In an era of global politics, both nationalism and inter-nationalism are beginning to seem like reflections of a bygone age, apparently given extended life only by the requirements of the war on terror. In this brilliantly argued book, Tom Nairn shows that nationality politics have acquired a different and novel force - most notably in the USA, but also in most parts of the world, from the UK to Indonesia, from Turkey to China and Taiwan. Far from inevitably resulting in US dominance or the creation of an "empire" of undifferentiated capital, the globalizing process can instead lead to a world of "sustainable nationalism", in which human diversity is allowed to thrive within a newly constituted framework of liberal-democratic nation-states.