The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism

Abstract

In his first book since the much-acclaimed and much-discussed Barbarian Sentiments, William Pfaff writes an enthralling narrative of the fall of empires and rise of nations - and with them, of that modern nationalism which has become the most powerful political force in the contemporary world. Born in the revolution against oppression and dynasties, nationalism has both created nations and ruined them. It paved the way for Nazism but eventually destroyed it. It forced Soviet armies out of Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, and eventually crushed Communism. It brought down the European colonial empires, but has left Africa confronting anarchy, and much of Asia dominated by ambitious and authoritarian new nations. It is the enemy of internationalist ideology, yet becomes an ideology itself, employing the apparatus of totalitarian control in search of utopias placed in the past rather than the future

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