Nationalism has been the most powerful political force in modern political life, and since the end of the Cold War nationalist movements have been asserting themselves around the world, so one would think that Victor Davis Hanson would have no trouble proving this to be true. Strangely, he misreads much of the world’s political landscape and misinterprets most of what has been happening over the last two decades, and that leads him to make a number of far-fetched or simply false claims. For instance, he writes:

Cultural, linguistic, and economic divides between Germany and Greece, or Holland and Bulgaria, remain too wide to be bridged by fumbling bureaucrats in Brussels. NATO has devolved into a euphemism for American expeditionary forces.

Nationalism is returning, based on stronger common ties of language, history, religion, and culture. We are even seeing the return of a two-century-old European “problem”: a powerful Germany that logically seeks greater political influence commensurate with its undeniable economic superiority.

It’s not clear that the first sentence is correct. One might think that the cultural, linguistic and economic divides between EU member states are too great for the European political project to succeed, but it doesn’t seem to be working out that way. Despite some real difficulties over the last two years because of the woeful fiscal position of some of the Union’s peripheral members, the institutions of the EU seem to have remained intact.

As for NATO, there two major reasons why it is little more than a “euphemism for American expeditionary forces,” and both of them go against Hanson’s argument. First, Europeans are preoccupied with their project of political integration and cannot be bothered with increased military expenditures or larger deployments abroad (especially when they involve “out of area” missions that have nothing to do with NATO’s purpose). Second, economically their interests dictate that they should not antagonize Russia, which they have reasonably ceased to see as much of a real military threat to them. As a result, western Europeans in particular have no great desire to continue expanding NATO, nor do they want to provoke Russia with missile defense schemes and military installations in the new member countries, and they continue to dominate the EU’s course politically and economically. This is actually closely related to the “problem” of a powerful Germany, as Germany has been the European nation most interested in building an economic relationship with Russia. Nationalism is returning in some parts of the world, but for the most part it does not seem to be returning in Europe.

All right, so maybe Hanson got off to a bad start, but he must be able to do better, right? Not really. There is rising Turkish nationalism, which has been stoked in part by the invasion of Iraq Hanson supported and the flotilla raid Hanson’s colleagues defend, so Hanson ought to be able to use it as a perfect example of what he’s talking about. The trouble is that he’s so intent on insulting the Turks that he makes a number of easily avoidable errors:

Turkey is flipping back to its pre-20th-century past. Its departure from NATO is not a question of if, but when. The European Union used to not want Turkey; now Turkey does not want the shaky EU.

Turkish revisionism now glorifies the old Ottoman sultanate. Turkey wants to recharge that reactionary model as the unifier and protector of Islam — not the modern, vastly reduced secular state of Kemal Ataturk. Weak neighbors Armenia, Cyprus, Greece, and Kurdistan have historical reasons to tremble.

Going back to the “pre-20th-century past” sounds bad, or Hanson wants to make it seem so, but this isn’t what Turkey is doing. Neo-Ottoman kitsch aside, Turkey under the AKP is trying to do something quite different. Turkey has no interest in leaving NATO. Indeed, it is probably one of the few states in the Alliance with a significant military establishment that wants to contribute. For that matter, the actual position of the government in Ankara is that EU accession is still very much on their agenda. Foreign Minister Davutoglu was just discussing the matter earlier this week with the Belgian foreign minister. Hanson et al. may believe that Turkey has rejected the West, but they don’t see things this way.

Something that I find very annoying is the repeated claim in a lot of anti-Turkish commentary these past few months that the AKP has somehow betrayed the legacy of Ataturk by pursuing good relations with its eastern neighbors. The people writing this commentary evidently forget that Ataturk’s entire active military career involved fighting against European armies, and his tenure as president of the Turkish republic was marked by his friendly relations with the USSR and neutrality during WWII. [Correction: It was Inonu, Ataturk’s successor, who kept Turkey neutral in WWII.] From the Turkish perspective, these moves made perfect sense and served Turkish interests. Later, postwar Turkey joined NATO and faithfully served as a trusted ally for all this time even when its interests were sabotaged and harmed repeatedly and its protestations ignored over the last twenty years. Following this, the AKP has made a handful of small, mostly symbolic gestures of solidarity or goodwill with some of the officially vilified nations of the Near East, and for its trouble was denounced as treacherous and anti-Western when it is a far more Western-oriented government than Ataturk’s was or ever could have been. Incredibly, the Western response to this seems to be to pine for the good old days of true Kemalism.

Next comes Japan, which should be easy pickings for Hanson. After all, the U.S. and Japan just finished having a major fight over basing rights that brought down a Japanese prime minister and created chaos in the current ruling party. It wouldn’t be hard to fit Japanese opposition to a continued military presence on Okinawa into a column on returning nationalism, and Hanson could have added to that by mentioning the brief tenure of the nationalist, historical-revisionist PM Abe a few years back and the repeated controversies over officials visiting the Yasukuni shrine of Japanese war dead. None of that is mentioned. What does Hanson write instead? He writes:

Japan’s economy is still stalled. Its affluent population is shrinking and aging. Elsewhere in the region, the Japanese see an expanding China and a lunatic nuclear North Korea. Yet Japan is not sure whether the inward-looking United States is still credible in its old promise of protection against any and all enemies.

Most of this is true, but basically irrelevant to the argument that nationalism is on the rise. For that matter, when discussing an “expanding China” in the context of the return of nationalism, it might be useful to observe that Chinese nationalism has become the new prevailing ideology on the mainland, and that there have been occasional outbursts of anti-Japanese violence resulting from this intensifying nationalism. That is, it would be useful if the purpose of the exercise was to analyze and understand political changes occurring around the world, but by the end of the column we find that it is just a set-up for an appeal to vote for Republicans in the midterms:

But just as old problems return, so do equally old solutions. Once-stodgy ideas like a free-market economy, strong defense, secure borders, and national unity are suddenly appearing fresh and wise.

For the sake of those ideas, I hope that the arguments conservatives make to advance them are much better than Hanson’s reflection on nationalism.