By what definition is Pakistan not a country?
By Marty Peretz's definition, Apo.
I repeat 1: we have an embassy there. How is it not a country?
Fair enough. I guess my question is what are Peretz's criteria?
That it's inhabited by ragheads, and therefore doesn't deserve to be considered a country.
See, I could understand saying Pakistanis are not a nation, when the largest ethnic group makes up less than half the population. But not a country?
Are we going to debase liberal discourse by mocking somebody just because he's a vicious bigot who's used his wife's fortune to buy a pulpit for the last thirty years?
4: Now I think you're expecting a little too much.
My guess is that he's thinking something along the lines of Pakistan being held together by the military, rather than truth and light, which hold together the countries that Peretz think actually exist.
Pakistan is a country - they are willing to fight for that statement. And, as Peretz vaguely realises, they have nuclear weapons (and a large, efficient army).
Why is Marty arguing in favour of Hamas? By his logic the only justification for the creation of a state is violence..
By his logic
Now I think you're inferring a little too much.
His use of the word "valence" is not just pretensious, but incorrect.
From the comments, it seems his criteria are a historical existence as an ethnic nation, or something like that. One wonders how the United States would fare on this model.
You could argue for 'artificially created by a leaving colonial power', I suppose, but then you don't have a whole lot of real countries left in the Middle East or Africa. Israel, for instance, isn't one.
'artificially created by a leaving colonial power'
Heh. Real countries are created by Destiny.
It's idiotic mideast comparison day.
3: Counter-example: We have an embassy in the Vatican, and it's not a country.
Yes it is, isn't it? What's not a country about Vatican City?
It's an independent nation. Not a big one, but it has its own head of state, government, etc. Italy has an embassy to it.
Not a country: "Sealand has many non-Sealanders acting as official national athletes, including mini-golf and football."
I don't want to press the issue, because "country" is not a well-defined term. But it just seems wrong to call Vatican City a country. It is a state. It's definitely not a nation. (Both of those are fairly well-defined terms in political science, right?)
I think this fact, from its Wikipedia entry, makes Vatican City not a country:
Citizenship of the Vatican City is granted ius officii, which means it is conferred upon some of those who have been appointed to work in certain capacities at the Vatican, and it is usually revoked upon the termination of their employment.
The top of the wikipedia entry says independent nation. It's a weird one with 558 celibate citizens, granted, but it's there.
celibate
Or so the cardinals would have you believe.
Well come on, I mean the US probably has way more than 558 celibate citizens -- you can't use that to disqualify VC from countryhood.
Is 'nation' a well defined term? I've seen it used as an exact synonym for 'state', and more loosely to mean, roughly, 'the kind of ethnicity that either does or might without absurdity be able to control a state'. But I wouldn't call the latter sense tightly defined.
Was ancient Athens a "country"? Was Florence under the Medici a "country"?
Vatican City seems more like those than like our paradigmatic countries, e.g. France.
It is a state. It's definitely not a nation.
Now you're getting into Peretz territory. Whether the inhabitants share some historical ethnic bond is largely irrelevant for legal recognition purposes.
But I wouldn't call the latter sense tightly defined.
Better defined than "country", I think. One could have legitimate factual dispute about whether some ethnic group, e.g. the Kurds, are a nation.
But my disagreement with Cala over whether Vatican City is a country seems merely linguistic.
There is no disagreement, merely pwnage and the refusal to accept it.
Speaking of definitions, I just filled out a survey for my long distance carrier (Working Assets) that had, under the "Gender" options, male, female, and transgender/other. I think that's the first time I've seen that in a big corporate setting.
28: I don't think use of the term "nation" to indicate a group with historical/cultural ties implies that it has some important bearing on recognition of statehood. Peretz thinks that, but that's not implied by the terminology.
There are states that aren't nations, and that's just fine as far as I'm concerned. Ancient Athens was one. Vatican City is one. Maybe the US is one.
That will just make the "other" demographic angry.
"No, no! We are not transgendered. We are other. How difficult can that be to understand?"
Belgium and Canada are not really nations.
30: I'll have to check my pwner's manual before I'll acknowledge this purported instance of pwnage.
I agree about the "states that aren't nations" way of looking at it.
Trouble is, the word "nation" is deeply embedded in our national culture, despite its imprecision and misleading aspects. Gettysburg Address. I Have A Dream.
re: 34
The UK explicitly isn't.
I suspect he is confused in his own mind between Pakistan and separatist Kashmir.
re: 38
I suppose that's dumb enough.
I think he just doesn't cotton to this majority-muslim-nation business. If pressed, he would no doubt include Indonesia and Saudi Arabia on his list of "not actually countries".
37: Yeah, but Belgium and Canada really aren't nations. G.B. just has the archaic notional entities called "Wales" and "Scotland".
Well, sure. Indonesia: please, we're letting groups of islands call themselves countries now? And Saudia Arabia: What's with all that desert?
Nothing to do with Muslims, honest!
Imagine there's no countries . . .
On second thought, imagine there's no Marty Peretz.
There. I feel much better.
MAE and IDP are making me laugh.
I think that's the first time I've seen that in a big corporate setting.
I just saw a Selective Service form that offered, as one of the excuses for failing to register: "I am a transsexual." All I could think of was "I was female at the time!"
(thank you, Eddie Izzard)
The Navajo Nation is a nation. Right?
Not every group that calls itself a nation is a nation, though.
46: Not to mention the Cherokee Nation.
What about Rhythm Nation? I'll turn to Heebie as the resident expert.
By the way, aside from demonstrating that he has no idea what the words "country" and "nation" mean, what the fuck was Peretz getting at with this postscript? Was he implying that Blair's time would be better spent negotiating a settlement between India and Pakistan than trying to broker peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
What I like about this is the way that (as someone already sort of said) Pakistan is a nation in almost exactly the same way that Israel is a nation.
I support negotiating a settlement between India and Pakistan!
Somebody should ask him if Iraq's a nation.
Weird. In the comments, somebody asks Peretz whether anybody is a nation. here's his reply:
"yes, let's see, the French, Brits, Americans, Egyptians, Chinese, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Finns, Danes, Scots, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Berbers, Bulgarians, Laps, Letts, Japanese, Koreans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Ashanti, and on and on. Also the Kurds. No, not the Iraqis and not the Lebanese or the Syrians and certainly not the Palestinians."
Egyptians, but not Syrians. Do we see a pattern here?
56: what on earth is he talking about? Seriously I keep trying to parse that and I'm stumped. Berbers? Americans? Chinese? What could possibly be the unifying thread, besides Peretz's dementedness?
Huh. The 'Brits' and the 'Scots' are both nations. Does the former include the latter, or how does that work?
Like, it's not ethnic homogeneity. It's not state boundaries. It's not historical nationhood. It's not strictly anti-islam. What is he thinking?
Wait, Americans? I assumed he was working with some sort of demented ethno-linguistic definition, but, no, he's just a lunatic.
54 - Me too, but not because I think it has greater "valence" than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
56 - I wonder if Peretz believes the Tibetans belong to the Chinese nation.
38: Yeah, I thought that was cool too.
45: Don't spill the beans on my plan for PK.
The demented ethno-linguistic definition falls apart pretty damn fast in the case of China, too.
And don't forget Woodstock Nation, which, as Abbie Hoffman assured us, was a State of Mind.
Does this man have any function in the real world beyond providing a butt for the mockery of people on Unfogged?
66: it's an excellent question. He doesn't even own the damn magazine anymore.
You could make an argument that many big states consist of a large, hegemonic "nation" core, plus minorities. But if he still thinks "Americans" should be thought of as fitting that pattern, as I suppose many people did and do, that's a different thing for us to be disgusted about.
The nation of Islam?
I wrote this two hours ago and forgot to post it:
Rather than wonder about the technical senses of "country" and "nation" I'd be interested if there's any sense of those terms that (a) makes Peretz' claims true and (b) does some useful work, that is, the concepts are ones we have reason to be interested in. I suspect a smarter Peretz would, in response, provide some explication that makes his claims true, but leaves us asking 'so what' about the concepts involved.
I think not with the list of examples he gave. Without that list, there might be something plausible along the lines of the ethnic definition of 'nation', although I'm not sure what work it would be expected to do.
Listen, you haters, he listed Mexicans right there in his reply thus including all Middle Easterners. It's our own latent racism that limits us such that we only think of Iranians in that way.
That list in 56 is crazy. Totally mental.
60 also makes a good point. However, I suspect he's just making that common mistake of translating 'Brits' as 'English'. Which we Scots just adore.
I keep reading the list and playing "spot the token ethnicity included to show he's not racist". lol, Ashanti. Sure, Marty. Sure.
The problem is that I keep being tempted to subscribe to TNR solely so I can leave humorous comments on Marty's ravings. Perhaps that was the whole plan with giving him a blog?