Yoram Hazony, the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, is the author of several books, including God and Politics in Esther, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, and the Virtue of Nationalism, which was just released. The following is an exchange we had over email, discussing the Virtue of Nationalism and contemporary politics, edited for length.
Adam Rubenstein: Your book is a thorough case for the nation state and for nationalism. What’s our best evidence that nationalism is a good thing—that its virtues outweigh its vices?
Yoram Hazony: Nationalism is a principled view that says the world is governed best when nations are able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions and pursuing their own interests without foreign interference. Though independent national states have existed since ancient times—with biblical Israel the classical example—we have remarkable examples of what an order of competing national states can do after English and Dutch independence in the 1500s. Competition among national states in Europe unleashed dormant energies and a spirit of innovation in government, economics, science, religion and art. It’s hard to think of modernity without English empirical science, developed in direct competition with French rationalism; or the development of freedom of the press, or the securities market, which arose in the Netherlands, and later in Britain, in the midst of the struggle against Spanish imperialism; or the Prussian university, designed to rival French and English achievements. It’s also important to notice that the toleration of diverse national and religious traditions that arises out of the Westphalia settlement—what Henry Kissinger calls “the Great Moderation”—is ultimately what permits tolerance of diverse viewpoints within national states as well. Once viewpoint diversity is accepted in principle on an international scale, it gradually becomes easier to respect alternative viewpoints at home as well.
AR: What’s the current status of nationalism and of the modern nation state? With Brexit and “America First,” among other expressions of nationalism, is it ascendant—or are there signs of a pendulum swinging in the opposite direction? What might a move in the opposite direction look like?
YH: Nationalism is certainly ascendant at this moment. That opens the door for a serious discussion of a kind that we have not seen since the formulation of post-war conservatism by Russell Kirk and William Buckley and their colleagues in the 1950s. And if we work hard and if we’re very lucky, this nationalism may develop into something important and permanent. But we need to be very clear about the dangers as well. The new nationalist movements are really a work in progress. In the absence of a serious moral leadership, there is an obvious danger that they will get tangled up in bad ideas that quickly lead to failure and to universalist liberalism reasserting itself. European and American universities, media, and business elites are still overwhelmingly committed to a universalist-liberal view of things that sees national and religious particularism as inherently wrong. As long as that’s the case, and no alternative educational channels exist for young people to hear an alternative view, there’s good reason to fear that universalist liberalism will just reassert itself with even greater force.
AR: What threats and pressures is the nation state facing from within and from the outside? Do international institutions pose a threat to an order dominated by nation states? If so, how?
YH: The greatest threats to the independence of nations are at the level of ideas. Universalist ideas, both Marxist and liberal, dominate intellectual life in America and Europe. The universities are not just some ivory tower. They are a transmitter of ideas, training generations of students who go on to implement the things they studied. The last generation, since 1989, will all the crazy talk of a utopian “new world order”—in which all the nations of the world give up their independence and self-government and obey “laws” invented by international law professors—all of this is ultimately the product of universities that teach utopian political and economic theories instead of training students to face empirical reality. We need a conservative or realist alternative to academic Marxism and liberalism, but we don’t have it except maybe in the most rudimentary form. This means that every international institution is immediately governed by Marxists or liberals, just as like the universities that train the officials that are appointed to run these institutions. Under these conditions, every international institution just accumulates power so it can force Marxist or liberal ideals on what independent national governments.
AR: You write that the best political order “is one of independent national states.” A position, which, “resembles that of [John Stuart] Mill, who saw the independence of national states as an evident good and urged that such states should be established where…feasible.” Is there, and should there be, a universal right to self-determination? What are the competing interests here, and how might they be reconciled?
YH: As I write in The Virtue of Nationalism, I don’t think that everything that is good and desirable can be turned into a “universal right.” Rights can only be enforced where there is an overwhelming governing power capable of enforcing them. That can be done within a cohesive national state in which the population and the government are bound together by widespread mutual loyalty. But who would enforce “universal right to self-determination”? You’d have to build a universal world empire to enforce that, and the cure would end up worse than the disease. In my book, I propose that a world of independent nations needs to be regarded as an aim that gives direction and purpose to the international system as it adjudicates the competing interests of nations, not a utopian blueprint that some Napoleon is going to impose on the world. It may be that many more generations will pass before 30 million Kurds, for example, are finally able to achieve national independence. Still, it is a just aim and would benefit not only the Kurds, but the system of national states as a whole.
AR: What should President Trump read? And why?
YH: Leaders of Western countries suffer terribly from the fact that they don’t know the Bible. Quite apart from the questions of eternal salvation that Christianity emphasizes, the Jewish Bible (or “Old Testament”) is the source of the most important political ideas we have inherited. The independence of nations is an Old Testament idea and if you want to understand it, the Bible is your best bet. But if the president doesn’t have the time to make a serious study the Old Testament right now, a much quicker read is The Virtue of Nationalism, which is a useful introduction to biblical political ideas—including national independence. Everyone on the president’s staff should have at least a couple of copies handy. It could really help.
