Nationalism becomes self-reproducing in a world of nation-states. For once the world has defined “normality” as national solidarity and national statehood, every nation must be vigilant against signs of cultural assimilation and must produce nationalists whose self-appointed task is to strengthen national identity and uniqueness in order to increase social cohesion and solidarity. In a world of nation-states, nationalism can never be ultimately satisfied.

—Anthony D. S. Smith, Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (1979)

Economic integration, and with it cultural globalization, has far outpaced our global mindset, which is still rooted in nationalist terms. We benefit from all that the world has to offer, but we think only in narrow terms of protecting the land and people within our national borders—the borders that have been established only in the modern era. The barbed wire, chain-link fences, security forces, and immigration and customs agents that separate us from the rest of the world . . . cannot change the fact that we are bound together through the invisible filament of history.

— Nayan Chanda, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (2007)