From American Patriotism in a Global Society

by Betty Jean Craige, University of Georgia

[published by State University of New York Press, 1996]

Conclusion

The international atomic weapons race exemplifies the persistence of tribalist values in our own time; it also makes urgent the recognition that warfare in a global society does not enhance the security of any nation. Unfortunately, most people in militarily powerful nations still believe that their own well-being depends to some extent on their nation's military strength. The success of the Bush Administration in "kicking the Vietnam syndrome" reinforced in the United States the demand for a strong and ready military "defense."

. . . In writing this book I came to realize that groups, like individuals, experience tension between the desire to cooperate with others and the fear of destruction by others. Tribalism, perhaps the social behavior most fundamental to the human species, will counter whatever force emerges that threatens a group's identity, integrity, autonomy, or survival; and tribalism will decline in strength only when the group feels safe. An ethnically and ideologically heterogeneous society--global or national--will have many groups that feel unsafe.

. . .

To some people, political holism is the appropriate ethical response to globalization, because of its commitment to democratic governance in which minority interests are respected. Political holists do not regard cultural homogenization as desirable, recognizing that in any system diversity is natural and beneficial to the whole. What matters to political holists is that all parts of the whole remain healthy. Oppression of one part by another--whether the oppression is military, economic, political, or cultural--is disadvantageous to all, because by disabling part of the system, oppression renders the whole system politically unstable. Social injustice stimulates the desire for weapons and provides motivation for war.

. . .

While making groups threatened by irreversible change belligerent, globalization may ultimately be a force for peace among nations. Global trade connects the largest economies of the world to the smallest, establishing interdependencies that may render international warfare self-defeating. Because, in the holistic model, a system does not function well if all its constituents are not healthy, leaders of the wealthy and powerful nations may come to recognize the advantages of strengthening the nations that are now poor and powerless. Eventually, the present dominance order may give way to a new global organization of cultures and nations governed by international law in which the voices of all are heard.

The injustices and outbreaks of war occurring during the transition to a global community ruled by law should not be mistaken for effects of international law itself. The human population of the planet is undergoing the same transformation to democratic governance--that is, governance by law and not by men--that individual nations have undergone during the past two hundred years. The shift from tribal values to democratic values, involving the assumptions of universal human rights, legal equality, and rule by law, should lead ultimately to a more stable global system of nations. That may take another two hundred years. Then, if international law, established democratically, protects the system's least powerful members against domination by its most powerful, tribalism may be inconsequential.

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