Nationalism Essay

In this weeks articles, there seemed to be an ongoing theme of nationalism that the two authors, Van Evera and Suny, seemed to embrace the subjectivities of the role of nationalism. Both authors discussed the dangers of nationalism in Eastern Europe, mainly in the regions of the former Soviet Union. In this reflection, I will be discussing why I believe that the greatest risks of war are due to the political/environmental factors in Van Evera’s article, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” in comparison to the structural and perceptual factors that Suny’s article “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations.” Also, I will be discussing how the feelings of nationalism are easily able to be converted into antinationalism, and what this conversion has the capabilities to do to a state.

Nationalism as described by Van Evera, is “a political movement in which individual members give their primary loyalty to their own ethnic or national community, this loyalty supersedes their loyalty to other groups, e.g., those based on common kinship or political ideology and these ethnic or national communities desire their own independent state.” (Van Evera, 258) As both articles discuss, there is an extremist statehood of nationalism that began to arise in Eastern Europe in comparison to the Western nations. Van Evera focused on how there were numerous factors, such as structural, political/environmental, and perceptual factors in which nationalism was a main cause of war. I believe that this article is the more accurate of the two articles, and this is because he is able to take the constructivist/ideological views that Suny uses, and incorporate them into his article, and rather than only explaining to the reader the political and historical ideologies that a nation may have. Van Evera also explicates his hypotheses by explaining that although there are constructivist ideologies such as: mythical beliefs, like self-glorification, self-whitewashing, and other...