Is the Post-Nation State Part of Our Dystopic Future?

It has become increasingly clear that the world is potentially on the cusp of a major evolution thanks, in large part, to highly influential non-governmental organizations like the World Economic Forum.  The cult of WEF has many of its stooges placed in governments around the world, serving as conduits for Klaus Schwab's Great Reset, Build Back Better or Fourth Industrial Revolution or whatever buzz phrase of the day most closely reflects the WEF founder and leader's vision for the world.

 

Let's start with a definition of a concept that is rarely discussed.

"Postnationalism is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to cross-nation and self-organized or supranational and global entities as well as local entities."   

 

One of the mantras of the World Economic Forum is the end of the nation state as we know it.  Here is a article which appeared on the WEF's website back in November 2017 which derides the concept of nation states as obsolete, in part because of the internet:

 

Here are some quotes from the article:

 

"The diminishing power and influence of nation states is often attributed to globalization. Globalization - the rapid integration of money, ideas and culture - is said to erode their authority and autonomy....

 

Yet the character of globalization transformed in the latter decades of the 20th century, becoming decidedly more predatory and destructive. Hyper-globalization was characterized by massive financial deregulation, the acceleration of capital flows, and the disintegration of fixed exchange rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Multinational companies played states against each other in a bid to lower corporate taxes, relax regulations and maximize profits....

 

In a genuinely globalized world where everyone and everything is connected, the relevance of nation states is coming under scrutiny from above and below. Many people - especially the newly digitally empowered – are less wedded to the idea of a nation state than were their predecessors. Turning to internet-enabled communities, they are seeking out alternative identities, whether animated by faith, ethnicity, language, class or sexuality. Augmented by social media, the fault lines of identity politics are exerting new pressure on nation states and traditional political parties. Globalization, which at one time played a unifying force, is triggering ever greater localization....

 

A dangerous consequence of the retreat to competing nationalisms is the accompanying decline in international cooperation. Analysts like Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini describe the current predicament as a “G Zero world”, where no single country, region or coalition – whether the G20 or G8 – is able or willing to assume global leadership. Instead, there is resistance, in some cases even hostility, to a multilateral architecture designed to secure global security and trade. Instead, the losers from hyper-globalization are fighting back, railing against migrants and calling for more protectionism."

 

The author then states why nationalist movements are a bad thing:

 

"The timing (of the nationalist movement) could hardly be worse. Global commitments are urgently required to reverse global warming, curb the threat of pre-emptive nuclear attack, prevent pandemics and superbugs, and respond to population dislocation and the protracted wars giving rise to it. As the global mood sours, grudging half measures are all that nation states seem prepared to muster. Not surprisingly, the international institutions created to address these challenges – chief among them the United Nations Security Council – are paralysed to act. For their part, economically powerful cities are stepping up, but still lack the political power to take their place at the global decision-making table."

While many despised the Trump Administration, his world philosophy was clearly one of "America First" in complete contrast to the small "l" liberal globalist/postnationalist view.

 

The post-nation state plays into the United Nation's vision of a global parliament, a particularly interesting thought since the WEF has close ties with the United Nations as shown here:

 

With this in mind, let's look at a few quotes from a paper entitled the "State of Davos - The camel's nose in the tents of global governance" by David Sogge which looks at the WEF's post-nation state agenda with my bolds throughout:

 

https://www.tni.org/files/download/state_of_davos_chapter.pdf

 

"By custom and by law, the formal management of international affairs is a matter for sovereign nations and their representatives. Of course global high politics has long been an opaque realm managed by elites. Yet the inescapable, but risky work of transnational governance should ideally occur through open, accountable public authority guided by democratic norms. That is not a new idea. After all, the UN Charter begins with “We the peoples” and affirms the “equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”.

 

Today the defense of those principles, though never robust, seems weaker than ever. The camel of private interests, having made itself at home in the tents of domestic political life, has today pushed its nose and much more into the rickety tents of international governance. Helping it has been a shrewd camel-trader, a broker of corporate ideas and networks, the World Economic Forum (WEF). Its annual invitation-only gatherings in Davos, Switzerland, have given rise to the half-mocking term “Davos Man”. That archetype represents a global elite who “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations”.

 

This chapter pursues several storylines converging around a simple proposition widely held in the private sector and vigorously pushed by the WEF: When it comes to tackling global problems, nation-states and their public politics are not up to the job. Their old, run-down institutions should be re-fitted to serve a sleek new system in which ‘stakeholders’ –- that is, governments, ‘civil society’ and business, chiefly as represented by transnational corporations –- will together manage the world’s affairs. Nation-states are to become just one participant among several holding authority over us all.

 

Here is a distillation of the WEF's new post-national future:

 

"At its core, WEF is advocating against the organization of international affairs based on the progressive development of universally recognized frameworks. In short, its position might be summarized as:

 

1.) Universal frameworks out, ad hoc private sector and NGO frameworks in.

 

2.) Inter-governmentally adopted standards out, self- selection of international standards in.

 

3.) Effective implementation by international organizations and governments out, corporate opt-in/opt- out implementation systems in.

 

4.) Progress on international conventions out, self- enforcing systems in.

 

While we can write the concept of a post-nation state future as so much political bafflegab, Big Business (aka the Global Capitalists) is highly motivated to take advantage of a post-nation state future which, through the implementation of multiple government-created business agreements like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will allow them to override the sovereignty of nations and allow the unfettered flow of capital (money).  This new reality will benefit one very small group of individuals, the global ruling class who form the foundation of the cult of the World Economic Forum.

 

With all of this in mind, let's close with a quote from Canada's current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau which appeared in the New York Times shortly after he was elected Canada's Prime Minister in 2015 and whose government is very closely linked to the World Economic Forum through Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum and other members of his cabinet who are alumni of the WEF's Global Young Leaders cult:

 

"And on the subject of national security, Trudeau’s critics say he’s a lightweight and a dangerous one. Trudeau’s most radical argument is that Canada is becoming a new kind of state, defined not by its European history but by the multiplicity of its identities from all over the world. His embrace of a pan-cultural heritage makes him an avatar of his father’s vision. ‘‘There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,’’ he claimed. ‘‘There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.’’

 

...and, in response, we have this from the University of British Columbia:

 

"For the current Prime Minister to contend that Canada has no core identity, it risks the implication of Canada's history, traditions, and principles as not having a fundamental role in defining who the people are. In this way, the Prime Minister's conceptualization of a post-national state seems to go against a collective sense of belonging. In addition, part of Canada's history includes being a settler state. The genocidal desire to eliminate the Indigenous peoples makes up a substantial part of Canadian history through policies of direct extermination, displacement or assimilation. The Indigenous peoples' sense of belonging to the land is already such a contrived issue. In saying that Canada has no core identity, it risks erasure of the history that discriminated against their people and it also diminishes the consequences of immigration on the Indigenous communities. Immigrants are essentially settlers who also participate in the dispossession of Indigenous lands.

 

If Trudeau's definition of Canada as a post-national state focuses solely on celebrating diversity and welcoming newcomers without notions of integration, there is a possibility that diversity will turn Canada into fragmented pockets of ethnic enclaves. Whether or not the Prime Minister thinks that this is desirable is not clear, but could a post-national state practically be in Canada's future?"

 

It's obvious that the post-national concept can be viewed in two ways; the first viewpoint is that of the liberal class where political control shifts from local and national entities to international entities like the United Nations and even non-governmental organizations like the World Economic Forum and the second is that of the international business class which views post-nationalism from an economic viewpoint with the internationalization of markets through trade agreements where borders to commerce no longer exist, allowing for ever-increasing profitability as jobs move to the regions with the lowest labour costs and environmental restrictions.  In either case, it is not the serf class that will benefit from the evolution to the post-nation state world.