Nationalism is not strength, it’s severance
When nations cut their ties, and seek malevolent conspirators, World War creeps…
We are closer to a world war footing than at any point in our lifetimes. Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, the Red Sea: each is a matchbox in a dry forest. Yet the loudest political voices in the West are not calling for connection but for retreat: shut the borders, sever the ties, stand alone. It feels strong, it feels sovereign, but it is a trap. And the dwindling band of liberal voices, maligned and uncertain, propping up the fragile ruins of the twentieth century, are too afraid to challenge populism. They drift in a trance of paralysis, silent while the ground shifts beneath them.
The Course of Empire Destruction, Thomas Cole, 1836
Proxy wars are nothing new, but when they collide with that silence, and with the dress rehearsal of restriction we lived through in pandemic lockdown, the effect is different. The incubator of rationing, limited travel, the inability to see loved ones, the constant fear of the unknown: all of it gave our generation a faint echo of what our grandparents and great-grandparents endured in times of true world war. And it reminds us of the simplest truth: when survival is at stake, the ties that bind matter.
If you do not have skin in the game, you are more likely to kill the game. That is true in business, in families, in nations. When countries invest in one another, they are forced to argue inside the same house rather than burn the house down. Trade, migration, shared culture: they are messy, they bring friction, but they build stakes in survival. Sever those stakes and there is no cost to destruction.
Consider Israel. Cloaked in fear, it now acts toward its neighbours with a brutality shaped by indifference. Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon: each holds the possibility of isolationist expansion, yet all are irrelevant to Israel’s economic survival. Instead, Isreal’s lifeline runs through distant allies in Washington and what remains of support in Western Europe. That distance matters. Without local interdependence, there is no restraint. It is easier to treat a neighbour as disposable when their existence adds nothing to your prosperity.
The nationalist story is simple, seductive, and false. It tells you borders equal power. It tells you shutting people out is control. But it ignores the oldest lesson in human psychology: it is easier to kill what you do not know, easier to erase what you do not depend on. Nationalism is not strength. It is severance.
Globalisation is flawed, sometimes grotesque. It creates billionaires faster than it creates stability. It hollows out communities and leaves scars. Yet it has also been the quietest peace treaty in human history. Every container ship on the water is one less convoy of tanks on the road. Every student visa, every export order, every joint venture makes war that little bit harder to start.
And as the brittle facade of globalisation and neoliberalism crumbles, the putrescent death mask of nationalism, populism, and fascism takes its place. That mask means only one thing: war is inevitable, unless we imagine peace. Not a flawless peace, but a peace nonetheless. Peace does not mean the absence of poverty. Peace does mean the absence of total destruction.
The choice before us is not between globalisation and sovereignty. It is between fractured connection and absolute destruction. Between the managed disorder of interdependence and the unmanaged violence of isolation.
We cannot afford the fantasy that going it alone makes us safer. The opposite is true. The more skin we have in each other’s game, the harder it is for anyone to end it. Globalisation needs reform, not retreat. Interdependence is not frailty. It is the only strength that lasts.