again and again throughout the book.
A breezy visit to Abkhazia doesn’t
do enough to explore a rising trend:
Russia’s exploitation of nationalist
rivalries to maintain a shadow of the
buffer zone it enjoyed in the days of the
Russian Empire and then the USSR.
Putin maintains a military presence in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, republics
unrecognized in the West and carved
out of the republic of Georgia. The same
playbook was followed to carve Trans-
nistria out of Moldova, to carve Lugansk
and Donetsk out of Ukraine, and even
to assist Armenia in carving Nagorno-
Karabakh out of Azerbaijan. The Rus-
sian annexation of Crimea was the
culmination of this campaign, although
whether it is the end is far from certain.
The rise of conflicting world maps—
just as Western maps refuse to acknowl-
edge Transnistria, maps in Russia do
not recognize Kosovo’s secession from
Serbia—is worrying. A border that
moves depending on who’s telling you
where it belongs is nothing new, but in
a world where borders are as stable as
they have ever been, any threat appears
large. Keating touches on this briefly as
he discusses the Spratly Islands, where
China is literally building up its pres-
ence by constructing thousands of acres
of new land. International law doesn’t
recognize a claim to an exclusive eco-
nomic zone based on artificial islands,
but by building on existing reefs China
is attempting an end-run that, backed
by a lot of money and the diplomatic
clout it buys, will succeed, at least in the
short term.
Meanwhile, some natural islands are
disappearing. Keating ends his tour in
Kiribati, a vast nation of low-lying atolls
and islands that could become unin-
habitable within decades as oceans rise.
Having purchased land in Fiji, its plans
to continue as a government without a
territory are starting to ripple through
international law. Can the Kiribati
people maintain some sort of virtual
citizenship? Once in exile, will they
keep their seat at the U.N. and other
bodies? Can they retain political and
economic control over what amounts to
a seabed? Will international law change
to recognize artificial islands built on
a country’s former site? The academic
question of a nation-state without
a state could become less academic
sooner than we think.THAT LEADS US to Keating’s last and
largest question: How might changes
in the physical world impact the politi-
cal world? As coastlines and climates
change over the coming decades, people
will move and bring with them a host of
new dilemmas. How will today’s powers
react to tomorrow’s crises?
Here again, Keating asks more than
he answers. He gives lavish attention
to the eccentrics, romantics, and rebels
challenging the simple narrative of the
nation-state, but not to their opponents.
We’re told the African Union opposes
the adjustment of borders, but we never
meet anyone who works there. We’re
told the United States uses its influence
to discourage secession, but Keating
never talks with a diplomat, a World
Bank official, or anyone else deploying
hard and soft power to maintain the sta-
tus quo. It’s like a movie whose villain is
never on the screen.
This omission highlights another
issue: The book devotes almost no
attention to the real power of the
nation-state. The anthropologist and
political scientist James C. Scott hasshown how lines on maps do not always
translate into the lived reality of states’
subjects. At the same time, treaties
and trade pacts have eroded the legal
boundaries between nations while
globalization and the digital revolution
have made the world much smaller. As
states are threatened by a more homog-
enized world culture, by rivals that
provoke with impunity within their bor-
ders, and by the logic of a market that
demands an endless, frictionless flood
of goods and services across borders, it
is little wonder that a populist reaction
has arisen. Keating does frustratingly
little to digest all this.
Despite such flaws, Invisible Coun-
tries is a worthwhile read. It challenges
ideas that have long lived as quiet
assumptions in our heads. It suggests
that things will change soon—that the
minor flaws with and exceptions to the
Westphalian system are not aberrations
but harbingers. Keating never settles
long enough on any one point to give
truly satisfying answers. But if his book
ultimately leaves too many questions
open, it remains a useful starting point
for the discussions we must begin.JAMES ERWIN is the author of Declarations
of Independence: An Encyclopedia of U.S.
Secessionist and Autonomous Movements
(Greenwood Press).Are we in a brief
and historically
anomalous period of
stable international
borders that is coming
to an end?REASON 65Invisible Countries: J ourneys to the Edge
of Nationhood, by Joshua Keating, Yale
University Press, 296 pages, $26