Before participating in a political discussion, there are a few views -- let's say educated prejudices -- that one simply must first adopt if they are not to be gawked at by their cultured peers. Among these idées fixes, for example, is the superstition that America's national debt is worse than the pox, the notion that there is a significant difference between both political parties and, of course, the ironclad conviction that all times the government should pursue that elusive goal known as the 'national interest.'
This last assumption is particularly intriguing, seeing as it entails the 'sophisticated' observation that the country's 'interests' differ from those of other states while failing to carry this observation to its logical conclusion. That is to say, if people believe that the 'interests' of states conflict with each other then how do these same people reconcile the contradictory assumption that all the members of a large and staggeringly diverse society like the U.S. somehow share a monolithic 'national interest?'
During the past century this notoriously ambiguous, and shall we say illusory ideal, has been referenced repeated by politicians, pundits, and the otherwise powerful, each pronouncing it decisively with an appropriately knit eye-brow and stony certitude. When we are lucky, they add to the theatrics with an emphatic Clinton-fist gesture or firmly-planted pound the table for good measure. Credulous journalists and a preoccupied public either gobble up this manufactured mush or let it slip in one ear and out the other. In any case, the contradictory and, quite frankly, dangerous ideas embedded in the term remain uncontested.
In dissecting the assumptions and, most tellingly, the motives behind this promiscuously used term, however, it becomes ever apparent that the concept of 'national interest' is not only wrong, but perversely so.
For starters, the term is most often cited as a reason to go to war or pursue some other hawkish and invariably reckless policy. Right now the hot topic is China, with febrile strategists in Washington clamoring for belligerent measures that involve heightening America's influence in SE Asia and elsewhere in order to contain the Chinese juggernaut for, well, the 'national interest.'
This is patently silly. Moves to reopen military bases in the Philippines, to cite one concrete step made in recent years, are not only counterproductive but potentially dangerous. The not-so-subtle message is that the U.S. is willing to use its 'big stick' if needed to maintain America's economic and military dominance on the world stage.
Incidentally, the U.S. made similar moves in the past again the USSR and China (PRC), calling this the Cold War. I suppose that installing nuclear missiles pointed at the USSR from Turkey was also a saavy move necessary for protecting our 'national interests.' The problem with this juvenile posturing eventually manifested itself in the specter of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a gratuitous and mind-bogglingly reckless confrontation based on the same logic employed today at the Pentagon and White House -- and which almost resulted in nuclear Holocaust.
Declassified documents now show that JFK knew that the USSR was chagrined, to put it mildly, by the presence of American nuclear weapons in Turkey and saw the missile installations at Cuba as an equalizing factor -- you know, that 'sophisticated' strategy called mutual deterrence. What makes this brinkmanship all the more unforgivable was the fact that JFK's administration knowingly engaged in nuclear chicken, literally gambling with the human race, for what they themselves referred to as political reasons.
Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, later admitted that "right from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those missile sites alone. He didn’t say militarily, he said politically.” Fortunately for the human race, Khrushchev had the good sense to back down, literally allowing Americans to continue their lives and JFK -- fornicator, narcissist, and gambler par excellence -- to later become lionized as one of the great statesmen of our time.
Besides acting as a veil for self-aggrandizing political aims, the 'national interest' is equally used as a curtain behind which narrow and generally antisocial economic interests are pursued.
The latest wheeling and dealing in Congress has made this eminently clear. It is telling that in the midst of a grueling economic crisis Congress has chosen to cut key social programs -- the programs that those who have been most adversely affected by the crisis rely on most -- while only cosmetically altering the tax burden on the nation's super-rich. Without a hint of irony politicians pontificate about the need to decrease the country's debt while stoically refusing to raise the funds to do so from those who can actually afford it.
Instead, starving ordinary people of affordable health care, education, and yes, food, is considered necessary, or as Obama calls it "shared sacrifice." Of course, the "sacrifice" of a single mother attempting to pay her bills with a dead-end job and the "sacrifice" of someone who is well off enough that they shall, in all likelihood, not experience in any change in their comfortable lifestyle, is not really "shared sacrifice."
One wonders why if this "shared sacrifice" entails immiseration for one and fortifies the resplendent living of the other, the "sacrifice" can be referred to as "shared"? Even better, why does it have to be "shared" at all? The 'national interest' and 'shared sacrifice' are at heart tasteless euphemisms for the exploitation of the most vulnerable in order to entrench the power of the well-to-do. In other words, the 'national interest' is soothing piece of Newspeak meant to conceal powerful class interests, covering up what would otherwise be blatantly antisocial behavior.
I will admit that to say there is a 'national interest' is true. But it is the same interest as that of Chinese, Palestinians, Iranians and everyone else: the good of the human race is the real 'national interest'. At present, the 'national interest' is used to cover up what are perceived by elites to be their interests. Yet, more often than not these 'interests' amount to nothing more than short term gains that are deleterious for all in the long run.
Oil barons can sermonize about the 'national interest' inherent in increasing America's exploitation of unclean energy at home but green paper will not help them when there is no oil left or the world is too pockmarked, spoiled, or hot to live in anymore.War may make a coterie of profiteers very rich but in the end their lives will be debased by their greed, their spiritual health soiled by their avarice. Violent posturing in Pakistan or the Philippines might make Americans feel safer but the use of violence that accompanies such posturing will only result in more deaths and bitterness towards an unfeeling Pax Americana. And safeguarding the profits of multinational corporations may raise GDP but this means nothing for most Americans when most of the dough finds its way into the pockets of those at the top -- a legalized and, indeed, revered form of embezzlement.
While the 'national interest' is a comforting figment for those who are, in fact, chasing after their own short-sighted conceptions of 'interests', it is both hollow and dangerous. And while there is, in truth, no 'national interest' in the popular sense of the phrase, there is a 'human interest,' one that harnesses beauty instead of prostituting it; one that uses creative energy to heal instead of destroy.
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