At the root of every war, even a victorious war, is a failure of politics, for surely it is the task of any worthwhile politics to avoid war. Otherwise, we would have to admit that war can be a legitimate instrument of national politics, in which case our nationalism would be intrinsically of the same type as the ideology of jihad which we claim to be fighting.

We should also note that nationalism is above all an ideology that goes hand in hand with a state-building project. Liberals often make the distinction between "good" and "bad" nationalisms by separating the "good" states from the "bad". American nationalism is good, they say, because it enabled the creation of a tolerant and democratic state. The German nationalism of the Nazis was bad because it was the ideology of a racist, intolerant and authoritarian state. But ... tolerant and prosperous democracies were built at home in Britain, France, Holland and the United States at the same time as, and some would say, because of, militarist, exploitative and racist imperialist expansion abroad.

Today, nationalism is passe in the West. State-building at home is no longer on the agenda. The imperial project too has moved on. Now what stands in the way of western hegemony is Third World nationalism. The obstacles to a liberal world order are atavistic, ethnic loyalties, autarchic economic regimes and corrupt and authoritarian Third World states ...

Those critics of nationalism in Third world countries who declare themselves to be citizens of the world or global cosmopolitans buy straight into the new imperial discourse of the West ... A more robust and persuasive criticism can only emerge, I believe, by searching within the nation-state, not beyond it.

Such a critical effort must avow, and speak on behalf of, not the dominant or the most popular or even the majority version of the national ideology, but those who are suppressed and marginalised by the existing nation-state. It must, for instance, interrogate the nation-state from the position of the inhabitant of Kashmir who has never been asked if he is willing to let the Indian and Pakistani governments decide on his national fate. It must speak from the position of the Muslim resident of Assam who has to prove, endlessly and with inevitable futility, that he is not a natural subversive.

There are differences between more and less democratic states ... The irony is that even "good" nationalism, in times of crisis, feels compelled to lower its own standards. The slide from nationalism to jingoism is often quick but imperceptible ... That those who should know better timidly endorse the surge of "national unity" or choose to stay silent. (Source: The Radiance, 12-18 September, 1999)