Is the U.S.A. Obsolete?
By: Walter Nicklin
Tags: Governance, International Relations, Trump, Climate Action, Nationalism

Is the U.S.A. Obsolete?

By Walter Nicklin

Perhaps a better societal model than Nation-States are ancient City States.

When elections are delegitimized and a minority rules over a majority, can the United States still be called a democracy? Or is it now better described as an autocracy? Plutocracy? Kakistocracy? (Or given the predominance of conservative Catholics on the Supreme Court, a theocracy even?)

But maybe the real question is not about how the country governs itself but whether the U.S. remains a country at all? On a map, of course, it remains a country, but territorial definitions have ever less meaning when most of us now “live and work” in a virtual world independent of geography. Most human activities — from business meetings to yoga workouts — no longer require specific physical places (just access to Zoom!). Moreover, online connections and conspiracies — from LGBT to QAnon — fragment American identity.

Is the very notion of a nation-state — that relatively recent (19th Century) invention to organize the international system — now obsolete? As the American Experiment — once a model for other nation-states — sputters, possibly unraveling, should we rethink the way we humans organize and govern ourselves?

The nation-state: an area where the cultural boundaries overlap with the political boundaries.

Now cleaved apart in the United States is the compound word nation-state: White-identity, right-wing politics frame ethnically-diverse liberals as destroying the nation, while liberals point to Steven Bannon’s brazen vow to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

Though disconcerting and painful, as all breakup’s are, maybe it’s time to jettison the concept of sovereign nation-states as the best way to organize societies. Just as the founding of the United States became an example for other, new democracies, its breakup into some other entity (or entities) might serve as an exemplary template for all mankind.

But what might that be?

Maybe a world divided into city-states is the way of the future — if there is to be a hopeful future at all? Singapore is a model — so, too, are the Venice of 1,000 years ago and, of course, ancient Athens.

Already there exists a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change — since nation-states seem incapable of collaborating effectively in dealing with the most pressing planetary problem affecting them all:

As defined by the United Nations, the world now has 195 sovereign nation-states. Of these, even the putatively most powerful — the U.S. — is now too polarized to govern itself, much less offer leadership in solving any planetary problems.

Only its Constitution, laws and institutions, democratic norms and traditions, continue to bind this nation-state together — but now only flimsily at best.

To take but one example, the inhabitants of the northeastern part of this American nation-state have more shared values and interests with their European counterparts than with their “fellow” rural Americans. The Atlantic Ocean may still divide two continents, but the greatest division is found in the two diametrically opposed media landscapes reflecting the once United States.

Norumbega was a legendary settlement in northeastern North America featured on many early maps.

Such a self-governing megapolis in the northeastern U.S. could be called Norumbega, the imaginary place on early maps of northeastern North America. No matter its name, it makes sense on a number of levels, but could such societal reorganization ever come to pass without the violence of a civil war?

Intellectually, we know that nation-states are no longer (if they ever were!) the best way to structure the international system — as we also know that growth-driven capitalism destroys the planet — but what can we realistically do about either?

We’re like the alcoholic who knows he’s got a problem but continues to drink himself to death.

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