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Ed Webb

There's No Such Thing as the "National Interest" - 0 views

jacobinmag.com/...reign-policy-national-interest

IR analysis opinion politics Marxism

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Jul 20 - Cached
  • Interests are presented as shared faits accomplis — objectives that are self-evident, inevitable, even natural. And as the descriptor “national” implies, they’re also supposedly beneficial to the country as a whole.
  • The United States’ national interests aren’t the result of mass consensus. We haven’t held a referendum on foreign policy. No one asked if I wanted to spend a portion of my yearly taxes supporting eight hundred military bases abroad and a $1.25 trillion annual national security budget. Sure, I can write my congressperson and tell them I oppose such things, but it’s safe to say that contractor dollars are likely to have more of an impact on my rep.
  • The lumbering momentum of the Pentagon, the rapacious profiteering of the war industry, the quiet tyranny of Washington lobbyists, the cynical votes of captured politicians — all of these crystallize into something called a “national interest.” Are there internal debates between these forces? Do they shift or come into conflict occasionally? Of course. But ultimately, ordinary people have very little say in the matter. The “national interest” is in fact a ruling-class interest.
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  • Seeing through the mystification of “national interests” is particularly important right now because we are told again and again that the world is entering a new age of great power conflict. Even liberals who abhor the anti-Asian xenophobia of the Trump administration appear to endorse increased confrontation with China. The consensus in Washington holds that the United States and China are headed for a new cold war, in part because their national interests are necessarily opposed.
  • more like petty but dangerous squabbling between two national ruling elites. The “interests” of the United States and China aren’t collective pursuits. They’re prescriptions imposed on us from above — and highly risky ones, at that.
  • This internationalist perspective also serves as a subtle rebuke to the anti-imperialism of fools, which carries water for repressive governments simply because they buck the United States on the international stage. We can and should critique US imperialism without falling prey to the ideology of a competitor state’s ruling class.
  • A wise man once noted, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” I’d say the notion of a national interest qualifies, wherever it’s asserted.
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