Planetarism: a paradigmatic alternative to internationalism
Stefan Pedersen
Abstract
What is a robust theoretical alternative to nationalism? For many seasoned cosmopolitan thinkers the answer is internationalism, which is generally perceived to be a sound foundation for creating a global polity in the form of a federation of nations. But this assumption is here criticised on the basis that it is founded on an inherent fallacy – internationalism is only a modification of nationalism, where the latter remains the ideological nucleus in conceptual terms – which therefore means that today many renowned cosmopolitan thinkers in the last instance seek to build a global polity on the same divisive ideational foundation that brought on the World Wars in the last century. Because of the shared roots of nationalism and internationalism, the salient question is really; what comes after the international? The answer argued for here is; a novel paradigm of ‘planetarism’ that is not a compromise with the extant nationalisms.