The first great work of Western history told the story of a battle between empire and nation. Herodotus, in his “Histories,” narrated the Greek’s fight for freedom against the Persian empire and its universalist impulses. The same ancient theme of imperialism versus nationalism, local freedom versus global unity, has dominated the contemporary discussion of Donald Trump and American exceptionalism, as well as Brexit. Ought we to move towards a more integrated world with more national power ceded to international organizations? Or should we return to the project of politically empowering independent nation-states?
With these issues in the background, Dr. Yoram Hazony, director of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, sets out to answer fundamental questions of political organization in his new book “The Virtue of Nationalism.” For Hazony “nationalism” means not simply a love of country akin to “patriotism,” but a particular political order in which the world is divided into independent nation-states, each with its own self-determined way of life. Hazony’s thesis is that a world of free and independent nation-states, much like a free market unfettered by centralized regulation, is best.
A hallmark of conservative thinking is captured by Edmund Burke’s famous line in Reflections On the Revolution in France that in political matters, it is better to talk to a farmer than a metaphysician. The philosopher’s concerns — abstract, ideal states of affairs — are largely irrelevant. It is far more useful to ask what can actually be done and therefore to consult those who have the relevant hands-on experience. By contrast, Hazony, despite his conservative orientation, attempts to argue that nationalism is best in an abstract and absolute sense. In so doing, he undermines the practicality of his thesis and fails to consider whether nationalism is tenable in the real world.
Unlike Adam Smith, who used painstaking empirical argument to demonstrate the utility of the free market, Hazony’s argument in favor of nationalism is a single chapter. The argument is comprised of five theories about nationalism. One is that a world organized by national freedom offers a competitive political order that results in periods of social and cultural flourishing:
Competition among independent states explains the fact that those periods of history that we find most admirable in terms of the kinds of individuals they produced, and their fruitfulness in terms of works of science, religion, and art, were periods in which the political order was one of small, independent states in competition with one another, whether national states, or tribal city-states.
The problem here is that Hazony does not attempt to demonstrate causation from this apparent correlation. Granted, it may well be the case that the independent nation-state has, at times, been crucially associated with technological and artistic progress. But history also shows that nationalism has, on other occasions, as in Nazi Germany, been associated with the destruction of art and culture. Hazony’s theory is only plausible if one cherry picks historical facts. It will only be convincing to those whose biases already favor nationalism.
Hazony also theorizes that nationalism is better suited to our epistemological condition. National freedom, Hazony writes, is “premised on the supposition that political truth is not immediately evident to all.” Under these conditions, a global laboratory of diverse nations pursuing experiments in living is best for all. But this is in tension with Hazony’s thesis that nationalism is the best political organization in an absolute sense. Hazony’s preference for nationalism seems premised on the view that we do in fact know political truth.
Hazony also fails to make a practical case that nationalism can keep the peace on the world stage. There are, according to Hazony, supra-state principles that are required to secure the order of nation-states. But these “natural laws of nations,” as he calls them, seem arbitrary, untested, and ethically dubious. One of Hazony’s principles is of non-interference in the internal affairs of other national states. Hazony writes:
This is what, in a free state, permits the nation to pursue its interests and aspirations according to its own understanding. Without this principle, powerful nations would take control of the affairs of smaller nations, and the order of national states would collapse into an imperial order.
Hazony does allow for the violation of national sovereignty when one’s own national interest is at risk. When nation-states are confronted with imperialist actors like Hitler and Stalin, for example, they “have no choice but to interfere, whether by political or military means to slow or prevent their rise.” However, Hazony leaves no room for intervention in the case of human rights abuses.
Independent of ethical arguments against Hazony’s rejection of interference based on human rights, he does not present clear evidence that his principles can actually secure an international order. There is little evidence that international laws based only on self-interest can secure global peace. Hazony’s view seems on particularly shaky ground if one considers similar, failed principles for securing an international order that emerged in the 18th century. Legal theorist Emer de Vattel, for example, wrote that,
[The] first general law that we discover in the very object of the society of nations, is that each individual nation is bound to contribute everything in her power to the happiness and perfection of all others.
We have no reason to assume that Hazony’s international policy of self-interest is any more likely to establish global order than this older view of altruism between nations.
Ultimately, the simple binary opposition Hazony assumes between nationalism and supra-state power is not well founded. On Hazony’s account, to be a nationalist is in principle to oppose all supra-state power. But a less strict theoretical distinction seems more germane to history, and more useful. A more nuanced account of national power would allow us to pose an important practical question Hazony’s theory rules out, namely: what is the proper balance between state and supra-state power? Most likely, it will vary to some degree depending on the particular international challenges a given historical epoch faces.
To be sure, there remain deep and important questions about nationalism. How can a love of nation can be balanced with a supra-state ethic? Do human rights abuses ever justify the violation of a country’s sovereignty? And who has the authority to decide? Should non-Western nations accept Western ethical standards of individual rights and liberty at the price of their traditions? Unfortunately, in Hazony’s book, these practical issues are largely ignored in favor of a wishful metaphysics of nationalism.
Max Diamond is a reporter at RealClearInvestigations.
