Why countries are a fiction
“As any map will show you, the world is divided by political borders into spaces called countries. People and things can live in, come from, or go to these places. But countries are not any more than that,” says Thomas Wells. Nations are social constructions – collectively produced fictions that only exist so long as enough people agree they do. Countries have no goals or actions of their own – a point that’s frequently misunderstood.
We need to separate these divisions on a map from the organisations that run them. “Unlike countries, organisations are a kind of collectively produced fiction about which it does make sense to attribute interests and which can actually do things, often very significant things.” Governments are a particular kind of organisation that has achieved the power called “sovereignty”, which amounts to a “local monopoly on violence”. We must apply this framework when examining the conflict in Ukraine, for example, because mistaking countries for actors can only lead to injustice. The West has been quick to make this mistake, blaming things that come from Russia – such as students or vodka – for the terrors caused by the Russian regime. “This will fail to do anything about the real cause of the problem: the organisation controlled by Vladimir Putin.”
Put people first
The same error also works the other way. “A great many people believe that countries literally trade with each other, when what is really happening is various people and commercial organisations trading with each other across political borders.” The UK and Italy trade with each other no more than London or Manchester do. International trade takes place under rules set by governments, but this does not mean the governments are trading with each other. Conversely, when two governments go to war, the goodwill fostered by the economic ties between multiple business across their borders will do nothing to stop the conflict, because it is not the businesses fighting.
Governments claim to represent a country and its inhabitants – but establishing the legitimacy of this claim is hard even under democracy. Non-democracies are simply exercising their monopoly on violence. “People live in countries and are ruled over by governments.” We must keep these three elements clear to avoid common errors in international affairs. “We should pay more credence to actual people and less to the organisations who claim to be their legitimate representatives merely because they have the power to hurt them.”