[...]... the form of shortages of water, food and energy and rises in their price as a result of the explosive growth of the poor urban population of the underdeveloped countries In this new edition of The Myth of Development, I also discuss another enormous obstacle to development: the crisis of our civilization, which is not only, as many people believe, an economic crisis, but actually a crisis of our unsustainable... number ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 9 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM 10 | One of countries find themselves in a worse situation than when they were colonies, and many of them wish they could be recolonized The cult of a Leviathan of one’s own and an ideology based on the principle of self-determination caused an unprecedented proliferation of nation-states during the Cold War At that time, demagogues scoffed at... fundamentally the product of the American and French revolutions After that era, it began to take root all around the world In the nineteenth century this idea finished off the Spanish and Portuguese empires, giving rise to the new Latin American republics At the beginning of the twentieth century, as a result of the First World War, the ideal of the nation-state destroyed the multinational Austro-Hungarian and. .. concept of the state, or of the nation, and that lacked both the middle class and the national market they needed in order to be governable and viable Upon granting them recognition as independent countries, the rivals of the Cold War lost no time in lavishing international aid on them so as to exercise their own influence on the new nation-states When the Cold War ended, the strategic value of these... that they would never be completed either as states or as nations, and that the majority of these underdeveloped entities are not Leviathans The idea that the European model of the nation-state could be reproduced proved to be not only false but dangerous for the stability of the region and of the world ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 11 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM 12 | One During the Cold War, all those false, incomplete... their fathers and grandfathers had rebelled so as to give them a nation-state It is not so strange, therefore, that the inhabitants of Puerto Rico and of the Pacific island of Palau do not want to become independent from the United States and that the inhabitants of the Comoros wish to be recolonized by France Nowadays, support for the right to self-determination is not as enthusiastic as it once was and. .. climate for transnational enterprises There is no better demonstration of the loss of economic power of nation-states than the deregulation and rescue of the global financial system The deregulation of financial markets has in fact turned finance into a giant transnational casino, and financial ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 26 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM The Twilight of the Nation-State | 27 operations that are primarily... possibility of instituting a process towards self-government and economic viability The colonial powers seemed to be in a great hurry to rid themselves of the explosive socio-political burdens caused by an anti-colonial movement that was more fired up by nationalist ideology than by the feasibility of economic and social ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 10 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM The Twilight of the Nation-State... mountains of ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 13 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM 14 | One social sacrifice, without managing to eliminate poverty and establish a true civil society ruled by law and by democratic institutions The cost of the Soviet version of development was shortages and lack of freedom; today, that of the neoliberal, capitalist variant is unemployment and social exclusion For the great majority of the so-called... theory of international relations Since the emergence of the modern state, despite legal pronouncements about equality, there have always been powerful nations and weak nations, large and small In the nineteenth century, however, the smaller and weaker states, such as Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark or Japan, ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-C001.indd 14 7/13/10 2:01:44 PM The Twilight of the Nation-State . PM7/13/10 2:12:33 PM to Penelope ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd vZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd v 7/13/10 2:12:33 PM7/13/10 2:12:33 PM ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd viZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd vi 7/13/10 2:12:33. 2:12:32 PM ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd iiZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd ii 7/13/10 2:12:32 PM7/13/10 2:12:32 PM THE MYTH OF DEVELOPMENT Non-Viable Economies and the Crisis of Civilization Second edition Oswaldo. PM ZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd viiiZED -RIVERO- 1 0-0 401-FM.indd viii 7/13/10 2:12:33 PM7/13/10 2:12:33 PM Introduction Since the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the mod- ern nation-state