A Global Village or the Rights of the Peoples?nThe great conflicts of the future will no longer pit leftnagainst right, or East against West, but the forces ofnnationalism and regionalism against the credo of universalndemocracy. The lofty ideal of the global village seems to benstumbling over the renewed rise of East European separatism,nwhose aftershocks may soon spill over into the Westernnhemisphere. Already the dogma of human rights is comingnunder fire by the proponents of peoples’ rights, and thenyearning for historical community is making headway intonatomized societies deserted by ideologies.nWith the collapse of communist internationalism thenclock of history has been turned back, and inevitably thenwords of the 19th-century conservative Joseph de Maistrencome to mind: “I have seen Poles, Russians, Italians, but asnto man, I declare never to have seen him.” Indeed, thisnparadigmatic universal man, relieved from economic plightnand from the burden of history, this man on whom wenpattern the ideology of human rights, is nowhere to be seen.nHe appears all the more nebulous as in day-to-day life wenencounter real peoples with specific cultures. If he resides innBrooklyn, his idea of human rights is likely to be differentnTomislav Sunic is professor of European politics atnJuniata College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of thenforthcoming Against Democracy and Equality: ThenEuropean New Right (Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.).n22/CHRONICLESnby Tomislav Sunicnnnfrom somebody who lives in the Balkans; if he is anfundamentalist Moslem his sense of civic duty will bendifferent from somebody who is a Catholic. The rise innnationalist sentiments in Eastern Europe should not be seennas only a backlash against communist economic chaos;nrather, it is the will of different peoples to retrieve theirnnational memories long suppressed by communism’s shallownuniversalism.nAll of Europe seems to be undergoing a paradoxical andnalmost ludicrous twist of history. On the one hand WesternnEurope is becoming more and more an “americanocentric”nanational meta-society, while post-communistnEastern Europe threatens to explode into a myriad ofnmini-states. Conversely, whereas Western Europe is experiencingnan unparalleled wave of foreign immigration and theninevitable surge of racism that must follow, the racialnhomogeneity of East Europeans has made them today moren”European” than West Europeans — the East’s own multiethnicnturmoil notwithstanding.nIn view of the disintegrating state system in EasternnEurope, Woodrow Wilson’s crusades for the right ofnnational self-determination and global democracy mustnseem contradictory. Home rule as envisioned by the architectsnof the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 may have suited thendemands of Poles, Czechs, and those European peoplesnwho benefited from the collapse of the Austro-Hungariann