The nation state may soon be a thing of the past

What will be clear, with hindsight, is that the global order of nation states is now unraveling and is no longer viable. I was born in the second half of the 1950s, when the ideal of a homogeneous nation state was at its highest. The ideas behind the nation state germinated in the 19th century and reached their peak in the 1870s following the unification of Germany under Bismarck and Italy under Garibaldi. What we are seeing is the end of the nation state, not the beginning. A sovereign state with secure borders and a homogeneous national population and culture is a thing of the past.