a world where identity is not primaryto practice, where we recognize that the price to pay for the small comfort is it not fear? - of patriotism may be as high as a nuclear destruction ofmillions of lives. In Leo Tolstoys(1900) words:I have already severaltimes expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is anunnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of the great part ofthe ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feelingshould not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, besuppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. We must, of course, read Tolstoy in the context of a nineteenth-centurymale world of Reason, therefore the appeal to the irrational side ofpatriotism. This does not discredit hisclaim, though, if we realize how much of twentieth-century history has been theinvestment of patriotic peoples towards military interventions and wars, suchas the so-called world wars. Also,Tolstoy would not agree with the eradication of patriotism through an imposed,authoritarian power. However, historyviewed from an ethical perspective calls on us to reflect upon the linksbetween patriotism and State terror. Germany is for Germans, Hitler said. Today some Hindus in India are saying Hindustan for Hindus, and goingon their way to kill, rape, and burn Muslims alive. Many of them feel that India has to become aworld superpower no less than the United States. The patriotism of the United States, whichblinds its own people to its tragic consequences in the world, while being aprimary cause in these events, serves as a model for nationalist andimperialist, terrorist, practices all around the world. One could think: well, India is never goingto be a superpower, but that would only show how the labeling of an identityblinds one from the reality that India isalready a superpower, in that it has the means to destroy whole countries bythe pushing of a stupid button. Indiawould not have gone to this extreme were it not for the patriotism that isexemplified by the United States (but this remark should not lessen the role ofthe Indian elite in the process), which is for many Hindus an openly discoursedreference in a post-Cold War world.Where todaysterror was produced: the post-World War II, Cold War World In the aftermath ofWorld War II, when Western and some parts of Eastern Europe were destroyed andlocal governments went into a deep crisis, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. came outas two superpowers standing. The criteriafor superpower is, of course, a self-identified one, although some of theirclaims for that position proved to be true in the decades that followed. The U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. would make theirpresence known in the world through the strengthening of ties not betweenthemselves, though - across national borders, many times through directmilitary interventions. The motivationsfor these moves are the political-economic control of resources and thearrogance of empires and their moral feeling of superiority. While both Moscow and Washington supporteddictatorships worldwide, the scope and number of atrocities committed by thosesupported by the U.S., its friends was by far greater. Beginning withPresident Truman, and followed up to this