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Especially in America and Britain, the new nationalists have also drawn battle lines between themselves and globalists, who believe that global markets are beneficial and global coordination is essential to confront planetary challenges. Once again, the real divide is actually within: urban versus rural, wealthy versus underclass, and young versus old. Urban youth strongly voted against Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK. Neither Brexit nor Trump therefore presents compelling evidence of a durable new nationalism, though both reveal the fragility of consensual democracy in countries so divided by geography and generations.
This is a reminder that the new nationalists (especially in the West) cater largely to an older generation, with one foot in the grave—and will follow them into it. They represent the last hurrah of a white overclass that managed to masquerade its identity politics as the national interest. The Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid poignantly captures this seductive nostalgia: “We are told not only that movement through geographies can be stopped but also movement through time can be too, that we can return to the past, to a better past, when our country, our race, our religion were truly great. All we must accept is division. The division of humanity into natives and migrants.”6 But the only certainty in this thesis is that its advocates will soon be dead. Elderly xenophobes are headed for what Hamid terms the “big Brexit in the sky.”
By contrast, today’s youth can hardly be considered chest-thumping nationalists. According to the US Election Survey, only 45 percent of American millennials even consider their national identity important (versus 70 percent of boomers and 60 percent of Gen-Xers). Furthermore, half of American millennials believe the US is no greater than any other nation, a significant drop from the 75 percent of boomers who view America as exceptional. (PragerU’s vacuous five-minute video titled Why You Should Be a Nationalist has fewer than 4 million views.) In previous generations (or centuries), one might have assumed that ungrateful youth would eventually mature into nationalist attitudes, but today’s young have far better access to information and can judge for themselves whether their nation is actually deserving of gloating self-praise.
Just as important is the fact that today’s young populations hold demonstrably pro-globalist attitudes. In a survey covering twenty Western nations, an overwhelming 77 percent of respondents aged eighteen to twenty-four felt that “globalization is a force for good” versus only 11 percent taking a negative view.7 The more youth move and mingle, the more globalism is entrenched and nationalism recedes. The work of scholars such as Ronald Inglehart and Jonathan Haidt suggests that educated youth carry globalist traits and society’s values evolve with them. Maybe the difference between a globalist and a nationalist then is that the former accepts reality and the latter does not.
Youth are also wise to believe that populist politics are a bigger threat to national stability than immigration is. As with nationalism, populism is much more a political movement to exploit grievance than a platform to actually address it. The history of populism is a lengthy roster of regimes skilled at rallying voters behind alarmist rhetoric and calls for drastic reforms—but achieving next to nothing. From Latin American socialists to Arab Islamists, populists have never failed to fail. The worst Covid-19 infection rates were in countries with populist nationalist regimes such as the US, UK, India, and Brazil.
Poland and Hungary have most frequently been held up as harbingers of a pan-European populist wave. In Poland, the right-wing, anti-immigrant Law and Order Party barely clings to power after being clearly rejected by the country’s youth in the July 2020 election. Hungary’s Victor Orban, icon of Europe’s illiberal strongmen, made anti-immigration a pillar of his agenda (not that migrants actually wanted to stay in Hungary with Germany so close). But predictably, once worker shortages meant that ordinary Hungarians had to work overtime and weekend shifts (without pay), public rallies quickly turned against him. Meanwhile, young, green, and technocratic liberals have swept the mayoral elections in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Bratislava. In small countries, there’s only one job bigger than being mayor of the capital—so we won’t be referring to their countries as nationalist strongmen regimes much longer.
The megaphones utilized by populists are their own undoing. Whether on the left or the right, those who gain the spotlight by preaching populist messages make clear on a daily basis where the buck stops. High on emotion and low on substance, they claim to represent a backlash against “business as usual,” yet quickly invite a backlash against themselves. In Italy, the grassroots Sardines movement, for example, has been credited with taking the wind out of Matteo Salvini’s sails with a message that they—ordinary, centrist, working-class—are the people, not the bombastic fringe.8 Instead of wannabe DJ drop-outs, Italy’s most recent prime ministers have been the academic lawyer Giuseppe Conte followed by central banker Mario Draghi. Similarly, after a decade of playing “Grexit” chicken with Brussels, the music has stopped on Greece’s merry-go-round of populist parties. (The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party also disappeared, exposed for murderous thuggery, its true vocation.) In their place, the New Democracy Party is focused on what a government should do: encourage investment and create jobs. Technocrats may be less sentimental, but populists’ incompetence guarantees a short political lifespan. And remember that in the largest and most important European states—Germany and France—technocratic pragmatism prevails. Angela Merkel, Europe’s elder stateswoman, used the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II to denounce the very idea of “the nation-state alone.”
Europe—the birthplace of the ethnically defined nation-state—is also where nation-states are being most rapidly diluted through demographic decline, migration, intermarriage, and legal changes to citizenship rights. Europeans once divided themselves violently by nationality; now they have a generation of “Erasmus babies” born of Gen-X parents who met during cross-border exchange programs—the first generation of post-national Europeans. Furthermore, both the number of migrants into Europe and the diversity of where they come from are growing. No matter what you hear from far right political parties today, supply and demand remains a far more powerful force than any populist movement in history. If there is a deep and irreconcilable tension between ethnonationalism and immigration as economic necessity, not a single Western country ultimately lands in the former category.
There is an extreme scenario in which demographic expansion goes further than societies can politically and culturally manage. By that point, however, turning back the demographic clock won’t be possible; the choice will be between building an inclusive new national identity or civil war. An older generation may well cling to their nostalgic notions, but that’s a luxury today’s youth and future generations can’t afford.
America has never been more ethnically diverse than today. In fact, the only counties in America that have become less diverse are those that were already mostly Hispanic populated and have become even more so, such as around Miami or along the Mexican border of Texas. Year after year, the US, UK, Canada, and Germany rank as the world’s top immigrant destinations. This is both a reminder that populism is fated to fail but also a warning that it’s here to stay, since the presence of migrants gives populists something to rail against. But the fact that populists remain sufficiently obstinate in democratic politics to prevent political progress is precisely why more and more people—particularly the young—want to have an escape hatch. If their countries tilt too far toward political extremism in either direction, they’ll rush for the exits.
Young people choose destinations not based on exclusive identity but rather, as nation branding expert Simon Anholt explains, whether a country is admired or scorned. Not surprisingly, there is an inverse correlation between those countries most chauvinistic about their identity and the admiration they command worldwide. A hypothetical world in which each person could choose only one citizenship would be deeply embarrassing for the nationalist leaders in Turkey, Russia, and Brazil, given how keen their youth are to abandon ship.
This is what makes the currently vogue notion of “civilizational states” bent on ethnocentric imperialism little more than a pseudointellectual abstraction. In reality, their underlying demographics often point to dilution rather than purification. Russia and Turkey are most conservatives’ poster children for civilizational revanchism. But Russia has a growing population of Muslims and Turkic minorities from former Soviet republics, while ethnic Russians have the highest death rate. As much as Putin would hate to admit it, he can’t rebuild the Soviet Union without accepting the Soviet Union’s vast ethnic diversity from Baltic to Asiatic peoples. For its part, Turkey has more Kurdish citizens and Arab migrants than ever. If Erdogan genuinely wants to resurrect the Ottoman empire, he’ll also need to do so demographically, for the Ottomans presided over a dizzying array of ethnicities and faiths, from the Balkans to Iraq to Egypt. As with Russia, minorities are scapegoated in bad economic times, but long-term success hinges on turning them into assets.
History rewards empires who forge shared identity and punishes civilizations who put themselves above the rest. Throughout history, successful empires, such as the Romans and Mongols, have been built on diversity and inclusion rather than singular ethnic dominance. A “civilizational state” in demographic decline will in due course not amount to much of either a civilization or a state.
Strongmen pursuing an agenda of civilizational pride may want to reset the clock to a time when there was a coherent national identity, but younger generations have no idea what that looks like other than in grandparents’ photo albums. Inevitably, each generation is ever less anchored in a single dominant tribe. The nation doesn’t make people; people make the nation.
Diversity with harmony?
All of this applies in spades to the world’s most ethnically diverse large country: India. Its present leader, Narendra Modi, is a majoritarian populist who speaks of a “New India” that is Hindu-centric rather than secular.IV The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) denied millions of Muslim migrants from Bangladesh the right to citizenship, while the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) turns Muslims without formal birth certificates into second-class noncitizens. But for all Modi’s assaults on Muslim freedoms, India remains on track to have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world (more than Indonesia or Pakistan) within the next two decades. Indian Muslims are moving to more Muslim-populated areas, including villages—but they’re not leaving India. A dozen Indian states have declared they won’t back the CAA, making them potential magnet destinations for Muslims. Meanwhile, the electorate is more interested in economic reforms than cultural tutelage. Indian youth rallied behind Modi for his infrastructure investments, focus on job creation, non-dynastic background, and bootstrapping swagger, but now many have turned on him just as quickly for his economic follies and divisive chauvinism. They don’t need their identity prescribed to them. India’s masses of disgruntled farmers were similarly unfazed when Modi labeled their protests “anti-national.” Modi will learn that if he overplays his hand, he could perversely accelerate the very fracturing he set out to reverse.
China also has several dozen ethnic minorities, but neither they nor foreigners taken together represent more than a tiny percentage of China’s 1.4 billion mostly Han population. Han nationalists are nonetheless bent on denying the prominent role that Mongols, Manchus, Sui, and other ethnicities have played in China’s historical success and the genetic diversity embedded in the society’s fabric. The ongoing pogroms to cleanse Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongolians of their identities will lead many more to flee to India, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia respectively. China is an empire, but historically a more multi-civilizational one than its current leaders are willing to acknowledge.
Conscription: The test of nationalism
When I finished high school in Germany, all my (male) friends were required to report to the Bundeswehr for military service, with a minority opting instead for Zivildienst (civil service). Skipping out on military service was unthinkable. Only a very good medical excuse—or serious claim to be a conscientious objector (Wehrdienstverweiger)—could secure exemption and a route to civil service instead. Based on letters I received, it seems both military and civil service were equally monotonous. After all, it was the mid-1990s and Western Europe was enjoying the post–Cold War peace. Pressure had been steadily mounting to reduce the term of military service from eighteen months to one year or less. By 2011, the inertia—and the lacuna—could no longer hold. Germany switched to an all-volunteer army, making it (as in America) a career choice, often a very temporary one. In 2018, Germany’s CDU party floated the idea of bringing back military service to compensate for plummeting troop numbers, mostly as a gesture pandering to the far right that supported the move. It was ridiculed by everyone else.
Attitudes toward conscription present the most damning picture of the so-called “return of nationalism.” Perhaps no issue more clearly embodies the gaping generational divide across many societies—both East and West—than the duty to protect one’s country. Bertrand Russell defined patriotism as the “willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” By that measure, today’s youth are the most unpatriotic generation in history.
Across Europe, youth have rejected any whiff of government imposition in their sacred post-adolescent lives. Conscription has been abolished or the time commitment heavily reduced. Even Switzerland—of which it was famously said: “Switzerland does not have an army; it is an army”—has rapidly declining rates of military participation. For the older Swiss generation, bonds formed during military service translated into lucrative jobs in the banking industry. But with youth today more interested in entrepreneurship and civic pursuits, suddenly national service appears a waste of time. Individual opportunism trumps collective commitment.
Americans are no more patriotic than any other nation when it comes to taking up the burden of military service. The US returned to an all-volunteer army after the Vietnam War, and today less than one-third of Americans under the age of thirty have a relative serving in the military.V All-volunteer armies represent a sea change from military service as a patriotic duty and rite of passage. According to a 2018 survey by the RAND Corporation, occupational motivations (meaning needing the military as an employer) far outweigh institutional motivations (the value of military service) in the US. Enlistees are primarily interested in getting out of an unhealthy environment and gaining financial and educational benefits, whereas serving one’s country tends to motivate primarily those who have a family history of military service. Two decades after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the trauma suffered by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans has discouraged would-be recruits across the board. These “forever wars” have fared so badly that youth today will do anything to avoid being sent to die in wars they don’t believe in.
Even if they wanted to, much of the American public isn’t fit to fight. Seventy-one percent of Americans are ineligible for military duty due to health issues (such as obesity), criminal records, or insufficient education. A series of US Army reports from the 2010s carried ominous titles such as Too Fat to Fight—followed by Still Too Fat to Fight—warning (repeatedly, it seems) of the threat obesity poses to American national security. (You can’t make this stuff up.) If time spent on social media and gaming constitutes preparation for a career in cyber warfare, however, then the army of the future has plenty of recruits to tap. This is perhaps why it began actively using TikTok to recruit more Gen-Z volunteers (until TikTok fell out of favor). In early 2020, rumors that the army wanted to reinstate the draft led to the Selective Service website crashing as fearful youth nervously Googled it. The call to fight is one today’s American youth are not going to answer.
Russia would seem an obvious case of a nationalistic country for which a strong army of loyal soldiers is vital to ensuring its stature. But Russia too slashed its mandatory conscription, from two years to one, in 2008, and one of the only pledges that has maintained Putin’s standing among youth is his promise to abolish conscription entirely as soon as Russia can afford to replace it with a professional army. As of 2016, only 260,000 new draftees enter the Russian army each year, versus nearly 400,000 contract soldiers—effectively domestic mercenaries of all ages looking for a job, whether maintaining military installations across the country or occupying foreign ones. As in America, Russian youth enter the military profession mostly if they need the money.
Even in tougher neighborhoods such as the Middle East and Asia, youth have no appetite for military service. For example, Turkey and South Korea are both patriotic societies facing genuine strategic risks. As in Europe, public pressure in Turkey has already led to military service being reduced, from one year to six months. But even that’s too much to ask. As of August 2018, the Turkish government allowed young men to buy their way out of the six-month service and do just three weeks by paying 5,000 lira (about $900). Within the first two weeks of the registration portal going online, 340,000 Turkish men had applied for the exemption. That year, an additional 180,000 men failed to report for military service. Saving up to bail out of national service has become the most significant savings priority for any Turkish teenage male. It’s that or get sent to Syria. In 2020, Turkey signed an agreement offering citizenship to Pakistanis who would serve in its military as they have for Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
