Politics & Power Quote by Peter Singer

Singer isn’t trying to “both-sides” nationalism; he’s diagnosing it the way a utilitarian diagnoses pain: as a stubborn, empirically observable fact that moral theory can’t wish away. The sentence is built on a careful balancing act. He grants nationalism its brute motivational power - “a very strong force” - then immediately widens the frame to “other forces operating,” a deliberately clinical phrasing that treats political identity like competing pressures in a system. The verb choice matters: “tendencies pushing” suggests structural momentum (institutions, markets, migration, law), not just ideals.

The Europe clause is doing quiet but heavy work. In the postwar European project, Singer sees a laboratory for his larger ethical wager: that people can be coaxed into broader circles of concern through shared governance, rights regimes, and interdependence. It’s also an implicit warning. Europe is where cosmopolitan integration looks most plausible, and yet it’s also where nationalist backlashes reliably erupt. The subtext: do not confuse aspirational narratives of unity with the emotional stickiness of the nation-state.

Singer’s intent is pragmatic, almost tactical. As a philosopher associated with expanding moral consideration beyond borders (and even beyond species), he’s signaling that moral arguments alone don’t move history; identity does. If you’re designing policy - refugee intake, foreign aid, supranational rules - you have to account for nationalism as a real constraint, not a moral error that will dissolve under better reasoning. The line reads like a bridge between ethics and political psychology: the bigger picture may be coming, but the older loyalties aren’t leaving the room.