Is pursuing internationalism a good thing?

Answer 1

There are many different forms of nationalism that can be pursued. There is the internationalism of politics, the internationalism of linguistics, the internationalism of the proletariat or internationalism of Marxism, and then the political parties such as the international party of the United States and the Internacialismo of Venezuela and then there is a set of booklets published in the 1920's called the International Jew. For the purposes of this answer, time out will be taken from the more appealing pursuit of hot looking women and just plain fun, to pursue the pros and cons of internationalism in terms of politics. That being said, there should perhaps be a brief discussion of internationalism in terms of linguistics.

In linguistics there is the term known as "loanword" which describes those words that occur in the same languages of several different nationalities sharing the same or similar meaning and etymology. If one is to pursue a political agenda of internationalism then the linguistics of internationalism becomes a necessary tool. The pronunciation and orthography, or how the words are pronounced and written is also very important. It is just plain important to be able to understand what people are saying to each other when they strive to cooperate. Internationalism politics purports to achieve this end and so understanding those nations one hopes to cooperate with is paramount in obtaining any form of success.

An example of international "loan words" would be the Latin or Greek words which have found themselves scattered across the lexicons of many of the European Latin based languages and others. New technologies also tend to create international loan words as that technology is embraced by the different nations across the world. The word computer is virtually the same in most languages as is disc and spam. Scientific words such as gene, bionics, and cybernetics are the same. Words such as coffee and chocolate are also words that tend towards internationalism. It is unclear and poorly defined exactly how many different languages must use the same loan word before it is considered an international word and it remains unclear exactly who would decide how many languages would be required for a certain word to qualify as an international loan word. Thus, in this regard, perhaps a pursuit of internationalism on a political level is not such a bad idea, if only to get some clarification on how many languages are required to make an international loan word.

In politics, the term internationalism is used to describe a political agenda that aspires to foster cooperation on an economic, scientific and political level believing that cooperation between nations far outweighs any competitive or nationalistic goals in the long term. In terms of theoretical argument, it is hard to argue with such a supposition. Cooperation is key in any social endeavor even those that are competitive. If you and I are to play a game of chess it is best we cooperate first long enough to agree on what the rules are before engaging in competition. To that degree, cooperation becomes the senior mode of operation between our competition.

In any organized competitive sport, cooperation is what makes the competition work and because of this it is understandable how internationalism might think the same principles could work between countries. However, even in sports, the cooperation established is oftentimes undermined by willful disregard to the rules established by cooperation. It has been agreed that betting on sporting games amongst owners and players is off limits and yet it happens. For whatever reasons, it has been agreed that the use of steroids would not be allowed in professional sports and yet it happens. That these agreements are broken illustrates the fundamental problem with internationalism. To make such agreements on an international scale only confounds the problems of breaking those agreements exponentially. Indeed, in many ways World War I was caused precisely because of this.

The proximate cause, which is to say the event coming closest to resembling the cause of World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Now, one might wonder how an assassination of an Archduke, even one who was heir to Austro-Hungarian throne could lead to a World War that involved the majority of the world powers of that day, killed more than fifteen million people and made it one of the deadliest wars known to humanity. It was the network of alliances some known and some secret that drug the rest of the world into a conflict between Austria and Yugoslavia or Serbia.

These alliance became ever more complex as the Dual Alliance of Germany and Austro-Hungary evolved into the Triple Alliance when Italy had signed on. It was, in a large part, Otto Von Bismark who had crafted these careful alliances and treatise with the rest of Europe to avoid any full scale European conflict. One could argue that Von Bismark was the ultimate internationalist. His statesmanship and efforts to deal with French revanchism, (revenge for the Franco-Prussian war), made him legendary. Von Bismark was directly responsible for the League of Three Emperors. Of course, in the end being a Chancellor of a protectionist country such as Germany didn't make Von Bismark such an internationalist after all. There was the strained relations with Russian and even though Bismark was somewhat integral to the Unification of Italy he didn't much care for Italians. This, combined with the failings of the Ottoman Empire that only seemed to ensure a rising Russian power only made Von Bismark's job at diplomacy harder.

Then the League of Three Emperors fell apart and this led to the forging of the Dual Alliance which then became the Triple Alliance. These careful alliances forged by Von Bismark were greatly undermined when Wilhelm II was made Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm broke with Von Bismark on many issues and the Triple Alliance eventually gave way to treatises that formed the Triple Entente. The falling out of Von Bismark and Wilhelm is just one example of what could go wrong with internationalism but in regards to World War I there was much more involved that would make one reconsider any political ideas that involve internationalism. Of course, while the politics of internationalism puts their stress on cooperation, it can't be stressed enough how dangerous competition between nations can be and this also led to the calamity of the "War to end all wars".

The arms race of Europe leading up to the first World War began between Germany and Britain. Wilhelm had spent a considerable amount of money building the German Kaiserlich Marine in an attempt to rival the British Royal Navy. In 1906, the British built the HMS Dreadnought and this gave them the edge on the arms race between them and Germany but also led to the rest of Europe joining the race and by 1913 the military spending of European nations had increased by fifty percent. The fracturing of treatise only got worse when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina which more than agitated Russia and Serbia because of the huge population of the Slavic Serbians in Bosnia-Herzegovina. All of this nasty form of internationalism was known as the "Powder keg of Europe". Further destabilizing the European theater was the First and then the Second Balkan Wars which resulted in the Treaty of London from the First Balkan War which created the state of Albania and expanded Britain's holdings on Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece and this led to the Second Balkan War.

So, when Princip assassinated Ferdinand, there was great confusion particularly among the Central Powers. Where Germany had promised to support the invasion of Serbia by Austria-Hungary, there was confusion, misunderstandings and misinterpretations of what the terms of their treatise actually meant. This confusion made it a nightmare of military strategy for the Austria-Hungary armies now divided on two fronts. The horror and devastation that followed in WWI is well documented and there is no need to document it here, especially since the question is in regards to pursuing internationalism. Thus, we will review the many alliances that directly led to that World War. Listed below are those alliances.

1.) 1879 The Dual Alliance

2.) 1881 The Austro-Serbian Alliance

3.) 1882 The Triple Alliance

4.) 1894 The Franco-Russian Alliance

5.) 1904 The Entente Cordiale

6.) 1907 The Anglo-Russian Entente

7.) 1907 The Triple Entente

8.) 1914 The Triple Entente (No separate peace)

The importance of these treatise is that in order to honor them some countries had no choice but to enter into that war that was so costly and so devastating it makes one stop and wonder just how valuable internationalism can be given the risk of such a cost. It was that great rock n roll guitarist and jukebox philosopher Carlos Santana who once said: "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it...what? Oh I forgot! Okay, it wasn't Carlos Santana who said that it was George Santayana who said it and what he actually said before I forgot what he said was: "Those who can not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." But he also said that: "Sanity is madness put to good use." So, who knows, but in the case of internationalism it might do us all well to remember the lessons of history and what such endeavors has done in the past.