1) The new nations that came into existence between 1989-1992 are located in the home of nationalism and result from events in the 1914-1918 era. (He calls it the hatching of the eggs of Versailles and Brest-Litovsk.)

2) Lines of national borders are the product of either colonial divisions or of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson's thinking, not of national aspiration of self-conscious feeling.

3) Nationalism was the beneficiary, not the cause of the Soviet collapse, which was caused by perestroika that undermined the foundations of social order and withdrew military support from satellite regimes.

4) Therefore, the only true nationalist movements with political potential are those in the West -- Quebec, Scotland.

5) State creation has had nothing to do with nationalism, but only as a result of decolonization, revolution and the intervention of outside powers.

6) The leaders of nationalist movements are really motivated by the pursuit of international status and resources, not for domestic needs, and their movements fall into internal fighting and further division when they succeed.

7) Hobsbawm calls it a great accomplishment of socialist countries to have delayed or postponed violence between nationalities. After the fall of communism allowed political mobilization resulting in ethnic agitations resulting from non-ethnic principles of state formation. [This is the man who calls the deaths of 50 million people under totalitarian Communism a justifiable sacrifice for an experiment!]

8) The growth of international organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, including international financial institutions, has reduced the relevance of states as bounded economic communities. The technological revolution of globalization has reduced the sovereign control that states can exercise over their economies. They are still significant chiefly by virtue of the fifty percent of the national economy that most states take in taxes and spend.

9) Politics after 1945 was orderly, but dominated by mostly revolution and counter-revolution, not nationalism and after 1990 there is no ordering principle, even nationalism.

10) Most political units are dependent on the international system for their survival, and like regions, do not constitute viable economically units.