The present crisis in Ukraine and the conflicts with Russia over what previous treaties had defined as sovereign Ukrainian territory raise questions about the meaning of national sovereignty and what really makes a population of people a distinct nation. I thought it would be useful to examine those questions in a more general sense. I am focusing on Europe because that is the historical context in which Ukraine exist. However, the general ideas here are applicable to the rest of the world.
Most of us are accustomed to looking at maps that have colored blobs that divide the world up into nation states. Here is the present layout of Europe from that perspective.
If we looked at a European map from a 100 years ago just before WW I the lines would be drawn quite differently.
There is of course a different perspective to take on the continent. That is what the land itself looks like.
There are natural barriers such as oceans, rivers and mountains. There are areas of generally broad open spaces. These geographical features have played a role in the shaping the boundaries of nation states but when we compare how much the lines have changed over a century it is clear that for more than nature is involved.
The very idea of sovereign nation states is fairly recent in the course of human history. It was first formally defined in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
The treaties resulted from the big diplomatic congress,[4][5] thereby initiating a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of a sovereign state governed by a sovereign and establishing a prejudice in international affairs against interference in another nation's domestic business. The treaty not only signaled the end of the perennial, destructive wars that had ravaged Europe, it also represented the triumph of sovereignty over empire, of national rule over the personal writ of the Habsburgs and the establishment of the first version of international order.[6] The treaties' regulations became integral to the constitutional law of the Holy Roman Empire, and stood as a precursor to later large international treaties and thereby the development of international law in general.
Humans roamed over the earth as bands and tribes of hunter gather culture. The existence of settled agricultural communities only goes back about 10,000 years. One of the results of more organized societies was the development of a warrior class which in turn gave rise to competing empires. Empires have come and gone in most parts of the world. Pieces of land and the people that live on them have been traded back and forth depending on the fortunes of war. They were still in business on a grand scale a century ago.
Most people living in a particular spot had little reason to form a personal identity based on the dynastic overlords who claimed ultimate authority at a particular time. In the pre-modern world group identity was likely based on the experience of personal association. People likely thought of themselves in terms of membership in kinship groups or tribes and residence in a restricted location such as a village or valley. Nobody in the 18th C referred to themselves as an Ottoman or a Hapsburgian.
The many changes brought about by the industrial revolution began to broaden the horizons of the general populace. Communication and travel became easier and newspapers as a means of mass communication began to emerge. It developed first in England in the 18th C and then spread to other parts of Europe. One result of these changes was the phenomenon and movement that has come to be known as nationalism.
In Europe before the development of nationalism, people were generally loyal to a religion or to a particular leader rather than to their nations.
With the emergence of a national public sphere and an integrated, country-wide economy in 18th century England, people began to identify with the country at large, rather than the smaller unit of their family, town or province. The early emergence of a popular patriotic nationalism took place in the mid-18th century, and was actively promoted by the government and by the writers and intellectuals of the time.[9] National symbols, anthems, myths, flags and narratives were assiduously constructed and adopted. The Union Flag was adopted as a national one, the patriotic song Rule, Britannia! was composed by Thomas Arne in 1740,[10] and the cartoonist John Arbuthnot created the character of John Bull as the personification of the national spirit.[11]
The widespread appeal of patriotic nationalism was massively augmented by the political convulsions of the late 18th century, the American and French Revolutions. Ultra-nationalist parties sprung up in France during the French Revolution.[12][13][14]
The term nationalism was first used by Johann Gottfried Herder the prophet of this new creed. Herder gave Germans new pride in their origins, and proclaimed a national message within the sphere of language, which he believed determines national thought and culture.[15] He attached exceptional importance to the concept of nationality and of patriotism – "he that has lost his patriotic spirit has lost himself and the whole worlds about himself", whilst teaching that "in a certain sense every human perfection is national".[16]
The political development of nationalism and the push for popular sovereignty culminated with the ethnic/national revolutions of Europe, for instance the Greek War of Independence.[12] Since that time, nationalism has become one of the most significant political and social forces in history, perhaps most notably as a major influence or postulate of World War I and especially World War II.[17][18][19][20]
Benedict Anderson argued that, "Print language is what invents nationalism, not a particular language per se".
The 19th C saw major struggles between the creaking structures of empire and the revolutionary idealism of nationalist movements. Much of what is now Italy was under Hapsburg rule. There was then so such thing as a nation of Italy. The struggle for Italian unification involved not only military conflict but a drive to establish a uniform language and shared culture. The Writer Manzoni and the composer Verdi were willing participants in the movement. For a variety of reasons the countries of Western Europe were further down the road to being independent nation states with a nationalist culture than those of Central and Eastern Europe when WW I arrived.
World War I was a battle of empires. The Russian, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires were landlocked and all covered large regions with a mixture different people from different backgrounds under their control. Much of Eastern Europe had been their battle ground with the lines of control being pushed back and forth. Germany, Britain and France were European nation states with colonial empires in what we now call the developing world. One important outcome of the war was to bring all of those empires except Britain and France to an end.
In the Paris peace conference the three main victors Britain, France and the US proceeded to carve up huge stretches of the globe. Lloyd George and Clemenceau the British and French leaders were mainly interested in territorial booty and extracting revenge on Germany. Woodrow Wilson thought that this was his opportunity to remodel the world on the principles inspired by American exceptionalism. Sitting in Paris looking at maps they made decisions about which people had some sort of natural affinity for forming functional nation states. None of the nations that they thus created have endured in the form laid out. Some of them such as Yugoslavia have disappeared in a storm of conflict and bloodshed.
Even when we look at nations that have managed to hold together over time we can see lots of cracks in the national identity. The UK has never really been able to weld its component parts into a fully unified nation state. The English and Irish have been shedding blood off and on for centuries. There is now a Scottish independence movement that has a possibility of succeeding. The Basque want out of Spain. It is possible to develop educational and propaganda schemes that can instill some general sense of patriotism, especially in time of war or other national crisis. However, efforts to define a high level of national homogeneity and purity usually lead to xenophobia and racism that create truly serious problems. The 21st C movement of people that has been stimulated by globalization is contributing to such tensions in many places.
When you compare the maps form 1914 and 2014 there are very few countries that have the same borders in both maps. The major shifts occurred as results of both world wars and the breakup of the USSR. Sometimes borders have moved while leaving people in place and changing their citizenship. Other times there have been mass movements of people driven for nationalistically inspired programs of purification. None of these changes have achieved states that only contained people who were identical in language, religion, ethnic identity, etc. In practice such national identity is not what actually determines the validity of a nation state.
National boundaries are created by the prevailing political realities at some point of upheaval. It might be international war or civil war. Occasionally it is a fairly civilized divorce as in the case of the former Czechoslovakia. The colors on the map change when there is a preponderance of other nations who give recognition to a particular configuration. We have lots of situations on the map where borders are chronically in dispute. Israel and the surrounding territories are the best know and most contentious example.
This brings us to the matter of Ukraine. It is a place that has had various borders and various overlords during the course of centuries. On August 24, 1991 it declared itself to be a state independent of the USSR which was then in the process of collapse. It took the borders which it had had as the Ukrainian SSR a component of the USSR. In 1994 the Budapest Memorandum was signed by the US, UK and Russia. China and France were sort of concurring parties to it. It wasn't in the usual form of an international treaty but at present the western nations are claiming that it carries the same validity. It's main purpose was to get Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons. In return the signatories made the following commitments:
Respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.
Refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine.
Refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics.
Seek United Nations Security Council action if nuclear weapons are used against Ukraine.
Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Ukraine.
Consult with one another if questions arise regarding these commitments.[8]
Now of course Russia has taken over Crimea and claimed it as a part of the Russian Federation. The future status of other parts of Eastern Ukraine also seems presently in doubt. From its long history of being connected to various empires Ukraine has a mixed collection of people with different religions, languages and ethnic identities. Since its independence in 1991 it has struggled to create a cohesive national identity of some sort. That hasn't worked out very successfully. There has been a chronic tension between the eastern and western parts of the country. That has been one of its several problems.
The future of Ukraine is a classic example of a small not very powerful country at the mercy of a tug of war between great powers. Whatever configuration it assumes somewhere down the road will likely be much more a matter of international politics than any sort of inherent national destiny.