The Politics of Nationalism, Human Development and Global Peace

Abstract

This paper investigates whether nationalism fosters human development and global peace. Nationalism is a political ideology that strives to unite people to give birth to nations underpinning common identities, including religion, race, culture, or language. Nationalism is based on psychology rather than logic. The core question is whether nationalism gives birth to nations or makes human development. Human development leads to peace. This means that giving birth to nations and the human development of its people are distinct political phenomena. To explain the distinction between two phenomena, the paper distinguishes two kinds of nationalism: negative nationalism and productive nationalism. Negative nationalism embraces the non-cosmopolitan approach, which divides humanity into different nations and creates political hatred among them. Most supporters of negative nationalism humiliate, exploit, discriminate, torture, and exclude people of other nations. This kind of nationalism is inconsistent with human development and global peace. In contrast, productive nationalism is consistent with cosmopolitanism which supports cooperation among people within and outside their states. Productive nationalism promotes self-respect, freedom, dignity, equality, and solidarity in society. Productive nationalism cultivates human development and peaceful co-existence among people. So, this paper repudiates negative nationalism and promotes productive nationalism, which fosters cooperation among people across the world.