It's troubling when individuals do this, but I find it especially brutal that "double down and never admit guilt" is the go-to strategy for most nation states and corporations.
I wouldn't limit this to nation states, seems a general approach by politicians all over the world. A certain one made it much more popular over the past four years.
The rest of the world makes a useful distinction between a 'country' (such as France), a 'state' (the public institutions which run France), and a 'government' (the political entity which controls the French state).
However in the US the word 'state' is overloaded, so 'nation state' is used. It's confusing, because 'nation' is sometimes used to mean 'country' (which is how it's intended in 'nation state') and more traditionally used to mean a people with a shared language and history.
As a friend in the State Department exlained, it's because of the French and the British. Generally,"nation" is used to refer to an autonomous political unit, but "nation-state" refers specifically to a sovereign nation.
And the French and the Brits have/had a lot of "nations" which are part of their "nation" and which thus are not "nation states" of their own. For example, Scotsland (and even technically Britain itself) are both nations that are themselves part of the nation-state that is the U.K. For the French, it gets a bit more complicated, since they have a number of territories which are nominally sovereign but are legally subordinate to the French government in Paris (like Tahiti).
"Britain" is a bit confusing. Most often it is used to refer to the UK itself, or sometimes to Great Britain the island. I doubt that's what you meant.
Yes, didn't notice the error until after window for editing had passed. I initially meant England, but "Britain" itself still works because the UK includes more than just the nations on the island itself.
Also, it's my understanding that the main island is Britain, and that "Great Britain" includes the smaller outlying islands, but not the island of Ireland.
The English language is horribly ambiguous and confused around words like nation, state, nation state, country, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, race etc.
Yes, but I've not seen an explanation of which useful cases are covered by "nation state" but not by "country" or even better "government". I don't think it even solves the problem of countries which cause other people to get mad if you acknowledge their existence (Taiwan, Palestine)
Meanwhile, does "nation state" apply to the Plurinational State of Bolivia?
Government is also a murky concept. In the US it seems to cover all of the state apparatus, while in other cultures it only refers to the executive branch or even the "cabinet" specifically.
"Nation state" seems to be a thing because state alone could be confused with the 50 US states.
With nation state the focus is on the institutions and leadership, with country the focus is on land and ordinary people it seems.
"Nation state" is used colloquially just to mean "country", but it has a connotation of formality or even oppression. Where "country" just sounds like a place where people live, "nation state" has a kind of academic, officious sound.
So it's used in a context like this to imply something nefarious, treating a country a bit like a dystopian sci-fi megacorp.
That doesn't make the assertion wrong. It would have been equally valid with the term "country". Just explaining (over-explaining, probably) why the OP chose that particular phrase: it has a particular emotional impact.
A nation is a body of people that believe they are similar (usually ethnicity or language.) "An imagined community".
A state is the entity that taxes people, builds roads, maintains a military. It has a "monopoly on violence" in a particular territory.
A nation can be stateless - like the Kurds or Uyghurs. They have a cohesive self-identity, but lack their own state. Colloquially, "nation" can also mean "country" - think "national champion", but this more specific meaning exists as well.
It's rarely necessary to use the term "nation-state". Just using "state" is fine. I suspect people like using it because it has a nice ring to it and sounds serious.
The USA has 50 states, none of which are nations (and thus not nation-states), but which together comprise the whole nation-state union. So the US government and US institutions tend to use "nation-state" more often than others do, because it's a useful disambiguation for them.
