Nationalism and War in the 21st‐Century Europe

Since the end of WWII, many analysts were adamant that Europe is a continent of peace and geopolitical stability. The influential authors were arguing that warfare is experiencing a historical decline and that many forms of organised violence belong to the dustbin of European history. The leading scholars of organised violence tended to focus on civil wars, revolutions and insurgencies on other continents. The dominant view was that Europe is unlikely to face a major interstate war. A very similar stance was expressed in relation to nationalism. For many scholars, this ideology has reached its peak in the 19th century; since then, its influence has been on the wane. In this context, much of the contemporary sociological scholarship has focused on the significance of globalisation, individualism, cosmopolitanism and consumerism, all of which were understood to be more relevant for 21st-century Europe than nationalism. Nevertheless, such ahistorical and present-centric interpretations fly in the face of a much more complex European historical record. To better understand the social dynamics of war and nationalism and their historical trajectories, it is crucial to explore these two phenomena in a longue durée mode. In this article, I aim to show that the return of inter-state warfare in Europe, together with the greater visibility of nationalism, can be explained using the analytical tools of comparative historical sociology. By zooming in on the long-term coercive-organisational, ideological and micro-interactional processes of nationalist grounding, one can trace the relatively continuous rise of nationalism in Europe. Similarly, by analysing the key structural and societal historical conditions in Europe, it is possible to see that organised violence has not experienced a decline but has, in fact, increased in modernity. The first part of the article provides a brief analysis of European nationalisms over the last three centuries. I aim to show that rather than appearing as deus ex machina in the 21st century, this phenomenon has been gradually developing, expanding and penetrating different areas of social life. In the second part of the article, I briefly explore the transformation of organised violence in Europe. I look at the centrality of warfare in European history and point to the continuous significance of force in the social development of this continent. The last section brings the two phenomena together and indicates under which conditions nationalism becomes virulent. In the conventional understanding, nationalism is often perceived to be a phenomenon that reached its peak in the late 19th century. The traditional historiography regularly depicts this period as the 'springtime of nations' and associates nationalism mostly with the anti-imperial projects and the movements of national unification. Thus, the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg and Romanov empires is often attributed to the rising of national consciousness amongst the 'small peoples' of Europe that were determined to destroy the imperial 'prison houses of nations' and establish their own independent and sovereign nation-states (Hroch, 2015; Kumar, 2017). Similarly, the unification of Germany and Italy is typically described as 'belated' and is understood to be the pinnacle in the European nation-formation processes. Although many analysts recognise that nationalism played an important role in the two world wars, the causes of these violent conflicts are typically attributed to other factors including the changing power dynamics, the crisis of capitalism and class politics, geopolitical transformations or the motivations of specific rulers. In the post-WWII Europe, nationalism has generally been relegated to the margins and perceived to be a phenomenon associated with the separatist movements based at the fringes of the European continent – the Basque country, Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Flanders or the Balkans. With the intensification of economic globalisation from the 1990s until 2010s, nationalism was generally perceived as a relic from the bygone age. The leading social theorists including Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman have proclaimed its inevitable death. For Giddens (2013, p. 65), 'The development of globalised social relations probably serves to diminish some aspects of nationalist feeling' … 'in circumstances of accelerated globalisation, the nation-state has become "too small for the big problems of life, and too big for the small problems of life"'. Similarly, Beck (2006) was adamant that globalisation fosters individualism where 'the nation-state project' is being replaced with the 'cosmopolitan project'. In Bauman's (2002, p. 84) view, consumerism has killed all forms of collective attachments, and as such, 'nation-building coupled with patriotic mobilisation has ceased to be a principal instrument of social integration'. Thus, the dominant views concur on perceiving nationalism as a phenomenon that has reached its zenith in the late 19th century and has ever since been experiencing a continuous decline. In this context, the proliferation of nativist, populist, anti-immigrant, protectionist and ethnicist movements and parties, many of which have become influential political actors across the European continent, has been a major surprise for many scholars.1 Even the well-established political parties, social movements, religious institutions and civil society groups have embraced the strong nationalist rhetoric and have started advocating 'preservation of our national identity' and exclusionary policies against the non-nationals. This ideological shift has often been labelled as an unexpected return or resurgence of 'new nationalism'. The commentators have typically attempted to explain this 'reappearance' of nationalism in economic or cultural terms. For some, 'new nationalism' was a direct consequence of deepening socio-economic inequalities. Thus, Snyder (2019) interprets the 'sudden rise of nationalism' as a by-product of neo-liberal policies where large sectors of the labour force have become the victims of globalisation. As such, they tend to scapegoat the immigrants for their economic losses. They also vote for the parties with the nativist and far right programmes hoping that these parties will protect their economic interests. In contrast, the culturalist explanations have centred on the impact of value transformations on social and political life. Hence, Norris and Inglehart (2019) identify the cultural backlash as the defining feature of 'new nationalism' and populism. They focus on the polarisation between the social liberals and social conservatives and argue that voting for the populist parties is a product of deep cultural cleavages. Nevertheless, as I have argued before, this is an ahistorical, present-centric and short-sighted view of a phenomenon that has a long, complex and for the most part an upward historical trajectory (Malešević, 2025, 2019, 2013, 2006). To fully understand what has been happening recently, it is crucial to take a longue durée perspective and situate the development of nationalism in Europe over several centuries. Rather than viewing nationalist ideology as something that has reached its peak in 19th century, it is crucial to realise that at that time nationalism was largely a marginal ideological discourse that had an impact on a very small section of European populations. The 19th-century Europe was still a world dominated by empires and patrimonial kingdoms where the imperial projects, dynastic politics, monotheistic religions and local identifications easily trumped nationalist attachments. By mid-19th century, nationalism was largely confined to the upper middle classes who promoted ideas of popular sovereignty, cultural authenticity and parliamentary representation with a view of attaining more influence within the political order still dominated by the aristocrats. At the brink of WWI, the overwhelming majority of European countries were still ruled by monarchs whose sources of political legitimacy could be traced to the religious idea of divine origins of kings rather than to the notion of popular sovereignty. As Storm (2024), Mann (2013, 1993) and Hall (2024, 2013) convincingly show, it took another century for nationalism to become a society-wide ideological discourse that would gradually replace its historical competitors. The two world wars have played a central role in transforming Europe from a continent dominated by the imperial projects and dynastic politics of aristocrats to the social order where the major political decisions were legitimised by invoking the will of nations. The shared war experience was the ideological backbone of many national projects. Initially, only small number of people identified in national terms and would be willing to fight for Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and so on. The enormous casualties of the WWI forced the rulers to introduce the conscription and consequently expanded the citizenship rights for different groups that traditionally lacked many political and economic rights or any social protection (Mann, 2023, 1993). The London Whitehall cenotaph to the 'glorious dead' symbolised this ideological shift – with an abstract concept of the nation replacing the individual heroism of individual soldiers. As Anderson (1983, p. 9) noted long time ago, the empty war graves become the ghosts of the nation: 'Yet as void as these tombs are of identifiable mortal remains or immortal souls, they are nonetheless saturated with ghostly national imaginings'. The Second World War had an even more significant role in homogenising nationhood and in promoting the idea that the ultimate sacrifice of soldiers was made for the very survival of a specific nation. This war also fostered more class and gender integration. The idea that the shared sacrifice makes war the 'great leveller' and that the mass mobilisation for war opened new labour opportunities for women has both contributed to the project of national solidarity. Another significant legacy of this war was the unprecedented welfare state that has been the cornerstone of the post-WWII European order. The disposition of the state authorities to provide generous social protection mechanisms for the large sectors of its population was a direct consequence of the shared hardship of war. It was total warfare with mass scale participation and enormous human sacrifices that laid the foundation of the welfare state. Consequently, the presence of a strong and inclusive welfare state has also strengthened the sense of national belonging for many people. The two world wars have also reshaped the ethnic composition of most states in Europe, with the coercive large-scale migrations forcing millions of individuals to settle in their 'ethnic homelands' and learn dominant languages and cultural practices. In this context, many post-WW governments purposely pursued policies of cultural assimilation and national homogenisation (Mazower, 2009). Nevertheless, the key societal mechanisms for the proliferation of nationalism in the 20th- and early 21st-century Europe were the structural transformations across the state and society. Rather than experiencing any significant decline, nationalism has been gradually penetrating nearly every aspect of social, political, economic and cultural life. For one thing, the strengthening power of the state had a direct impact on the development of nationalism. The relatively continuous rise of the administrative apparatuses and the centralisation of power allowed the state to enhance its infrastructural capacities, as it was now able to reach quickly every town and village under its jurisdiction (Mann, 2013, 1993). With the development of transport and communication networks, the governments of nation-states were able to implement their will and law throughout the territories under their control. By establishing the legitimate monopolies on violence, taxation, judiciary and education, the modern nation-states have gained unprecedented coercive-organisational powers that were legitimised through the ideology of nationalism (Malešević, 2019, 2013). The rulers of modern European states consistently win elections or maintain power by invoking the nationalist principles such as protecting the sovereignty of the nation-state, safeguarding the cultural authenticity, expressing the popular will of its citizens or accomplishing the national interests of their polity. The period from 1945 to 1991 is often perceived solely through the prism of the cold war, with the emphasis on the ideological clash between liberal democracy and capitalism on the one hand and state socialism with centrally planned economies on the other. In the conventional accounts, there was not much nationalism in the second half of the 20th century, as this was perceived as a global ideological conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that apparently superseded national attachments. Nevertheless, it is this period of relative stability that created ideal conditions for the development and expansion of nationalism across European societies. The process that I call the grounding of nationalism has particularly intensified in the post-WWII Europe (Malešević, 2025, 2019). Despite the deep ideological polarisation on the continent, both sides of the Iron Curtain were experiencing a very similar process of nationalist penetration of the social order. In the early 20th century, the majority of the European population were not fully integrated into the national public sphere and would still identify more in religious and local than national terms. As Weber (1976) and Connor (1990) show, many ordinary people in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century would refer to themselves not in national but in regional, local, kinship or religious terms. Despite the intensive nationalist policies of the post-revolutionary and the Third Republic France, many parts of the country were still dominated by remote rural dwellings where people spoke unstandardised vernaculars and remained disconnected from the dominant culture of Paris and other cities. Connor (1990, p. 94) has analysed the self-identification of European immigrants to the United States and has found that in most instances, the immigrants would describe themselves in terms of region, dialect, locality, village or kinship network rather than specific nationhood. In Eastern and Southern Europe, the majority of the population was still illiterate and only a small number of children have regularly attended the schools. For example, in the 1920s, most Mediterranean countries, including Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece, had a low literacy rate, whilst in many parts of Eastern Europe, the illiteracy levels were up to 70% (Paglayan, 2024). As Gellner (1983) and Anderson (1983) remind us, there is no society-wide nationalism without high literacy rates, standardised vernaculars, compulsory education systems, the nation-centric mass media and the national public sphere. The cold war period was a time of intense industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation, educational development and general modernisation that has radically transformed the European continent. As Hobsbawm (1994) points out, despite the very different political and social systems in the Western and Eastern parts of Europe, the continent has never experienced this level of socio-economic development, social mobility and relative prosperity. The direct consequence of this societal growth was also the strengthening of national identifications across the continent. The organisational and ideological grounding of nationalism was fostered in part through the society-wide expansion of state apparatuses, transport and communication networks, the educational systems and mass media. From the 1950s until the late 1980s, all European countries have experienced unprecedented development and reform in these areas. This includes thousands of new civil servants' positions created, numerous new roads, railways, airports and ports being built across the continent, with the proliferation of new statewide newspapers, radio stations and TV channels and with the abundance of new schools and universities being opened every year. For example, from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, most West European countries have undergone a substantial reform that extended the compulsory primary education by several years – from as low as 3 years in Portugal (since 1938) to 12 years in Belgium and Netherlands (Murtin and Viarengo, 2011, p. 508). A very similar process has also taken place throughout Eastern Europe with the introduction of compulsory primary education and its extension to 8 or 9 years. In the period from 1950 to 1990, the number of schools and pupils has increased by fivefold for many countries (Salonen and Pöyliö, 2017). This enormous organisational and ideological capacity was directly and indirectly deployed to mould the new generations of individuals into the loyal and often enthusiastic members of their respective nation-states. Even the creation and expansion of the European Union has not dented this process. As various surveys undertaken in the last 50 years show, the sense of national attachment and pride in one's nation has been very high for nearly all European countries, and in most cases, the polls point to the relatively continuous rise of national identification across Europe. For example, the snapshot of the Eurobarometer surveys since 1982 to 2024 indicates that pride in one's nation has regularly been very high, with the relatively continuous and substantial increases over the last four decades. Hence, from 1982 to 2005, the number of respondents who expressed the view that they are either very proud or quite proud of their nations has risen from an average of 80% in 1982 to 90% in 2005. This high level of national attachment has mostly continued the upward trajectory in the last two decades (Antonsich, 2009; Europa, 2024). Furthermore, when asked explicitly in 2021 what are their most important identities, the EU citizens have listed their family and national identity as numbers 1 and 2. Remarkably for 73% of EU respondents, national identity is one of their two most significant forms of collective attachment (Europa, 2024). The organisational and ideological grounding of nationalism is regularly underpinned by the micro-interactional reproduction of nation-centric ideas and practices in everyday life. The scholars of banal and everyday nationalism have provided ample evidence on how many mundane aspects of daily life are saturated with nation-centric content, from the nationalisation of the food we eat, to sporting events, singing competitions, tourist experiences, family entertainment, to intimate moments with one's family and friends. From birthday cakes with national flags, to singing national anthems at sports events and wearing national colours at the Eurovision song contest, Europeans have been constantly engaged in the everyday reproduction of their respective nationalist habituses. In this sense, nationalist ideas and practices have deeply penetrated the informal and personal spheres of daily life for millions of people (Fox, 2017; Skey, 2011). Thus, nationalism is not a phenomenon that has been in decline since 19th century. On the contrary, all available indicators point out that nationalism has been continuously on the rise for the past several centuries. Its organisational, ideological and micro-interactional grounding has only intensified in the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. What Europeans have been witnessing in the last decade or so is not a revival or re-emergence of a relic from the bygone era but just a more radicalised version of the phenomenon that has been developing and expanding for more than two centuries. Rather than being a temporary aberration, nationalism is the sociological norm in modernity (Malešević, 2025). The supposed unexpected rise of nationalism is not a mystery for historical sociologists, as this phenomenon never went away. What requires an explanation is the question: why has nationalism become virulent? In addition, under which conditions does nationalism become conjoined with war? To fully understand how, when and why nationalism becomes entwined with warfare, it is important to briefly trace the trajectory of organised violence in Europe. It is rather perplexing that just as with nationalism the dominant views on the historical direction of violence are shaped by misconceptions. Until quite recently, the prevalent popular interpretation was that the European continent was the beacon of peace where warfare and other forms of large-scale violence have mostly been eradicated for good. Many highly influential sociologists and public intellectuals such as Jürgen Habermas (2006), Ulrich Beck (2003) and Hartmut Rosa (2015) have all been adamant that the Europeans have left behind their violent past. For Beck (2003, p. 255), even the concept of war has become 'historically obsolete' and it needlessly still impact on 'our thinking and acting'. In Rosa's (2015) view, we live in a world that is shaped by never-ending acceleration that leads towards 'the demilitarisation of war' and 'the decline of the monopoly of violence'. For Habermas (2006), much of contemporary warfare is characterised by civil violent conflicts and 'new wars' that take place in the global South whilst Europe and the global North only experience terrorism and other low-level forms of organised violence. For the majority of analysts, the formation of the post-WWII political order has been associated with stability, prosperity and peace. The most influential perspectives on the long-term trends of violence were emphasising its downward trajectory. Steven Pinker, Joshua Goldstein and John Mueller, amongst others, have all argued that the world as a whole and the European continent in particular have been experiencing the continuous decline of violence and the vanishing of warfare. Mueller (2009) has identified global economic interdependence, the rise of international co-operation and the growing aversion to war as being the key drivers of global peace. In his view, these developments have created conditions for the disappearance of major war in Europe. For Pinker (2018, 2011), the long-term decline of violence is a product of the 'civilising process', the expansion of 'gentle commerce' and the 'humanitarian revolutions'. In his neo-Darwinian and neo-Hobbesian understanding, the inherent evolutionary violence of human beings is now constrained by state power, capitalism and the international human rights regime. Goldstein also emphasises the global transformation of norms, the importance of UN actions and its peacekeeping operations and the worldwide acceptance of human rights frameworks. They all insist that the expansion of the ideas and practices associated with the Enlightenment project leads towards the long-term decline of all forms of violence in Europe and elsewhere. Nevertheless, this soothing teleological and whiggish narrative of continuous progress and advancement flies in the face of a much messier and violent historical record (Dwyer and Micale, 2020; Malešević, 2017). Most historians and historical sociologists have documented well that despite being the smallest continent, Europe has experienced much more large-scale warfare than other continents. With a partial exception of 1815–1912 and 1945–1991, the European continent has constantly been at war. As convincingly argued by Levy and Thompson (2011), the arc of war that stretches from the Bronze Age southern Mesopotamia (late fourth and early third millennium BCE) to the early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean and China (last half of the first millennium BCE) has reached its destructive peak in the early Modern and Industrial Age Europe (ca. 1500–1945). They show that the European continent has experienced numerous violent conflicts that have intensified in the scale of destruction in the early modern period when state competition engendered technological development resulting in protracted warfare, large armies and mass weaponry production. Furthermore, it was the constant preparation for warfare and the intensification of protracted wars that have galvanised the development of the state administrative apparatuses, the transport and communication networks, the efficient systems of revenue collection, the well-established models of military draft and the capital accumulation strategies (Mann, 2023, 1993; Tilly, 1992). The early modern European wars were highly destructive and have often resulted in large human casualties and the subjugation of different societies, but they have also contributed substantially towards the development of powerful states and vibrant civil societies. As Tilly (1992) emphasised, these protracted wars have reorganised the geo-political structure of the European continent by reducing the number of polities from around 1000 in medieval times to only 50 or so nation-states in the beginning of the 20th century. The unintended consequence of these long-drawn-out wars was the emergence of robust parliamentary systems, democratic decision-making, the expansion of citizenship rights and the proliferation of different civil society associations. Being faced with the constant shortage of soldiers, weapons, materiel and money to wage these protracted wars, the rulers had to negotiate various deals with their citizens. Thus, in exchange for their participation in war or financing of military production, the rulers were forced to expand the social, political and economic rights of their citizens. The pinnacle of mass scale violence in Europe was the of the 20th century. Not only were two world wars initiated by the Europeans and then spread throughout the world, but also these two violent conflicts have also radically transformed the European social, political and economic order. The direct consequence of these two most destructive wars in history was the shift from the world of empires and patrimonial kingdoms to the continent of nation-states. Whilst, before WWI, the overwhelming majority of European polities were monarchies, by the 1950s, the republics had taken their place. The remaining kingdoms have all become constitutional monarchies where the royals retained only symbolic powers. In many respects, these two wars were the catalyst of a radical state transformation as after 1945, the nation-state model of polity became the global norm and nationalism was established as the principal source of political legitimacy (Malešević, 2019, 2013; Mann, 2013). The two world wars also had a profound impact on the socio-economic order with the unprecedented land reforms, the extension of citizenship rights to many social strata, the development of the welfare state, the state-led mass employment initiatives and the expansion of affordable education for all. As Halperin (2004) shows, it was only after WWI that the aristocracy lost much of its economic power as the radical land reforms across the continent transformed the socio-economic systems of many European states. The unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust and the systematic mass killings of civilians in the concentration camps and on the open fields of Eastern Europe have also generated a new sense of post-war morality and new institutional frameworks to prevent such horrors in the future. The project of European integration, that is, the European Union today, was built primarily to prevent new wars between the powerful European states.2 There is no doubt that the EU has been very successful in averting any potential wars and even smaller violent conflicts on its soil. Some of its powerful members, such as Spain and pre-Brexit United Kingdom, had to deal with the violent uprisings in its provinces (i.e., Northern Ireland, the Basque country), but these conflicts never expanded into fully fledged wars. However, it is also important to emphasise that this post-WWII geopolitical stability coupled with economic prosperity and welfare security emerged in the context of intense cold war and the continuous preparation for the potential WWIII. It is in this period that most powerful and the most destructive armaments were built and deployed throughout the European continent. The continuous tension between NATO and the Warsaw Pact has made the European continent more militarised than it has ever been. The deployment of the long- and medium-range nuclear missiles and the development of the high-tech professional militaries have made Europe the epicentre of the potential new world war. The second half of the 20th century was also a crucial period for the development and expansion of society-wide nationalist projects. Despite its wider left–right ideological framing of communism versus capitalism, the cold war rhetoric was deeply rooted in the nationalist narratives. The cold war enmities were regularly couched in the ethno-centric language of 'evil Russians', 'subservient Germans', 'French losers', 'proud and unvanquished Yugoslavs' and so on. Regardless of the mutually opposing normative ideological projects that have been promoted in the East and the West of the European continent, on the operative level all European societies were deeply engaged in the organisational, ideological and micro-interactional grounding of nationalism (Malešević, 2019, 2013, 2006). As Paglayan (2024) documents well, the expansion of primary and secondary education in Europe had much less to do with the promotion of democratic ideals and much more with the ability of modern states to control their citizens, generate society-wide national loyalty and prevent internal conflicts. In this sense, the cold war mobilisation together with the sense of constant threat has contributed substantially t