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Perspective: Realists, Nationalists, and ‘Liberal World Order’

June 14, 2019
By Henry R. Nau

From Claremont Review of Books

Realists and nationalists are winning the current U.S. foreign policy debate. Rejecting internationalist policies to build a “liberal world order” through the spread of democracy, markets, and global institutions, they advocate a strategy that defends America’s borders and preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, calling for intervention in other hemispheres only when another great power threatens to dominate Europe, Asia, or the Middle East.

Copyright: potowizard/Depositphotos.com

The American public seems to agree. After supporting NATO and World Trade Organization expansion in the 1990s and the “global war on terror” in the 2000s, they elected, first, President Obama to end wars and rein in financial elites and, then, President Trump to fortify America’s borders, put “America First,” and significantly reduce America’s military and economic engagement around the world. John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusionand Stephen Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions chronicle this dramatic turnaround. Two avatars of realist and increasingly nationalist thinking, Mearsheimer and Walt—who stirred up controversy earlier with their book on the “Israel lobby”—take dead aim at the “delusion” of liberal hegemony.

A brilliant polemicist who teaches at the University of Chicago, Mearsheimer argues that human nature precludes agreement on first principles in world affairs, on what constitutes the good life, and how societies organize to achieve it. Human beings’ basic instinct, he maintains, is to survive, and they do so by grouping together in societies. Although these societies sometimes merge and sometimes break apart, they can never unite across the globe.

For Mearsheimer, nationalist logic works hand in hand with realist logic. Nationalism is all about “sovereignty” and “self-determination,” the desire of every nation to have its own state based on its distinct, particularist culture.

That desire ensures that universalist cultures or ideologies—be they Communist, fascist, religious, or liberal—will never prevail. It creates a tension even within liberal states because they too require, “the non-liberal underbelly of national community,” a night watchman and national culture to protect the peace.

Continue reading here.

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