The Greeks envisioned a state of local society that could defend against barbarian surroundings. Rome sort of lived up to that idea. What the Greeks didn't anticipate is that some day the whole earth would be covered with "Romes" who think everyone else are barbarians...
Why our generals were more successful in World War II
https://youtu.be/AxZWxxZ2JGE
>>1
Originally the main barbarian threat to the Greeks was... the Greeks. It was the Dorian invasion which caused the collapse of the mycenaeans. The Persians were a threat but the poleis were capable of removing them. It was the Macedonians which subjugated the poleis. Even in the Hellenic period it was nominally Greek empires fighting one another for the most part. Before the arrival of the Slavs, Turks, and Arabs generally speaking the Greeks withstood barbarians.
>>1
Barbarians is one of those loaded terms like gentiles, pagans and uncivilised.
The question is, why do we still need nation states, if the whole world consists of non-barbarian insiders?
The question is, why do we still need nation states, if the whole world consists of non-barbarian insiders?
This was never what the state was for. The state is the engine of civilization, it made the civilized rather than the other way around. It is the source of education, it is the spring of economic advancement (see merchantalism or the american school of economics), it is the mechanism by which the interests of one state are put over another. In short the reason the state still exists in a few places around the word is because it is exactly what makes progress.