Since talk of the globalization of the world’s economy began some 35 years ago, the demise of the nation-state has been widely predicted. Actually, the best and the brightest have been predicting the nation-state’s demise for 200 years. Since the early Industrial Revolution, it has been argued that economic interdependence would prove stronger than nationalist passions. Kant was the was the first to say so. The “moderates” of 1860 believed it until the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. The Liberals of Austria-Hungary believed to the very end that their economy was far too integrated to be split into separate countries. So, quite clearly, did Mikhail Gorbachev. But whenever in the last 200 years political passions and nation-state politics have collided with economic rationality, political passions and the nation-state have won.
