Market-state versus nation-state

Those who see honour in the nation-state for its warlike nature should realise that dishonour lies in being poor.

After the Renaissance, city-states evolved into nation-states. They were supposed to be sovereign. In the League of Nations in the 20th century, all of them were recognised as such, but it did not work. In the United Nations, five states were recognised as “more” sovereign, expressing their sovereignty through a veto. This withdrawal of external sovereignty from most states has worked.

If total external sovereignty is expendable, internal sovereignty is not. When internal sovereignty is violated, the state begins to wilt and die. (Pakistan is beginning to look like a wilting state, not because its external sovereignty is being violated through the IMF, but because its internal sovereignty is being violated by al Qaeda and its client militias.) In all sorts of ways, external sovereignty remains a myth.

Nation-states give rise to nationalism, trying to achieve internal unity by designating an external enemy with whom a ‘just war’ has to be fought. After the two world wars in the 20th century, the nation-state in Europe began to wilt and nationalism began to be recognised as a villain’s refuge. The 21st century is seeing the emergence of a third version: the market-state. This state has a deliberately suppressed external sovereignty, no articulated foreign policy, and is devoted to trade.

Southeast Asia and the Gulf are witnessing the birth of this new state. The model for Southeast Asia at least is the European Union, since 1964. South Asia also has a vague market-state vision for itself since 1985, when Saarc was set up, but here the nation-state’s warrior instinct is still strong.

In The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History, (Allen Lane 2002), Philip Bobbit writes: “The market-state assesses its economic success or failure by its society’s ability to secure more and better goods and services, but in contrast to the nation-state it does not see the State as more than a minimal provider or distributor” (p.229). The nation-state has “national honour” which it judges on the basis of external sovereignty; the market-state doesn’t have national honour as a yardstick but seeks respectability through economic success.

In South Asia, it is impossible to secure honour without a standing army. In Pakistan, this year the army has done over a month-long expensive military exercise while people were committing suicide for the lack of food. Saarc, which is supposed to prevent war by transforming the region into a “common market”, is roundly condemned in Pakistan as a grand deception. Asean has set itself the goal of complete conversion to a market-state union by 2015.

The emergence of the market-state in the Gulf may offer an alternative to the Muslim world confused between the nation-state and religious state. In the UAE, people of many faiths work for the same market. Industrialist Razzaq Dawood says he makes his profits from a company in the UAE that employs many Indians too. Yet India is not allowed to invest in Pakistan while hardly anyone other than India is willing to visit. Drunk with the wine of nationalism – jazba-e-qaum parasti sey sarshar – Pakistanis reject building of transit roads which could open up the country to extra-regional markets.

In the market-state, the only ‘national interest’ is the economic advantage. Those who see honour in the nation-state because of its warlike nature should realise that dishonour actually lies in being poor. There was a lesson in the divine choice of the Prophet (pbuh) from a trading clan, who did not want to wage war. In fact, he established the market-state ethic — for which he was bestowed especially market-related epithets ‘amin’ and ‘sadiq’ — even before he was a Prophet.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2010.