America as a Model for the World? A Skeptical View

movement among Russian nationalists, exemplified not only by Boris Yeltsin but by a number of conservative nationalists as well. We should, therefore, put today's nationalist struggle in a certain perspective. They will dominate the politics of the world's relatively lessdeveloped and less-democratic regions. In places like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, intense nationalist struggles for independence will be the inevitable preconditions for democracy. But the process of national separation, while promising to be arduous and bloody, is in the end a transitional state of affairs. Once recognized as having a separate and equal station among the nations of the earth, there is no reason why the newly emerging nationalisms in these regions will not eventually mature in a more tolerant and democratic direction. Nationalist struggles in the present are therefore necessary precursors to the emergence of stable democracy in the future, just as they were in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Conclusion