Winning the war in Iraq was easy for George Bush; winning the peace will prove impossible. In order to bestow a stable and democratic Iraqi state upon the world, Paul Bremer, the American administrator in Baghdad, has to succeed in a task of nation-building. Turning an artificial state into a genuine nation, has never before been accomplished. Such states lack the national consciousness that acts as a "civic glue" binding the various peoples living on its territory.

Unlike normal states, artificial states are states which have been constructed (in Friedrich Hayek's sense of constructivism: according to more or less specific plans or rationalist schemes) in places where no similar state had ever existed and where the people had no common identity that would enable them to acquire a national consciousness and, hence, become a genuine nation. Artificial states are either established through violence or drawn up at conference tables. They unite diverse peoples of different cultural, linguistic, religious or ethnic backgrounds and are by definition multinational states. Until the late 1980s, Europe had four of these artificial states: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet-Union. Today, only Belgium is left.

Though artificial states may be exceptional in the Western world, the majority of the member states of the United Nations are artificial states. One needs only to consider the many states in Africa that obtained independence in the 1950s and 60s, but that originated within borders drawn by the European Powers at the 1885 Berlin Conference. Indeed, Africa, with a few possible exceptions (such as Egypt and Ethiopia) is composed predominantly of artificial states. The continent was divided by the Powers into colonies with boundaries that ignored traditional ethnic groupings and cut across regions forming natural units. At the first meeting of the Organisation of African States in Accra in 1958, the African leaders explicitly stated: "Artificial boundaries and frontiers (...) divide African peoples (and) operate to the detriment of Africans and should therefore be abolished or adjusted; frontiers which cut across ethnic groups or divide peoples of the same stock are unnatural and are not conductive to peace or stability. Leaders of neighbouring countries should cooperate toward a permanent solution to such problems."

Despite this declaration, the borders were never adjusted. As a sad result Africa has known neither peace nor stability in the past four decades. Countries inhabited by peoples grouped together without any conception of allegiance to their common state, were bound to fall victim to rent-seeking individuals or clans who looked upon the state merely as a vehicle for personal enrichment. As a result, almost the whole of Africa today belongs to the category of the so-called "failed states" run by criminals or mafia clans that colonise the state for their own purposes. Asia, too, has many of these artificial and failed states, that are unable to generate a genuine "civic glue" binding the nation. Iraq, established by the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreements of 1916, is an example. Within its borders three large ethnic groups (Kurds, Arabic Sunites and Shi'ites) were randomly thrown together. Only a dictator can keep them together. Artificial states can never become democracies. The obvious solution for Iraq would be to divide it into three units which each have the potential to become the nation-state of the people living within its borders. Unfortunately, the United Nations, which is basically a lobby group of the ruling clans in the present states, will object to such a measure as it could act as a precedent for a worldwide rearrangement of borders.

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, patriotism is a virtue. It is the generous love for one's state or nation. We need this love in order to be truly human and humane. Artificial states are unstable institutions because they lack genuine national patriotism. The only patriotisms existing within its borders are the patriotisms of its various peoples, but as these undermine rather than reinforce the state's unity, the authorities try to eradicate them, thereby turning a virtue into a crime.

Iraq persecuted Kurdish and Shi'ite patriots; the Soviet-Union persecuted Ukrainian nationalists; Yugoslavia did likewise with Croatian nationalists. Belgium, too, has always looked upon the Flemish nationalists as its mortal enemies, considering every declaration of affection for Flanders to be a threat to Belgium. In the early 20th century, the Belgian authorities censored a poem by the author Guido Gezelle because it contained the words "dear Flanders." References to Flanders were not permitted unless Belgium was mentioned too. The situation can be likened today to one where all references to England or Britain that do not simultaneously mention Europe would be prohibited. Perhaps if the Europhiles ever succeed in abolishing the old European nation-states and establishing Europe as an artificial state, the reader will live to see that day. Perhaps the Eurosceptic reader will then be considered a subversive, dangerous "extremist" by the state authorities, just as the author, who is a Fleming - hence a Dutch-speaking Belgian - is considered in his own country to be a subversive, dangerous "Belgosceptic."

Belgium is currently the only remaining artificial state in Europe. To Europhiles and post-modernists alike, however, it serves as a role model for the multi-national, or rather non-national, European super-state in the making. Belgium is a nation of rent-seekers. It was established as an independent state after a historical accident that only in retrospect came to be known as the Belgian Revolution. Indeed, the new state was unwanted by its Dutch-speaking majority, but also by its Francophone minority. In the autumn of 1830, Francophone radicals had rebelled against the Dutch Kingdom of the United Netherlands, whose most populous provinces later came to constitute Belgium. The rebels wanted to join France. The establishment of an independent state had not been their intention. It was the result of an international compromise between the Great Powers in the summer of 1831. The same compromise turned Belgium into a kingdom and established the non-indigenous Anglo-German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (the widower of the late British Crown Princess Charlotte, the maternal uncle of the subsequent Crown Princess, the later Queen Victoria, and the paternal uncle of her husband, the later Prince Consort Albert) as the first "King of the Belgians."

The Powers, however, were sceptical about the viability of their artefact. The French diplomat Talleyrand described the new country as "an artificial construction, consisting of different peoples." According to his Austrian colleague Dietrichstein, the Belgian nationality was "a political attempt rather than an observable political reality." Nevertheless, Britain decided to give Belgium a chance. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, liked the prospect of a weak and internally divided bogus state on his doorstep. But the grand old men of 19th century European continental diplomacy, from Metternich to Napoleon III to Bismarck, were all convinced that Belgium could not last longer than one or two generations. King Leopold surprised them all by cleverly holding together his new state. To this end he literally bought the adherence of the Francophile revolutionaries that had made the so-called "Belgian Revolution" by offering them well-remunerated positions that they could never have dreamt of if their country had been annexed by France.

In 1865, Leopold I was succeeded by his son, King Leopold II, a figure as shrewd and imposing as his father, who established himself a private Empire in Central Africa and let the Belgian establishment share in its spoils. Early in the 20th century, the third King of the Belgians, Albert I, became the real constructor of his artificial country by making corporatism the foundation of his state, thereby assuring the loyalty to Belgium of all those at the receiving end of an ever expanding welfare mechanism. The 20th century welfare state, that has extended (or "democratised" if you will) the number of rent-seekers from a small clan to a fairly large group, has for the past decades obscured the fact that Belgium, too, is a failed state. Today, however, we are witnessing the unravelling of the welfare state.

It is plain for all to see that the Belgian state is no longer able to fulfil its basic duties: to guarantee law and order, provide justice and protect its citizens. Mafia clans are again colonising the state. In this environment, a child dealer such as the notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux was free to operate.

Leopold I and the five descendants of his House that succeeded him since 1831, acknowledged the artificial nature of Belgium and the fact that it was unloved by the large majority of its citizens. Belgium was the Saxe-Coburg's tragedy. Its crown was their livelihood, but at the same time they came to loathe the country and its establishment with, as Albert I wrote, "the decadence of its administration" and "the ruinous abuses." They were constantly in search of unifying elements that could compensate for the lack of nationhood and the absence of genuine and generous patriotic feelings in their country. Belgium's history is a dramatic search for the civic glue that bonds "normal," i.e. non-artificial, countries.

The rule of law is the pre-condition of civilisation. Belgium is sometimes compared to multilingual Switzerland. While Belgium is an artificial and multinational state, Switzerland is not. Switzerland was not constructed but grew organically, thereby gradually creating a Swiss national consciousness. In this respect Switzerland is more akin to the United Kingdom where historic accident brought together two of Europe's oldest nations, the English and the Scots, but where their subsequent common history was able to foster a British national consciousness, thereby creating a British nation encompassing both the English and the Scottish nations in a common home. Belgium is a state in which two peoples were forced to live together and where no common Belgian national consciousness developed. On the contrary, instead of becoming the nation-state of its Dutch-speaking majority as it could have if the state had not consistently pursued an anti-Flemish policy, Belgium instigated an anti-Belgian Flemish national consciousness.

Though it is not inconceivable that an artificial state originating in violence, historical accident or planning at a conference table, could over time acquire a genuine encompassing national consciousness that either obfuscates (Switzerland) or supersedes (Great-Britain) pre-existing communal or national adherences, this has rarely ever happened. Once a previously artificial country is able to survive as a state under a democratic regime respecting the rule of law, it is clear that it has become a genuine, non-artificial, state. The Soviet-Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia all failed this test. They fell apart as soon as democracy and the rule of law were introduced. Belgium does not stand the test either. The rule of law in Belgium is often sacrificed to the requirement that the state survive. Because of the artificial nature of Belgium, its king also has greater power than any of his colleagues in the European monarchies. This power is not vested in the Constitution, but chiefly in the fact that the Belgian politicians implicitly, and (except for the Flemish separatists) almost unanimously, accept that the King, because he is neither a Fleming nor a Francophone and, hence, the only real Belgian, is a political arbiter who can actually make policy decisions and interfere in the political process.

Nevertheless, Belgium appears to be a rather stable country. If there is no national consciousness binding it, what has managed to keep it together? The answer to this question has a significance beyond Belgium, because European politicians are at the moment trying to create, through constructivist planning at conference tables, a pan-European super-state. The European State currently in the making will resemble a "Greater-Belgium" in that "Europe" is also going to be an artificial, multinational construct, but it will hardly be a "Greater-Switzerland." Those who want to learn what the future of the European Union as a single state might be, should study Belgium and the way in which the Belgian kings and the leading establishment in Brussels have kept their country together.

Belgium is the prototype of the Europe at present being planned. Belgium's nature as an artificially constructed multinational state offers relevant insights into present-day developments in Europe. In 1989, the then Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens called his country, the "prototype of Europe." "The Federal Belgian State," he said, "is a prefiguration of a Europe of Peoples, united in their organised diversity." Martens also stressed that an artificial country like Belgium "must have a transcendent project to commit itself to, otherwise it becomes very difficult to keep it together. For me that project is: Europe." Based in Brussels, and sharing its capital with Belgium, the European Union is greatly influenced - even infected - by Belgian political attitudes and habits. But, more importantly, Belgium acts as a model for the EU in the latter's efforts to "construct a nation" out of different peoples with separate languages, cultures and traditions. Belgium foreshadows "Europe."

Interestingly, the Belgian establishment realised already one hundred years ago that Belgium could only survive if it were to become the nucleus of a European State. In this sense, Belgicism and Europeanism are the same thing. "Have we not been called the laboratory of Europe," the Belgicist ideologue Léon Hennebicq wrote in 1904. "Indeed, we are a nation under construction. The problem of economic expansion is duplicated perfectly here by the problem of constructing a nationality. Two different languages, different classes without cohesion, a parochial mentality, an adherence to local communities that borders on the most harmful egotism, these are all elements of disunion. Luckily they can be reconciled. The solution is economic expansion, which can make us stronger by uniting us."

In the first half of the past century people like Hennebicq inspired Albert I to turn socialism and corporatism into the foundation of the Belgian State. Belgium was built on a principle that was later, in the 1960s, described by Public Choice theorists as "rent-seeking:" "the resource-wasting activities of individuals in seeking transfers of wealth through the aegis of the state." Belgium became basically a system of financial redistribution. According to Mancur Olson "distributional coalitions slow down a society's capacity to adapt to changing conditions, and thereby reduce the rate of economic growth." Belgium's history during the past decades confirms this. Economic stagflation and social rigidities have turned the "national" conflict between Flemings and Walloons, which was until the 1960s mainly a linguistic conflict, into the ever deepening socio-economic conflict that it is today. In other words: an artificial state, based on rent-seeking, can survive in a more or less democratic environment, so long as the economy performs reasonably well. Once the economy stagnates, however, tensions grow. The Belgian establishment is hoping that the transplantation of the Belgian model to a larger-scale European level, will boost the economy, thereby averting the danger of the model imploding.

King Albert I's son, Leopold III, and the latter's sons, Baudouin and Albert II, continued their predecessors' policies. The rent-seeking mentality of the Belgian establishment has, however, led to corruption. In the case of "normal" states, one can argue that these states have managed to become voluntary organisations resulting from generous motives of mutual concern and co-operation. They are based on the virtue of patriotism. In the artificially constructed state of Belgium, however, the absence of any patriotic feelings has forced the Belgian monarchs to make hard-headed calculated self-interest the foundation of the state.

Contemporary Belgium has become the very model of unscrupulousness, hypocrisy and corruption. It is the "land of a thousand scandals." Many political, social and economic problems affecting Belgium today - including the failures constituting the Dutroux affair and other cases of corruption to which the international media devoted a great deal of attention in the late 1990s - stem from Belgium's corporatist institutions that undermine individual morality.

As one might predict, a "Post-Modernist" interpretation of Belgium's condition has been advanced. The lack of genuine patriotic feelings entails that the Belgians are unwilling to bring sacrifices for the common good. Throughout its entire history, Belgium has been extremely unreliable to its international allies, while the Belgians at the same time came to see themselves as morally superior. In an Open Letter in 1998, a group of Belgian intellectuals wrote that they cherish the Belgian flag "because the latter does not represent anything," and that Belgium, precisely because it has no national consciousness, is "an antidote against nationalism" much needed by the postmodern world. According to the Belgian historian Louis Vos, "a non-ideological postmodernism has become the predominant fashion in intellectual life, more eager to deconstruct the national identity than to make a contribution to it. Some go so far as to deny that the 'invented' concept of national identity and community refers to anything real."

These "postmodernists" claim that Belgium's lack of identity constitutes a supreme morality. This was also the opinion of Belgian King Baudouin who in 1993 stressed the importance of "the European construction," which, in following Belgium's lead, "can best help us resist the temptation of egotism and narrow and disastrous nationalisms." King Albert II reiterated this message in 2002 when he warned against "a repetition of the disastrous 1930s."With these words, he was referring to the growing electoral appeal of Flemish Separatists who loathe Belgium because of what they call its "identity of non-identity."

The question must be asked whether states that were established as artificial "constructions," according to rational constructivist schemes, can really be morally superior. Hayek has pointed out that owing to the limitations of factual knowledge, it is hardly possible for intellectuals to order society, let alone influence public morality in the intended beneficial way, because the "Machbarkeit" or "makeability" of society is limited. He queries whether "anything produced by evolution could have been done better by the use of human ingenuity" and concludes that the latter view is untenable. The same question can be posed in relation to states by researching the connection between the artificial nature of the Belgian state and the morality of its political culture. Which of the two views is more likely to be correct: that of the artificial "non-national" state as the root of political and civic immorality, or, instead, as the root of supreme morality? This question should not only be worrying the Americans in Baghdad, but should also be at the heart of the debate about the future European super-state.