ABSTRACT

No meta-narrative in modernity is so ubiquitous as that of the notion of historical progress. Bound up with this narrative in recent discourse is the concept of globalism. Globalism is presented by its advocates as an evolutionary step beyond nationalism that civilization is inevitably progressing towards. A striking feature of the escalation of the war in Ukraine in 2022, from domestic conflict to interstate war, has been the unquestioned evocation of nationalism-as-justification on both sides of the conflict. This is particularly interesting as it gives lie to the supposed globalism1 of Western elites, who have been almost unanimous in their newfound concern for the inviolability of national sovereignty. In this paper, the Ukrainian crisis will be treated as an opportunity to critique the notion of historical progress, with special reference to the question of nationalism. The paper will explore how evidence of globalist “progress” has been entirely of a technical-materialistic type, and how the escalation of the international response to the war in Ukraine exposes the total absence of a moral progress in modernity. What is more, the paper will argue that what has instead transpired is historical decline as the worldview of nationalistic moderns is, in moral terms, far more parochial than that of what will be referred to as ‘Traditional’ civilizations.