Rana Dasgupta maps the decay of Britain and America, but his vision of what comes next is far less convincing than his diagnosis
It is apposite that ‘After Nations, The Making and Unmaking of a World Order’ – written by English novelist turned historian Rana Dasgupta – should be published as Donald Trump is desperately seeking to extract America from an ill-judged and calamitous war in Iran.
‘After Nations’ is an analysis of the rise and fall of the modern nation state – which Dasgupta sees as a uniquely powerful, secular political entity that first emerged in Western Europe some 300 years ago. The nation state’s theological foundation was reformation Christianity, its political philosophy was enlightenment liberalism, and its economic base was the then emerging capitalist economy.
For Dasgupta, the modern Western nation state is an intrinsically exploitative and aggressive political organization, which derived its unprecedented power from capitalist exploitation of its own citizens, and an even more brutal domination of its colonial possessions.
He views Britain and America as having been the most powerful modern nation states. Britain was the first modern nation state, and was the dominant global power from the 18th century until World War I. Thereafter, America supplanted a declining Britain, becoming the domineering global hegemon after World War II – by means of establishing a new global economic and political world order.
That American-controlled world order is now collapsing, and contemporary America and other Western nation states find themselves beset by acute internal crises that, because of their intrinsically exploitative and aggressive nature, they are incapable of resolving.
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