Unending Wars: Is Nationalism the Snag?

Abstract

Nationalism has been the major cause of wars since time immemorial and the most pronounced of it was World War I. Although the rhetoric of nationalism is seemingly less used after the major wars, because it adopted a new name, ‘self-determination’ – as enshrined in the UN Charter, Chapter I article 1 –, it remains in the background of many political discussions today and we continually see a global rise in collectivism, marked by religious fundamentalists of ethnic nationalist ideologies, which have resulted in nothing but fierce conflicts in almost every part of the world. Having noticed this increasing phenomenon, this paper tries to establish the relationship that exists between the world’s agenda to globalise and national interests, which have left the world in a rather saddened situation of protracted wars between and within states, and its main thesis is that nationalism has played and continues to play a major role in the violent conflicts that sparkle around the world today, in the guise of ethno-religious conflicts.