And so endlessly on, until you end up with what a sprawl of what A Sivanadan terms "cultural enclaves and feuding nationalisms".
One reason is the proliferation of manufactured nationalisms.
The American-led alliance won the cold war, a potentially even bloodier confrontation than the first world war's murderous clash of European nationalisms and the second world war's six-year struggle against would-be Superman Hitler and his friends.
In Spain, where he lives for part of the year, he backs a small centrist party that opposes the petty nationalisms of the country's periphery.In the Latin American tradition he believes that it is the writer's role and duty to intervene in politics.
Tolerant Irishmen likewise hope that closer links within the EU between their island's north and south may soften the edges of competing nationalisms.
This is because, contrary to much conventional wisdom conceived from afar, the past half-century of conflict between Jew and Arab in Palestine has for the most part been a clash of nationalisms, not religions.
And what is true of China can be just as true of the many other still unsubdued nationalisms dotted around the world.A young democracy will not always be pugnacious.
And of course the allure of pan-Arabism has waned, in competition with local nationalisms, pan-Islamism, the Shia-Sunni sectarianism and other trends.
It takes the double form of a conflict between religions and a conflict between nationalisms.
In a tearful farewell speech, Mr Clegg lamented the demise of liberalism and the "fear and grievance" evident in the rise of Scottish and English nationalisms.
AN ASCENDING economy, industrialising fast, that challenges the established power; hungry competition over energy resources; disputes over territory or spheres of influence; and nationalisms inflamed on one side by grievance and on the other by the opponent's presumption.
