THE PASSIONS & PERILS OF NATIONHOOD

FOR sheer and pervasive fervor, the love of nationhood has no equal among contemporary political passions. Independence is the fetish, fad and totem of the times. Everybody who can muster a quorum in a colony wants Freedom Now--and such is the temper of the age that they can usually have it. Roughly one-third of the world, some 1 billion people, have run up their own flags in the great dismantlement of empires since World War II, creating 60 new nations over the face of the earth. In the process they have also created, for themselves and for the world, a congeries of unstable and uneasy entities that are usually kept alive only by economic aid and stand constantly on the verge of erupting into turmoil. Nationhood is not an easy art to master, as Ghana, Nigeria and Indonesia have painfully learned in recent weeks.

Their troubles are particularly instructive, for most of the world's new nations do not have anything approaching even the modest resources of Ghana, Nigeria or Indonesia. Most of them are poor, primitive and ill-equipped for so much as the basics of nationhood. Some have capital cities that are not cities at all and government ministers who have not learned to administer. Government, in fact, is usually the biggest, and sometimes the only, industry in many new countries--and corruption is a way of life. Many of the new nations do not have minimal communications and transportation, or enough educated men to fill a new country's needs. In some cases, arbitrary national boundaries cut across ethnic groups, mock the rational use of resources, and defy any foreseeable hope of achieving distinct national identity.

Because it bears the heaviest legacy of colonialism, Africa teems with more new nation afflictions than anywhere else. But the problem of nations that are really not nations by any reasonable standards is worldwide: Latin America has British Guiana, which wants to go its own way on a shoestring; the Middle East has Yemen. Asia has its Laos and its Maldive Islands, neither of which makes much sense as a nation. In a different but equally difficult category is Pakistan, bigger and more populous than the others but separated into two parts by 1,000 miles of unfriendly land.

Heritage & Revolution

The problem is going to get worse long before it gets better. More new non-nations are waiting impatiently in the wings; Bechuanaland, Basutoland, British Guiana and Mauritius are all due to become independent this year, and Swaziland and South Arabia will follow soon afterward. Britain's Lord Caradon recently reported to the United Nations General Assembly that 50 colonial territories still remained to be freed around the world--31 in the British Empire alone. Since, in general, the weakest and least viable colonies are the last to be turned loose, the prospect is staggering. All of them, of course, soon apply for membership in the United Nations, where their equal voting power with such big nations as the U.S. and Russia has caused a whole new set of problems. This incongruous situation has moved Secretary-General U Thant to suggest that perhaps the U.N. might want to reconsider its criteria for admission in view of what he tactfully called "the recent phenomenon of the emergence of exceptionally small new states." Former U.N. official and Columbia University Dean Andrew Cordier puts it much more bluntly: "The concept of nationhood will be extended to absurdity," he says, if what he calls the "microstates" become full-fledged nations.

What constitutes a nation? Among political scientists, definitions differ. Johns Hopkins' Dr. Vernon McKay says that "a nation is a group of people who have a feeling of nationhood, based on common historical tradition, common cultural interests and, usually, common language." Rutgers Professor Neil McDonald suggests that the measure of a nation is "its capacity to maintain some kind of autonomy--political and economic--against its environment." The most sensible test of a nation's viability would seem to be economic sufficiency: the ability to support its people without massive outside aid. Such is not the case nowadays. Many statesmen and political scientists believe, in fact, that the whole idea of a "viable nation" is a 19th century concept that is no longer applicable. "Logic and nationalism rarely commingle," says University of Chicago's William Polk. "Nations don't go out of business in the 20th century just because of their apparent logical absurdity." The great postwar proliferation of such international agencies as the U.N. and the international development banks, the competition for loyalties in the cold war and, above all, the staying power of foreign aid practically ensure survival for any nation that wins independence, however great its problems. Anyone with half a chance gets a whole chance, as evidenced by the nearly $7 billion doled out to the new nations from the industrialized West and $500 million each year from the Communist bloc.

Furthermore, no one seriously questions the right of peoples to become nations, or suggests that they lapse into colonialism. Ever since Woodrow Wilson, self-determination has been the dominant political philosophy of the 20th century. The problem is, though, that right does not necessarily make might. In order to progress beyond mere survival, the new nations need a measure of economic heft and political substance, a chance to make sense in the long run by maturing into nations worthy of the name. Far too many of them raise their flags with little but a flagpole to go on. Considering only their economic demerits, World Bank President George Woods has estimated that 30 of the world's underdeveloped nations are at least "generations" away from anything resembling self-sustenance.

If today's world map looks like a conglomerate glob of silly putty, smashed by a hammer and stuck together again, it is because the new nations are in large part literally and lineally the heirs of their colonial history. Physically, they are artifacts of 19th century imperialism's division of the spoils, confined within arbitrary frontiers contrived by colonial mapmakers. Psychologically, they are the heirs of Europe's own fierce nationalism, which fueled the race for empire. As 19th century British Philosopher Walter Bagehot observed, political man is a highly imitative animal. The subjugated peoples of the empires resented and rejected colonialism, but they assimilated and accepted much of its trappings, casting about for the same status symbols that their masters had. This deep psychological need to cut the figure of nationhood for all to see is responsible for the imposing government palaces, the parliamentary maces, the conspicuous Rolls-Royces, the Western-run "national" airlines and the gleaming chancelleries that exist in many young nations that can hardly afford to print money on their own.

An Exhausting Task

The new nations are created so quickly and usually with such a lack of rational preparation that they spawn problems never faced by most of the older countries, which evolved their own nationhoods over centuries. The empire builders, for example, never were lashed by the obligation to improve the standard of living of those they ruled. Today the leaders of a new nation are soon in trouble if they do not do so--visibly and dramatically. They confront not one but several revolutions at once--political, economic, social, technological--and are thereby called on to make choices that Western statesmen never had to make. The evidence of how difficult those choices are, and of how unprepared the new nations are to make them, is everywhere at hand.

Simply getting a country in business at all can be a formidable task. Mauritania, for example, is practically a movable country, whose Moorish nomads wander after water in passportless circles through neighboring Mali and Algeria. Since every country must have a capital, Mauritania had to build one from scratch: Nouakchott (pop. 8,000), a clump of pastel cubes on a bleak stretch of sand dunes near the coast. In Laos, there are so few trained government elite--about 100 in all--that Cabinet making is essentially a game of musical chairs. Ethnic vivisection abounds nearly everywhere. The Somali peoples are split up among Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and French Somaliland; the Bas-Congo tribe is found in three nations, the Sawaba tribe in four. The reverse can be true as well: Laos, Nigeria and the Sudan, among others, are continuously rent by warring tribes that are unnaturally confined inside the same country.

Once in business, a new nation must establish embassies around the globe and send a mission to the U.N.--tasks that frequently exhaust both their finances and talent. Occasionally a new nation admits that it just cannot afford the overhead; although it is a U.N. member, Gambia has no U.N. mission, told the Assembly it might not be able to afford the minimum annual U.N. club fee of $40,000. The Maldive Islands near Ceylon are so poor that the U.N. must forward their mail through the Maldivian Philatelic Agency, located in Manhattan down the street from Macy's. Rwanda President Gregoire Kayibanda's chief government handicap is even more serious: he has no telephone in his palace in Kigali. Periodically he sends a minister driving off to neighboring Uganda to find out what is happening in the world. Rwanda is, however, progressing; until recently, it had only a barter economy based on cows. National pride also engenders pretensions as well as problems. Impoverished Dahomey boasts a $6,000,000 Presidential residence that is larger than Buckingham Palace. Mauritania has a Directorate of Forests and Waters, though it has no forests and precious little water. Upper Volta refers to its single quarter-mile of dual highway as the Champs Elysees.

The Fabric of Corruption

Such strutting at government often goes hand in hand with virulent corruption and an Old Boy monopoly of government jobs. In many countries in both Africa and Asia, every job from minister down to doorman is considered a sinecure to be purchased. Corruption is so much a companion of nationhood in some countries that it has become an integral part of the fabric of government. When the army took over in Nigeria in January, they found that Finance Minister Okotie-Eboh had arbitrarily raised tariffs to protect his own private shoe factory, and for a price was willing to do the same for others. One Laotian general on a salary of $250 a month supported his family and 32 relatives in style--all in the same house--by letting opium smugglers use army trucks and planes to move the stuff. A record of sorts was set by Burma's first Minister of Commerce and Industry, whose industriousness at graft netted him $800,000 in government funds before independence was yet a year old.

With pomp and flummery piled atop economic and ethnic chaos, democracy inevitably has a hard time. Though nearly all began by being governed in mufti, some dozen of the new postwar nations are now ruled by their military establishments. More and more, the military-officer corps plays the role of constitutional monarchy with emergency power. In the past nine months, seven African nations have been taken over by the military. "It is these men," says Gabriel Almond, president of the American Political Science Association, "who are initially most appalled at the signs of corruption and breakdown." New-nation armies by and large are not only the most honest, disciplined and organized elite in their countries but, paradoxically, the most democratic force around.

In the wake of the latest round of coups, Lord Caradon worried aloud that "people are going to say: 'These miserable little places should never have been allowed to exist.' They are going to reject these nations with disgust. That would be a bloody disaster." Nations have to begin somehow; occasionally just plain good luck comes along to give them a boost. A few years ago, feudal Libya was written off as a hopeless non-nation--until oil was found floating beneath the deserts. Barren Mauritania may yet bloom from the rich iron and phosphate deposits in its crust. Some unlikely nations have been struggling along for many years--little San Marino smack in the middle of Italy, Haiti and the Dominican Republic--and there is not much hope that their situation will improve. On the other hand, a minuscule country like Switzerland, divided into several parts by language and custom, is proof that some fairly difficult obstacles to nationhood can be surmounted.

A Safety Net

Today's new states are born into a large and particularly complicated world. One of its complications is, of course, the cold war rivalry, which so far has worked to the new nations' advantage by providing two competitive founts of aid. "The bipolar power structure provides," says Harvard's Joseph Nye, "a safety net underneath these nations as they play on their tightrope." If ever the U.S. and the Soviet Union get together and agree on spheres of influence, however, the new nations may find themselves with no net to fall into; in the interim, they had better acquire some bounce. The 20th century's other complications do not help either. The non-nations find themselves small and technologically blighted in a world that is fast integrating its trade and increasing its industrial and scientific prowess. Most of them simply cannot get up the ante to enter the race, let alone run the course on their meager human and natural resources. There is always the prospect of neo-imperialism, in which the stronger new nations would take over the weaker, but the votes and voices of other small nations in the U.N. are a deterrent to such country grabbing.

Probably the most sensible way in which the new nations can improve their lot is by forming federations: getting together to face common problems and opportunities while maintaining a healthy measure of separate identity. Economic federation is certainly the most promising form at the moment, despite some early failures. What English Economist Barbara Ward calls "technocratic federations" are likely to sprout in the future--and the young nations should begin planning how and when they can form and join them. This would happily preserve their proud national prerogatives while offering the benefits of a large economic mass and a sharing of modern technology. The Central American Common Market has demonstrated what economic association can do for underdeveloped countries: in five years it has more than trebled the trade of its five members and set their economies to humming. LAFTA--the Latin American Free Trade Area--is finally beginning to move, and Britain is pushing its West Indian territories toward an economic federation as the price of freedom. The Central African Republic, Chad and Cameroun have formed a small common market.

Farther down the road is the prospect of political federation. So far, it has proved an unsuccessful experiment, torpedoed in several instances by prickly national and even tribal sensitivities and by the fear of bureaucrats that cooperation would eliminate duplication of ministries--and hence their jobs. Though it is a geographical entity, for example, Africa suffers from such deep and profound differences as to make it seem like a collection of different worlds. More over, there, are no African, Asian or Latin American countries today that show much interest in revising their borders or totally merging with other nations. Still, given the number and the weaknesses of new nations, the possibility of future political federations is a real one. In the long view of history, after the passion of nationalism has cooled, after the adolescence of the underdeveloped countries succumbs to maturity, some form of union may be the answer to many of the problems of today's young nations. Some day there could even be something like a United States of Africa. The new nations--powerless, bothersome and somewhat bizarre as many of them seem--will continue to proliferate for a long time. It seems inevitable that, at some point, the flow will have to be reversed, bringing to federations of small nations the stature in world affairs to which at present they can only vainly aspire.

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