society needed to be reconfigured for industrialization to happen. And that requirement requires the population to be educated. And for that population to be educated and healthy, they needed a certain way that structure developed at home and outside. So, in a way, uh, you know, is it part of the cycle and life cycle of state, not just nation states? It might be empires, you know, for example, when we read about the Abbasid area era in in the Islamic, you know, history. We see the House of Wisdom. And, you know, there's a lot of intellectual activity. There's a lot of, you know, So, how do you see this? Because I'm picking it in from one of your arguments that and and how did that necessity change the way that West and especially British and America reconfigured and configured itself in terms of international law and institutions to come to this point where, you know, they end up losing the structure they develop. >> So, what is the structure they lose? >> For example, they built the United Nations, they built the World Bank, and they built a system in which they required China to become the factory because their own population, you know, were doing they require the necessity of making your own population better and better to be able to convince them to extract from other places. You know, by For example, if we remember the East India Company, there was a lot of, you know, small amount of British that was ruling all over the world, and they were just sitting at the head of each institution and some part of it with high-quality weaponry. And because of the way the education, the structure, the machinery was configured, it was a system of extraction with the belief that we are of a higher status. And in doing so, when giving that kind of, you know, international supply chain from China, so does the logic itself of accumulation of power historically also becomes the deterministic, you know, end end product wherein the state itself reaches a position that it cannot handle. And especially, is it what we are seeing in the Western context today. >> Yes, I mean I think it None of these things are necessary, but I think they are the outcomes of certain history of class conflict in the West. So, a couple of important observations. First of all, the role of Asia in the in the the history of the West uh is is absolutely critical. So, we we can say the the role of of the Americas also is absolutely critical. But, let's think about Asia first of all. India and China. India and China are jointly co- producing Some historians have estimated close to 50% of global GDP in the late 17th late 18th century. As late as the late 18th century. Um they are gigantic centers of economic activity. And the the Europeans uh have built up their economies in a way that's essentially parasitic uh on Asia. Not just on India and China, but on the on the Middle East as well. Going back to uh the the the sort of rise of Venice. The Venetian Empire was through the through the Crusades built trade routes into the Middle East and started to buy up all kinds of goods from porcelain to silk to spices um to textiles from Asia that they then traded in Europe. So, Europe grows up it's it's sort of um financial centers grow up according to whoever is able to control those trade routes into the Middle East and Asia. Um and that changes various times over over the over the century. So, Europe is constantly spending money in Asia uh in in return for goods that can be sold and traded. That money takes the form of gold and silver. And in order for any economy to grow and become dominant in Europe, it has to have vast quantities of gold and silver that it can spend in the Middle East, India, and China in order to buy these goods to sell them. And as European history goes on and the scale of this trade gets gets larger and larger, the search for gold and silver becomes dominant in the European project. As we know, Spain is the country that really opens up a new supply of silver in in Peru and Bolivia. Uh and that that silver enters Europe and then goes straight over to China. Most of that silver is spent acquiring goods from China that can be um sold in Europe. So, you have an accumulating sort of desperation in Europe for more and more silver and and gold to pay Asia. And this I argue in the book is one of the the um one of the things driving the East India Company. The East India Company wishes to access the Bengali textile industry and Bengali text and taxation because these this is one of the largest stores of silver in the world. And that silver has become necessary for the East India Company to keep buying tea from China and things like this. So, um the you know the history. I mean, the the history of of uh of of of laying claim to Bengali uh taxation uh and taking that silver out, creating total havoc, mass famine, all that sort of thing. Um and you you also know the consequences thereof. That if essentially Britain lost America as a result of this cuz it tried to get America to pay for the collapse of the Bengali economy. What I'm getting to is that this whole desperation of Europe to try and keep pace with Asia led to transformed Europe in two very important ways. One is it was slavery and the Industrial Revolution that became the main systems by which Europe tried to generate some capital for competing uh face-to-face with the much, much larger Asian economies. Um so, slavery and the Industrial Revolution, of course, are absolutely catalytic for European modernity. And the other thing is that Europe for the Britain, it becomes a global capitalist superpower uh not when it defeats France in the Napoleonic Wars, though that does make it the leading power in Europe. It becomes a global superpower when it destroys India and China, which it does uh increasingly it which essentially is a is accomplished pretty much by the 1840s. Um the the the Mughal Empire is in terminal decline by that point. And more importantly, I think, Britain has destroyed China in the two Opium Wars. Which means that uh by that point Europe is able to emerge as the sort of manager of a global capitalist system. And at that point, all the things you talk about, spreading a net of European law and especially property rights over the entire planetary surface through conquest and through deals with with local rulers, um that becomes possible. It becomes possible for European capital to travel all over the world and to invest in different kinds of resources and mines and forests and farms and things like that um in such a way that Europe can essentially own uh, the resources of the planet. >> One of the, uh, questions that come to my mind is that this is, you know, one of the ways in which because this is what you've written and what you've engaged with that the conception and the evolution of nation state as a structure and order it is not coming from one history of one empire itself. You know, it's not just British, it is France, uh, it is, you know, other streams which are competing together to to create an idea about their own states and their own economies of extraction. And in different regions, different logic is playing. You know, in the in France, different logic is playing. In Britain, different logic is playing. In America, different logic is playing. So, what were these three different logics? And what did they bring in terms of conceptual categories and ideas that ultimately converge together to build a nation state state system that you argue? So, what came from what in which trajectory and what it became as a coherent stable system for a long period of time? >> Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, I think the the United States and Britain, of course, are the two uh, capitalist superpowers one after the other. And they have very different ideas. And France, of course, has a another idea which in many ways does not really have so much long-term significance. So, you know, France, I think it it it thought of its empire in a more uh, it it it by the by the 20th century, France wanted to build an empire that was essentially a unified political zone. And by the 19 30s, 40s, I think, many of its African colonies were sending deputies to the parliament in Paris. And they were integrated much more. And I think there was an idea in Paris and in some of those colonies that the future of the world beyond the empire would not be that all these territories would be cut up into little nation states, but rather that that process of integration would become complete. That there would be an equality between, let's say, Senegal and France. And that they would they would operate in a large economic zone. Um and there were many uh states people in places like Côte d'Ivoire or Senegal who feared independence because they thought they would essentially be isolated with very poor economies. They'd become, you know, third world countries. When in fact, there could be a better reality where they were treated as equal partners of France, integrated into a French political and commercial zone, and become part of a superpower. That idea didn't really go anywhere. Uh the United States insisted, and so did the Soviet Union, that all dependencies be become independent nation states after World War II, and that that French idea never really went anywhere. Britain, of course, saw its role very much, to some extent, as America did later. Britain thought of itself as a capitalist superpower, uh enforcing property laws and a global currency on the world, policing the seas to ensure that they remain open and that that um resources could continue to flow into the capitalist system into the industrial system um and promoting an ideology of free trade and uh liberalism. Because of the state of technology at that time Britain tried to achieve this through the maximum occupation of territory uh in all continents. America as we know it it also wished to provide the global currency. It also well wanted to be the guarantor of international capitalist law. It also wanted to have the have a supreme military force that could keep the oceans open. But it did not wish to occupy the whole world. It its idea of empire was to break everything up into sovereign states and to coerce those states from outside to participate in certain ways in the in the capitalist economy. And one of the reasons that America wanted to play it like this is that America existed in a hemisphere where there were already many old sovereign states. The all of Latin America and to its north Canada and Mexico that all of these were sovereign states going back for a long time. So America was used to uh having client and that sovereign states as clients and and manipulating them from outside to do to to participate in a transnational capitalist system. So I think the system we we've existed in for several years is is an American empire uh built up of sovereign states with which the United States has uh you know asymmetrical power relations such that it can uh organize them into a political, military, and trading system according to its own vision. That's always been imperfect. Uh it's been very violent because the United States has not had total control over those client states. Often they've not wanted to do what America wanted them to do. There was the Cold War. Uh there's all kinds of very complex dynamics that um have made the period of American power just as violent, if not more so, than the period of British power. Um and many of the kind of idealistic slogans of of the American era after 1945, human rights, peace, all that sort of thing, never really came to pass. Uh it was inherent to the American project that war and coercion and regime change and civil wars and stimulating of of of of internal conflicts would be part of that project. >> So, do you think uh to draw analogy from your own argument, for example, when British required its own citizens to feel uh more equal, more powerful in terms of its engagement with the state apparatus, what was required was to restructure the modes of extraction and modes of oppression uh they were projected outside. So, in that sense, in the moment of America taking power, and if we take that analogy from humans to states, the states post-1947 or after World War, even [snorts] before that, because they were also getting their agency more than they had historically in the past few hundred years. So, were they able to negotiate or were they they considered it better that there is a state like US which does not have absolute control over them and that was an outcome that we still have certain level of agency and US thought as you argue from its experience with the South American experiment in its negotiations. So that was the outcome that was more achievable in terms of global order and yet that outcome had more power distributed anyway as opposed to the British Empire or the French Empire. So is it a transition of power already happening with a lot of it being retained in US and yet that becomes a vehicle of empowerment of say for example China because when you have more agency you have better negotiations. So it might take time but you are able to rise back. >> Yeah, I realized I didn't answer your previous question. I just want to say something else about your previous question if I may. Um >> Sure, sure, sure. >> The cuz I was talking [snorts] about class conflict. Um I I think that the the if we can call 1945 to 1975 the golden era of the European states and indeed the American states to some extent when when I say the golden era um when these states achieved quite dramatic things in in terms of development of their populations, development of infrastructure and development of the real [snorts] meaningful democracy. Um I think it was it at a cost to elites and to corporations that those elites resented a lot. So elites paid very high taxation. They could not move capital around and they felt that they were living in a sort of I mean, at the most extreme they live they felt that they were basically living in a kind of communist um prison in which their profits were were were taken away from them. Uh their capital was was imprisoned within a uh a national context. And I think from the 1970s or so you see a massive backlash against state power. To re- the purpose of which was to reestablish the supremacy of capital. Um and that backlash takes many, many forms. It takes the forms of but essentially globalization is is the the result. Um so your capital becomes mobile. You have all these offshore zones where capital can be can be housed free of tax and free of scrutiny. You move labor also around the world so that you can you can evade a lot of the the laws and regulations that have arisen in the West to protect labor. You can also evade environmental laws, uh pay lower wages, and essentially redistribute the production system um and the capital system such that you are no longer held captive by a single nation-state. And in fact, you can reverse the power balance. You can now um hold those nation-states to ransom. If you want us to invest in you, you better dilute your labor laws. You better give us better uh lower taxation. We will negotiate with you and if you don't play ball, we'll just go somewhere else. So the the fact that the nation-state now is a much whole has massively less power over the economic activity within its territory, and I'm talking particularly of Western states here, than it did in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't think it's an it's it's written into history that it has to be like that. But um the the the sort of mid-20th century appropriations, the kind of uh social democratic ideology, the victory over fascism, the the glories of the Second World War that put a lot of power into states at the expense of corporations, and at the expense of elites. Um that produced a later backlash, but that hugely dismantled those kind of powers of the state, and ultimately, as you say, put a lot of new power into the hands of China, because China a lot of this labor went to China. China had experience going back centuries of being the factory of the world, and it became the factory of the world again. Chinese Communist Party was extremely able at organizing all that. And so now we have a situation where, yes, the um the Western nation-state um no longer is is no longer wealthy, um it is hugely indebted, um and capital has become hugely privatized, and states don't control their reality in the way that they do. And they're trying to grab back a lot of that power in sort of cultural terms. Uh so I can't give money, I can't redistribute money in and and make the bottom 50% of my population richer, but I can give them a better mythology. I can tell them that being white is really great, or being Christian is very important, or something like that. So that was going back one question. In answer to the other question you asked me, um I think the the period um which and India is a a massively important part of this in this history, but as you say, it's not just one place or one power. Many, many interests need to combine and to overlap in order to create the the settlement that happened essentially in 1945. But, as you know, in India and in places like London looking at India, there were lots of different ideas about how the world should be organized after the end of empire. So, socialists in London, for instance, thought that empire was exploitative, uh empire was unjust, empire was racist. But, they didn't necessarily think that the nation-states or hundreds of nation-states was the best solution to those problems. They thought maybe a sort of global socialism uh in which there was a sort of all the benefits of empire would be retained, the cosmopolitanism, the freedom of movement, the the the the the sense of brotherhood and sisterhood that existed between different parts of the world. All those things should be retained. Um but that we should move towards a world state, for instance, um so that profits would not be concentrated in one part of the world, but be distributed. That was one idea that socialists in London had. Many people um in fighting for the freedom struggle in India, uh including people like Nehru, they they thought that overthrowing the the evils of one nation-state, Britain, um India should not replicate those same evils by becoming itself a kind of competitive, militarist, racist, nationalist uh power. It should inaugurate a different kind of sensibility, and Nehru hosted in in in Delhi in 1947, the I think it's called the the the Asian Relations Conference or whatever it was. With a whole bunch of other countries that weren't yet independent that all swore that, you know, Asia would be different from Europe. There would be this kind of oceanic consciousness where we would, as Asians, uh be more peaceful and all those things that it sort of evaporated shortly afterwards. Um and there were people like Einstein as well who were who came at it from the the the direction of sort of the atomic bomb and said, you know, any world of nation-states, each of them equipped with their armies and their nuclear powers, will be a will destroy itself. And therefore, we have to move to sort of world federation. Um and there were, of course, religious visions as as as you as no doubt will discuss later in this in this conversation. So, there were many other ideas of how the world should should resolve itself. But only one of them could really win. And the reason it won was because it was promoted by the most powerful and the least powerful uh movements simultaneously. The United States was very clear what it wanted, and so was the Soviet Union. It wanted a bunch of other nation-states that were standardized, that all had essentially the same structure, that were like the United States and like the Soviet Union, but less powerful, and that they would be able to control those other nation-states, trade with those nation-states, and build coalitions of of ideological agreement. Um As I say, the United States have been doing this for a very long time in uh in Latin America. It was very clear in 1945 that that the United States was producing far, far more than it could consume, and it needed other rich states to be able to consume its products, and it needed to build up Western Europe and Japan very quickly. So, that was the United States' vision. But it was also clear from many decolonization uh impulses that sovereignty Third World sovereignty, post-colonial sovereignty was it was impossible to to suppress that desire. That you could not anymore uh rule these countries from outside. And the only form that all everybody could agree on was that everyone should have their nations their nation-state. And by the 1920s, most anti-colonial movements had formulated their terms in that their their ambitions in these terms. And many of those anti-colonial movements were led by local elites, local educated elites, who often had traveled to the metropolis and been educated even in in places like Britain and France, and had absorbed many of the ideals of the nation-state from those places. Uh and thought very much in terms of that they would themselves become ministers and prime ministers and everything in their own countries. So, you had this kind of a convergence of interests um by by the 1920s and certainly by the 1940s that meant that there was really only one possible outcome for the world, which was you know, formulated most eloquently by the United States, which set up the United Nations, and set up a lot of the kind of romantic uh idealistic language of a world of nation nation-states that would support each other, that would trade with each other, that would protect each other's interests, and protect each other's human rights, and all those sorts of things. >> One of the uh things that has always interested me. So, when we talk about this this worldview, say for example, that the United States of America put in front of the people. So, and you made an interested point that there's a certain ideology that was pushed by the most elite and the most weak together for it to be accepted as a world view. Capitalism with its foundations in liberalism as a philosophical ideology and configuring itself in neoliberalism as a state capitalism product. Why do you think that capitalism, liberalism in the certain way that it was imagined? I mean, liberalism has different traditions like everyone else. You have a positivist tradition, but you have also a post-modern, post-structuralist tradition within liberalism itself. So, while not trying to be reductive but a particular kind of liberalism, a particular kind of capitalism, and a particular kind of nation-state order, why do you think that create I mean, you've already given, you know, certain amount of arguments, but trying to dig it a little more deeper, philosophically speaking, what is the exceptional attractiveness given the state of affairs in 1947, post-World War, post empire order where people were, you know, the states were liberating itself. How were How were people convinced from different point of views, from the philosophical individual atomistic point of view, from And yet ultimately, it transcended or it it reconfigured those same ideals into ways of exploitation, expression not just outside, but also internalized. Now, how did that happen? What is Why was capitalism, when you say in terms of US turning it into a legal system, how did everybody buy in? >> Well, as you know, there's immense conflicts around those questions that you're raising within countries and between countries. So, the United States had a vision of a of a of a global machine made up of national components, and each of those national components would administer property rights within their countries to ensure that capital could move around this machine, and you could buy a you could buy a a a steel plant here, you could buy a kind of rubber plantation here, and your money would be protected. And of course, many, many states refused those kind of protections. Uh and said, "Why should we start from this position of of disadvantage? Why should we protect uh interests, rights, investments that were made through colonial uh co- coercion?" Um that was always a a very difficult debate even within those countries because of course, you know, if you're building a new state, you cannot do so with no capital. A state is highly capital-intensive, and there is no real nation-state with with no industry and no power. So, if if if foreign [snorts] interests own all your industry and own your oil or your gas or your your electricity or whatever, um you start from a massive disadvantage. However, if you start expropriating foreign oil investments or foreign hydroelectric investments and all that sort of thing, there are lots of disadvantages that flow from that. A, you might face invasion or sanctions or whatever from those countries, which happened several times. Uh and B, you get into this dynamic even with your local capital because they also might feel that their interest might be expropriated by the state. Um, so these were always very painful debates and you know, leaders like Nasser who expropriated the Suez Canal for instance or uh uh when Iran expropriated the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company um these uh are are massive global events which cause you know, huge changes in in sort of international relations and everything like that. I think um mo- on balance, post-colonial leaders came out of the experience of colonialism with an anti-capitalist bias feeling that uh they would not be able to deliver rights to their own citizens if the capitalist system were allowed to function unchecked. This was the case for Nehru. It was the case for people like in Nkrumah and in Ghana. It was the case with Sukarno in Indonesia. Um, they felt that they had seen the sort of capitalism in it in its most sort of violent form and they felt that um a managed economy um in which uh there was large-scale land redistribution in which the state would would co-opt many large enterprises to give that to socialize their benefits. This is what how they viewed um their own futures and so they did. There were large expropriations going up until the 1960s and in their Indira Gandhi sort of peaked at that in India. Um, and so many of those states tend towards a kind of authoritarianism because if you're going to expropriate on a large scale, you basically have to wield large powers and you need to do battle with your own capitalist elites as well as foreign ones. Um And so all of these things are accompanied by by massive debates over what what is the purpose of the state? Where does liberalism stand if in fact the state is authoritarian, um etc. And so you have, I think, various different brands that that are very different from each other. The the sort of national texture in the 1960s between different countries is is very very different. Um As as countries navigate their own paths through all these different um problems and even and that includes even Britain and France. I mean, Britain Britain at certain points in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s becomes a truly socialist state. As does France. Um to the extent that America is putting pressure on those countries not to not to socialize uh industries and and corporations too far. But they have they have taken over national ownership of nearly all energy, airlines, all these sorts of things. So um it's really from the 1980s onwards that these countries start to converge again and that is under, you know, what is called the Washington Consensus where uh American, especially American, not only American, but American big finance in particular, also working through the World Bank and the IMF, starts to use in debt, the growing indebtedness of countries as a lever to homogenize their um their ruling systems and and particularly to privatize national industries and to allow capital to flow in and all that sort of thing again. So, I think, you know, liberalism is a very wide church, right? I mean, liberalism at one end is is essentially an economic uh philosophy uh that allowed you know, all kinds of of of deeply illiberal practices to go on in the name of generating a a universal capitalist reality. Um and it's that kind of liberalism that so many uh anti-colonial activists struggled against. And we can get on to side with that later, but you know, in in a place like Egypt, for instance, it was that kind of liberalism that was so abhorrent to to many locals because um it it broke up traditions. Uh it promoted uh things like gambling and prostitution as local elites acquired acquired money and foreign elites had had money and um and offended against lots of local sensibilities. And it basically um created a sort of uh a massively unequal and as far as they were concerned immoral sort of society. And at the other end of the extreme, we have a liberalism that is primarily primarily concerned with things like um human freedom, human dignity, um and increasingly questions of democracy. How can rights be taken away from people so that they can be repackaged and given back to people by the state uh through formal systems like democracy, human rights, et cetera. And there, of course, there's much more consensus that these are good things. Um And there, [clears throat] I think um it is not the values of the West that are offended uh the non-West so much as the hypocrisy of the West, the failure of the West to live up to its values. And I think to some extent and India is a is is a classic example of that. A a country that has dealt with the West, has been friendly to the West in all kinds of ways, but has always maintained a certain skepticism about the the the sincerity and authenticity of Western commitments to human rights and and freedom and equality and all those sorts of things. And I think those are the things that are playing out right at this moment. I think in the 21st century a a a unipolar world administered by the United States that has seen things like Abu Ghraib, that has seen things like the the the total destruction of Gaza, that has seen things uh like the the recent declarations of war on Iran. I think all these doubts about, you know, the value of this Western discourse have have been have come out to the fore, and that's why, you know, so few countries are really willing to take the side of the West today um and why the world is sort of fragmenting in in very new kind of ways. >> Because you have already [clears throat] indicated the uh about Sayyid Qutb, your engagement with uh the way the Islamic thinkers like Sayyid Qutb engage with the idea of nationalism and nation-state. So, while, you know, uh having this discussion with you, most of the names and the most of the discussions that we've engaged with, they're largely materialist in conception. >> [clears throat] >> So, the question is that there will be a nation-state, and there is nation-state. And the question is about how is the wealth, how is distributed, how are the rights distributed. But, there are also questions about sovereignty, the logic of sovereignty itself. In the Indian tradition and Indian Islamic political thought itself, there was massive debate between Allama Iqbal, Maulana Hussein Ahmed Madani, Maulana Maududi, uh Maulana Maududi, which is more like a Sayyid Qutb, because Sayyid Qutb used to read him a lot. So, there have been debates about nationalism and the legitimacy of the absolute sovereignty of the nation. The debate is not so much >> Yes. >> like a homogenized flattened debate about there cannot be a state or there won't be a state. The question is about where do the questions of ethics, say for example, values come from. So, how did you find Qutb? In what manner and what intrigued you to look into what he was saying and what value could be derived and what value could be given up of the critique that he made of the Western society in terms of its engagement with Egypt as a particular nation-state. >> Yeah, I mean, as I make quite clear in part one of my book, the the nation-state and states in general have always had a theological and cosmological aspect. Kings and emperors have always represented their power in theological terms. And I would argue that is still the case today. And therefore, when we get deeper into these questions, we always ultimately end in theology. The question of the state is a question of how we see the cosmological diagram. And of course the nation state itself the modern nation state as opposed for instance to let's say the medieval European state that had only relative power compared to lots of other powers. Uh the medieval European state, the king was one among many uh sources of authority. The pope was one, the local churches and monasteries were others, local noblemen, and cities themselves also had certain kinds of sovereignty. So the emergence of the nation state in in in Europe it is a gradual battle by kings against all those rivals. Uh and ultimately uh a very radical theological claim to state power as opposed to every other kind of power. And this radical claim is put forward primarily in the 18th century uh at a time when states are in chaos and when it's necessary to to make enormous to to to to take power from rivals such that the state can impose order for instance on religious wars. And so this is the this is the state that we inherit in in modern times in the West and by by extension rest of the world. A state that is basically uh will allow no rival. Not God, not church, not aristocracy, not city, not community, not locality, not family. None of these uh are able to challenge the state's authority. Um I I am not able to say that uh I have an exception to state law because of my religion, because of my my ethics, or my belonging to this transnational community. No, the state has the primary claim. And as you know, uh the states have extended those claims further and further. I mean, to the extent that uh I do not, as a parent, have ultimate rights over my children. Uh if I choose to educate my children certain ways, to mistreat them in certain ways, or whatever, the state will take them away from me. Uh ultimately, even myself, I'm not allowed to treat myself in certain ways. So, as you know, one of the big debates in in Europe these days is assisted dying. Um do I have the right to take my own life because I'm very sick? >> Euthanasia. >> Yes. So, the state Most states still deny me that right. So, states have exerted a very radical idea of of what power is over life and death. And of course, uh execution is is a is a state that that is a is a right that's many states still still retain. Um And so, many many critiques of the state, or rejections of the state, are also formulated in theological terms. And it's not only that strand of Islam, it's many strands also of of Christianity and other religions reject these radical powers that the state has, that that to to to control all these areas of life. So, I became interested in Cycle of the as I became interested also in Charles Maurras who wrote talk about in the same chapter who's a who's a a sort of um a right-wing Catholic who believes in France that the state is is exceeding its powers, that the state cannot take the place of God to be the mortal God as Thomas Hobbes uh calls him. Only only God has has those kinds of uh of powers and authorities. And if we start He believes that if we start giving power to the people uh to a set of indi- of of in- modern individuals that all vote for for power, then we eventually going to lose our culture, lose our civilization. Uh we need to put God back at the the center of things represented by a king. Sayyid Qutb is in many ways a much more influential uh figure than than those kind of minor uh traditions in Europe. Um and of course those traditions in Europe are coming back, but Sayyid Qutb is much more influential I think because he articulates um a very substantial uh and and importantly post-colonial um let's say horror of the way that the nation-state entered many countries' experiences um offending against uh destroying their local elites and their their local economies and replacing them with a sort of European administration that that was ignorant of and dismissive of local sensibilities, religious practices, cultural practices, um etc. And so Sayyid Qutb is is sort of um grows up feeling that French and British power in his native uh Egypt and then uh the the form that American power takes cuz he visits the United States in the 1940s is truly um uh truly abhorrent to his own sensibilities and indeed to human nature and human society itself. And he starts to formulate a kind of a a counter narrative of what modern civilization should should look like, which becomes hugely radicalized under the supposedly um secular rule of Nasser. So, Nasser uh pre- president of Egypt in the 1950s and '60s um is in many ways embattled both with the West and with uh local Islamist um groups and tries to to defeat all of them with a kind of Arab socialism that's secular, authoritarian, and people like Sayyid Qutb are jailed and tortured and and terribly treated. And all of this feeds into a sort of abhorrence for the the modern state uh that finds its way into Sayyid Qutb's enormous commentary on the Quran um and the generation of a sort of new concept of of modern citizenship, which owes sovereignty, which allows only the sovereignty of Allah and and rejects all um allegiance to worship of modern idols such as the nation-state. Um and and in its most radical interpretations sees um anyone who who and especially Muslims in fact who who kind of make their peace with the nation-state and pay their taxes and and become good citizens of modern nation-states as essentially um uh blasphemous and idolatrous. And and and sees a sort of permanent revolution as the only kind of true um, Is Islamic response to to the modern world. So that is uh you know, an incredibly uncomfortable kind of way to exist in the in the modern world, but as we know, is becoming very very influential because um, it it it provides a plat form for a rejection of not only American power, but by extension the nation-state system itself that has fueled all kinds of rumors as as as we know well. >> One of the important things that always comes up whenever these kinds of discussions happen is there there has always been state whether it be a city-state, a tribal uh, you know, geographical entity with certain So for example, when I read uh, as a Muslim when I read uh, the prophetic biography uh, I see Medina and Mecca as city-states. I mean, the way they are configured and structured. And then also potentially in the future there becomes empires and states and empires. So there's always been this idea of a state which is configured with different levels of understanding of other cosmic understandings that as you would argue. So in in a nation-state world order today because the book you're writing is after nations. It is not after nation-states, maybe you've written or after nations. What What does that mean? Does the state remain? What kind of configuration? So for example, if I go back to the Islamic tradition, which is much more wider than, you know, the Qutb's understanding, which is also meaningful but the way Ottoman Empire was structured, it had a certain kind of millet system where different uh groups had their rights even when there's an Islamic state. The preservation So, it's it's a sort of a liberal understanding of rights of others constituted while there is a certain sovereignty that has been imposed, let's say, for a moment to assume. So, when Muslims think about these concepts, they immediately try to fall back to what was. Without really try to think about what could be even from the Islamic principles itself. So, when you uh you know, Rana Dasgupta, when you see this long arc of history of states, then empires, then nation-states, where do you see the future? You know, what kind of potentials and possibilities lie beyond which are already in experimentation, for example, in terms of intellectual productions, or which are already institutionalized at lower scales and levels which may at some point of time develop into concrete structures? How do you see the future? Is it is nation-state there to stay? Or is it that new kinds of political formations can come up? >> Yeah. I mean, of course, these are massive questions um and I I like the way you ask it very well. Very much. Um so, I do think that we are seeing certain kind of limits to the nation-state in the sense that its success as an engine of, let's say, economy and military and things like that is not necessarily mirrored by its success in delivering certain kind of freedoms and rights to its citizens. Um in fact, increasingly it seems like for it to remain competitive with the within the global economic and military spheres, it must become more authoritarian in the domestic sphere. Um I don't think this is a this is a hard and fast rule, but it just seems to be the case right now that states are becoming more um at more authoritarian and that their inability to deliver certain kinds of goods to their populations uh or rather quite the opposite their their their their creation of more and more inequality for instance and that that's quite explicit in India for instance uh requires them to sell a different kind of message especially in democracies that um not the message let's say of 1789 or even 1947 of of equality equality for all those kinds of socialist promises that were made but rather the promise of a mythology uh uh an imperial kind of grandeur that this is we we can't put more money in your pocket but we can make you part of some kind of Hinduva grandeur or whatever it might be um and to try and sell the nation state to its citizens in that way rather than through the the kind of more more egalitarian promises of the past um and this does these kinds of things do confront us with certain limits of the national imagination and the national structure but it does seem to be a much less um extensive container than we thought it was. You know, I think multiculturalism and all that, we thought that the nation state was infinite, was very grand, and it could take contain everything. Actually, it's become becoming narrower and narrower, and many states are experimenting with different kinds of exclusion. How can we take the votes away from this kind of purpose people? How can we convince these kinds of people they don't have the same claim on citizenship as others? These kinds of experiments are going on get in lots and lots of countries, and I think I call them experiments because I I can see that leaders don't know which of these strategies are going to work for them. So, they try one thing, it fails, they try another thing. And you can see in you know, in in in America that Donald Trump has in in his particular style has thrown out lots of ideas about which kind of people are more or less welcome as Americans. To see what sticks, and what Americans will accept as an idea. Uh immigrants, Muslims, uh uh anti- um anti-fascist demonstrators, people who demonstrate against Gaza. Which kinds of people can we can we start to exclude as as citizens in a in an era where we don't need such a big labor force, and we we actually have to discipline our population. I think in these kinds of scenarios, some of the previous societies the older societies that you invent you mentioned in your question become very interesting. The Ottoman Empire, for instance. These are societies that that have that place a lower set of demands on their citizens, but they also give them much greater freedoms. So, we don't we if we just we interact with you in a in a less intense way. You as long as you pay your taxes, you participate in in in trade, maybe you have to give away some some some young man to military service or whatever. As long as you fulfill a certain set of basic commitments to the empire, we don't care how you marry, how you educate your children, what language you speak and all that sort of thing. We are more uh decentered sort of society than the nation-state. Well, for centuries and centuries, that was a very hospitable environment for many who were not Muslims or who were not Sunni Muslims. Um you know, Jews in the Ottoman Empire flourished for instance in in places like Salonica. Um so given the disaster that those same territories have become in the era of nation-states, many of them. Um given the fact that the former Ottoman Empire is in flames today. Um that it is that it is that it has been deconstructed into a set of nation-states, many of which are dedicated to eradicating each other and that have have have massively underinvested in their populations so as to invest invest in authoritarian regimes, corrupt economies, and war. Um it is quite clear I think that uh that part of the world has suffered in the era of nation-states against what it was in the 19th century, 18th century, but particularly what it was, you know, in in earlier times. So, I think that I mean, my my interest in in many kind of non-Western civilizational traditions, theological and cultural, uh at this point is in what which societies have the kind of cultural and theological resources to deal with cosmopolitan economies and cosmopolitan, you know, political zones, uh better than better than our own, better than the the nation-state system. To me, the nation-state system is never going to be an adequate framework, for instance, to deal with the um the current Middle Eastern framework. Uh having an Israel that is constantly trying to reduce all its neighbors to failed states, simply so that it can feel secure, having an Israel that that whose national security is a cause so enormous that it requires a perpetual war and destruction against all surrounding regions and its own occupied territories. Um having other states uh reciprocally who whose are almost constitutionally dedicated to the eradication of Israel. There is no end point to this um game except the further militarization of these societies to to the point of the total destruction of the region. It is only in pre-nation-state realities, um primarily imperial realities, realities of grand transnational transnational cultural zones, civilizational zones, that we can find the resources necessary for that so that region to have a future. And I think that that that applies to um uh other things, too. The United States increasingly has internalized idea that its national security also is an infinite project, that any part of the world can be attacked because it threatens American national security. This is the sort of the idea of the nation state taken to some sort of of of psychopathic dimensions. That um a state on the other side of the world um is a threat to your national security and therefore must be eradicated or threatened with annihilation. Um when we get to this point, we know that the nation state is no longer a vehicle for sort of international peace and harmony. Um it is something else. And it's it's when we look at regions like let's say Southeast Asia, which again are connected by many um ancient civilizational uh rhetorics um that are massively diverse in terms of of of religion, culture, language, etc. But which have traded with each other for millennia. Uh and which have a a profound acceptance of difference. Um that we see that superimposed on the very modern, very nation national agendas is a pre-modern um set of consciousness which understands uh you know, how China has worked in the past, how the Indian Ocean has worked in the past. Um and how uh the the the sort of movement of trade and religion has operated in the past. The organizations like ASEAN, they carry the imprint of these pre-modern, pre-nation state realities. I think these are these are sort of examples of how uh we need to be, you know, modifying the nation state into into a a a future form. [clears throat] Even the the the the continent that invented the nation state, Europe, has moved beyond the nation state and realized that the nation state in its raw competitive form destroys the continent. Um and the only a supernational arrangement that can constrain the violence of states and harmonize the interests of many states together can actually give the nation state any kind of future future survival. So I think you know we're not we're not about to see nation states collapsing because they are as I say the other branch of the capitalist system. The capitalist system is very robust and very flexible and dynamic. So nation states are not going to collapse. We have to I think you know embellish and innovate in ways that allow the nation state to have a have a more peaceful and and cosmopolitan future. >> On this point of the transnational arrangement you have invoked certain terminologies of public commons on the scale of international order. What do you mean by that? >> Well I think that you know I I regard the capitalist system and the nation state system as as indestructible at this point. There's nothing that you or I can do to end capitalism. And those systems deliver lots of things to lots of people. In fact the with the new kind of Asian era of capitalism it's delivered even more. I mean China produces at such so cheaply and so do many other Asian countries that people in the poorest areas of the world can afford you know mobile phones and text phones and things that they need to survive. And and so we should not view these systems as in completely anti-human systems. They deliver lots of things to lots of people. However, many people do not have a place in the capitalist system just as they do not really have a place in the nation state system. I've traveled a lot in Africa recently. There were lots of people who are simply dropping out of the capitalist system because they so they have no access to the state-issued currencies on which that system uh depends and and runs. Um and I think that rather than thinking that we can destroy these grand systems, I think we need to go find ways of of restoring the other systems that have historically protected and and and um and insulated those people who do not have access uh in those kinds of ways. So the commons, I mean to use that metaphor, the commons was the thing that allowed poor people in in much of European history to survive when they when there was no harvest and all that sort of thing. The commons was the land where you could you could uh graze your animals, cultivate emergency crops, all that sort of thing. And uh it it could it might even belong, parts of the commons might might have various ownership systems, but you could not deprive people of of their use of it. Um so you know, the the Magna Carta in England, it it protected you could not stop a widow who had no no income. You could not stop her from collecting land and and collecting resources so she could at least uh feed her family and feed herself and all that sort of thing. I think many political systems have been built like that, have been built to say, "Yes, you can own things, you can exploit things, but you can't do so to the extent that other people will die." And I think that the capitalist system today is is is built like that. It is built such that people can enrich themselves to the extent that other people will die uh or will will be um subjected to massive ecological destruction and so such things like that. I think that a system like that has no moral basis. Um and since the nation-state system supports that uh we include the nation-state system uh within that criticism. I think that in that in that kind of scenario, you don't destroy the nation-state system, you don't destroy the capitalist system. You build other systems that other people can use if they are neglected by those grand systems to survive and build their own economies, their own society. So, today, you know, we have we have technological tools that allow us to reconfigure the the commons in different ways. The commons doesn't need to be a bit of land. The commons can be, for instance, a a a user-owned currency, for instance, that can be used to trade and to to to sell your labor in the in across the world. There are lots of new ways of thinking about the commons that that we can invent for ourselves today that can allow it to new economies to coexist with the capitalist economy and new forms of migration uh and and and land use also to coexist with those that that already exist. >> One uh final question with a follow-up remark. It's about territoriality. Uh it's about when you use the word security. It's about the idea of private property uh drawing on the analogy of my home, say for example, my flat or my house, wherein I am part of a colony and I still have a private property, which I can freely enter and exit with my own privacy. If nation-state's territoria- territoriality is projected from the understanding of private property and the whole logic of security in nation states as outsider, insider, uh majority, minority, infiltrator, you know, tariffs, all of this draws from this idea of it of a sacralized territory territory. And most of the conflicts happen through that. So, when we overlap the idea of commons, say for example, from the European Union context, so one of the uh deepest anxieties the that totalitarian states even like what India is becoming under the Hindutva logic or, you know, all of these states in Middle East, all of these states and now including, you know, states like America. So, how do we deal with this idea of territoriality as something which can be reserved or which might be reserved and yet to be able to engage. Of course, one of the arguments that you're using is the use of technology. Say for example, Bitcoin or, you know, different kinds of arrangements in which you have transnational uh you know, ecosystems wherein you could participate. But the But at the level of citizenship, at the level of human rights, you know, one of the arguments that you make is mobile rights. I don't I'm not remembering it correctly. You might You can, you know, correct me where I'm wrong. So, for for example, if I move from one region to another, so the biggest anxiety is if, for example, in US some society has done more work to build a better society and if there is easy mobility. And these are the debates that happened 200 years also ago, even 100 years ago. These are not new debates. But these are the debates that come back every time. What constitutes human rights? What constitutes territoriality? What constitutes mobility? And within that, if a certain region is being more productive, why should somebody be allowed to move freely? And that is the basic idea in terms of the freedom of movement, freedom of ideas, you know, extraterritorial engagements. So, how do we engage with this anxiety of a private ownership of something and this expression of commonality of being while, you know, engaging with the nation state or moving beyond it? >> I mean >> How do you see this problem? >> This is This is a self-made problem. I mean, the nation state system has essentially functioned as a system of transferring wealth from certain parts of the world and concentrating it in other parts of the world. And that remains essentially its function today. I mean, it's it's extraordinary that the distribution of of wealth and poverty has not changed that much in two centuries. The period of the nation state um going from the from the 1820s onwards, the period of of national nation state building starting in Europe, um has been the the growth of inequality between regions. And that story has been complicated a little bit in the last 30 years by um the rise of Asia, but broadly um since 1820, we've seen uh huge concentrations of wealth and and massive gaps in in in between between nations and regions. So, inevitably, this this reaches a crisis where people realize this nation state system is not about the redistribution of wealth. It is not about the redistribution even of political rights. It is about the extraction of resources and wealth from certain parts of the world and their concentration elsewhere. So, there's no point me sitting in Somalia thinking that if I wait 20 years my nation is going to be rich and and harmonious like the Netherlands. No, it's not going to happen. I have understood this much about the nation-state system. The only way that I can give my children a Dutch style upbringing is to go to the Netherlands. And so I think there was a period in many countries after independence when they thought in 20 years my country will be like the Netherlands. Um all I need to do is stay here, be virtuous, study hard, work hard, and that's what will happen. And maybe I need to make sacrifices in the short term, but the long term is that all nations will look like the Netherlands um over over time. That's what is supposed to happen. But um now no one thinks that. Uh the least educated people on the planet have Instagram and they see exactly what life is like in the in the Netherlands and exactly what life is like uh where they are. They see themselves living in violent uh corrupt regimes where uh women have have few rights, homosexuals have few rights, their their societies have not given them the things they that they expected and they have to leave. So now and they're also under massive climate change pressures because they many of these people live in agrarian societies, they make their their living through the land in some way or another, and they are on the forefront of climate change. So unfortunately the global system is now reaping the rewards of [snorts] a two-three century project of um of of essentially the dev- the devastation of large parts of the the planet and the moving of poverty, wealth, and ecological destruction into certain zones. Uh, now it is only functioned by immobilizing the majority of the the human population. Obviously, if you're moving all the wealth into certain you have to stop people from following it. So, our present-day nation-state system is built on immobilization. Um, increasingly, we will not be able to stop people uh resisting uh that immobilization. Um, it's begun already on a large scale, but it's going to be on a much, much larger scale in the future. A lot of South Asia is going to be difficult to cultivate in with with climate change, and that's hundreds of millions of people. So, I think the movement of people over the coming years is going to be the really definitive test of the nation-state system because as you can see in Europe, even small numbers of people arriving uh creates a political crisis. Large numbers of people arriving will be uh very different. So, I think that territoriality, the question you raised, is the key question moving forward. I think we have to you know, the world can collapse into civil war or to into civil war of all of That's the most likely scenario because people will will will defend their borders, and armies will be sent to defend their borders, and people who come in will be killed. That's one scenario. But, we can also think very differently about these things. The the melting of the Arctic is opening up lots of territories that can be cultivated for the first time. That And we can see those territories as zones of a potential kind of uh settlement that can create massive new economic possibilities in the future. We can think of organizing migration corridors around the world, allowing people to move peacefully and organizing, you know, our economies in completely different ways, organizing our ideas of citizenship also in completely different ways. Um these would be very interesting ways for us as a species to respond to the various accumulating problems of the mismatch between our political system, our ecological system, and our demographics. Um but I I given that all international forums for meaningful discussion about these kind of things are collapsing. Um I I'm skeptical that we would be able to organize that at a top-down level. The only way to organize it would be at a bottom-up level, uh for which maybe we we can organize the sort of platforms and technological systems necessary. Um and and then maybe these states [clears throat] would have to give in to the to the inevitable and accept them. >> Thank you, uh Dr. Ronald Gupta, for this time that you gave us. One of the most exceptional parts of the work that you've done, which I found, is because of my training in philosophy, is this meta-political historical arc in which you invoke the interactive nature of ideologies in terms of its their engagement in territorialities and extraterritorialities to to argue that certain outcomes could have been, certain outcomes became, and there's an open future. So, it is not a hardcore deterministic way in which we should look at the production of ideals of states, the production of ideals of how societies and political hierarchies are conceptualized, conceived, negotiated, and institutionalized. These are themselves products of intellectual arrangements, arguments combined with power. How power interacts with it. Uh you know, how they privilege certain kind of ideas over others for the immediate and long-term gains that the elite, the powerful they want to benefit from. Of course, one of the arguments I was not able to maybe if you have time, you can give 5 minutes to it that how did nation-state embody all of the logic of empire that was extractive and it's still a kind of an empire if if you would like you would if you think there are certain points that are missing, but that is one of the things that I really enjoyed about your work that it's a comprehensive understanding of not just political engagement and political ideas and ideals, but about the holistic nature in which states have existed, interacted, conceived, and institutionalized different visions. And the future is open for different kinds of these arrangements to happen and occur. >> I I'm glad you got that sense from the book. I think that history is incredibly complex. And there are people who who who privilege only ideas. And and and it it it's clearly ridiculous to imagine that somebody can write a book and the world changes because many other things need to happen for those ideas to enter society. But there are also people who privilege only power. Uh armies and banks and assume that um that that those have kind of co-total power over the world when actually societies are very complex and societies are thinking, breathing machines that that will not accept certain kinds of realities. Um and and choose certain things for other reasons completely. Uh sometimes completely irrational reasons. Um so to to map all this and to predict all this is is very complex and I would say ultimately impossible. But I do think that um the there are a couple of things that arise from your question that's very important to point out. And I and I think that this is this is what I'd like to emphasize. The we should not imagine that the fact that the British Empire was dismantled or the Dutch Empire was dismantled um meant that the age of empires therefore ended. Mhm. The 20th century was a was a very different technological system from the 18th century. And empires could now be virtual. They could be operated through technology and law. And they did not have to be operated through bureaucracy and armies in the same kind of way. And if you look at international law as it was as it began to evolve under the British but particularly in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s um you realize that America especially America, I mean there are many other players but America was the driving force. Was able to construct a global imperials uh reality uh without you know, occupying lots of these territories through through a set of laws that basically ensured the reality would be continuous with the previous imperial uh era. And so much of um the the reason that wealth was was so continuous that the distribution of wealth and poverty was so continuous from the 19th century to the present is because we live in a dense legal framework that keeps it like that. And it keeps uh wealth flowing into the same centers again and again. Of course, you can have surprises. Countries like China can can can disrupt that system and can actually create a new reality. But by and large, the system of international law has been in very, very uniform over the last two, three centuries. Um and and so we we did not move from a system of sort of uh imperial um coercion and yoke to a system of sort of national freedom. Um we we moved from a very crude and obvious system of of international uh power to a much more sophisticated and invisible system. >> Sophisticated. >> Um and that system is now in huge flux. And the reason that all of us are waking up everywhere in the world and looking at the same news headline is because what is happening in Iran today and what is happening in Israel today is is changing that reality for all of us because the legal system like a nation-state, the legal system ultimately depends on faith. [snorts] It is it is it draws its its its its authority from some kind of cosmological plan that we all agree to. And today, the cosmology that that America put into place after 1945 is falling apart and many people are choosing to opt out and say we can design all of this in a different way. And that's why reality is so open today. >> Thank you, Dr. Rahlan, for this wonderful podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. >> enjoy it very much. I enjoyed your very searching questions. Thank you. >> Maybe we'll have a follow-up conversation somewhere down the future when you come up with another book. Thank you very much. >> Thank you.