The National Interest : Politics After Globalization

Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an ‘America First’ agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urgency of defending their own country’s national interest. But what is the national interest and why did it disappear from the political agenda? Will Trump restore American national interests, or will he betray them? How might we know the difference?  The National Interest answers these questions. It explains how and why globalist political leaders and bureaucrats abandoned the national interest over the past thirty years. Even today, many of our elites still sneer at the concept as an anachronism in an age of global environmental collapse and ‘polycrisis’. But without it, there can be no political representation, and without representation there can be no democratic accountability. The national interest can be revived as part of a strategy of nation-building and national rebirth. This book makes the case for such a revival, heralding a new era of democratic renewal and international cooperation.

With peak globalization behind us, we urgently need a new debate about the national interest. Yet across the West it is a concept that is conspicuous by its absence from public life. All too often the ‘national interest’ is still seen as a parochial idea – an anachronism in an age of global environmental collapse and ‘polycrisis’. Political leaders accustomed to making their case to the world at large rather than to their fellow citizens treat the national interest as an embarrassment.

Yet we will not be able to rise to the challenges that confront us without the legitimacy conferred by the national interest. This book explains how globalising political leaders and bureaucrats smothered the idea of the national interest over the past thirty years – and how we must now revive it if we are to have the democratic strength to meet the international challenges of the future. Instead of seeing the national interest as a matter of foreign policy, this book makes the case that the national interest is as much a matter of internal democratic politics as it is global order.