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Paulo de BRITO

Are international law and nationalism two completely self-contained and separated realities? It is said that international law, as the name indicates, is basically concerned with relations between nations politically organised into States, and is situated in the ambit of their external affairs, whereas nationalism is internal in scope, the two being, therefore, clearly separate. I do not feel, however, that such an absolute distinction is acceptable. The separation between internal and external results from an incorrect and over-simplified perspective. The internal and the external are closely interrelated. What one nation-state does depends upon its position in relation to the others, and, at the same time, what the others do is a function of what the first does. The external attitude of a State is a projection of attitudes which are termed ‘internal’, and these may be dependent on the way in which the nations are organised externally.