The State and the Nation 137not occur; the states in the region fought to keep the Kurds within their own bound aries,
and the Kurds themselves were divided. But the new Iraq constitution following the
2003 Iraq War called for an autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government for the Kurds
in Iraq, resulting in an eco nom ically vibrant area separate from the chaos in the rest of
Iraq. And the 2011 Arab Spring offered new opportunities for Kurdish nationhood, as
Syria was plunged into a civil war and the Kurds seized control of the Kurdish- majority
regions. As one of the Kurdish leaders expressed, “All the facts on the ground encourage
the Kurds to be in de pen dent.... Today, international powers can no longer resolve
any issue in the Middle East without taking into account the interests of the Kurds.”^3
Still other states have within their borders several diff er ent nations— India, Rus sia,
and South Africa are prominent examples. In the United States and Canada, a number
of diff er ent Native American nations are a part of the state, as are multiple immigrant
communities. The state and the nation do not always coincide. Yet over time in the
latter cases, a common identity and nationality have been forged, even in the absence
of religious, ethnic, or cultural similarity. In the case of the United States, national
values reflecting commonly held ideas are expressed in public rituals, including recit-
ing the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the national anthem, and volunteering in one’s
c om mu n it y.^4 Nation- states are both complex and constantly evolving.
Some of the hundreds of national subgroups around the world, which count over
900 million people, identify more with a par tic u lar culture or religion than with a
par tic u lar state, often experiencing discrimination or persecution because of their
identity. This situation is not new. The gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
between the 1830s and World War I reflected increasing ethnic demands for self-
determination from Egypt and Greece to Albania, Montenegro, and Bulgaria.
Yet not all ethnonationalists aspire to the same goals. Some want recognition of a
unique status, the right to speak and write a par tic u lar language or practice their reli-
gion, or special seats in representative bodies, as the Basques in Spain and France desire.
Still other groups seek separation and the right to form their own state, as Catalonians
in Spain expressed in the 2015 regional elections when separatists won in Catalonia,
the wealthiest area of the country. And some prefer joining with another state that is
populated by fellow ethnonationalists.
One per sis tent dispute over the state and nation involves the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) and Taiwan, also called the Republic of China (ROC). After World
War II, Mao Zedong and his communist revolutionaries took over the territory and
government of mainland China, forcing the former Nationalist government to flee to
Taiwan, a small island about 100 miles to the southeast. Both governments claimed to
represent the Chinese nation. For ideological and geopo liti cal reasons, the United
States originally recognized the ROC, while the Soviet Union recognized the PRC.
Over time, however, the growing po liti cal and economic power of the PRC meant
that the ROC was sidelined; notably, in 1972, the PRC assumed China’s permanent