USA - Without “universal values in our foreign policy,” we “have no identity as a nation” and no moral credibility

The Irrationalism of Nationalism

by Daniel McInerny

The juxtaposition of two posts on The Imaginative Conservative this week has me thinking about U.S. foreign policy in our increasingly fractured world, and, more deeply, the moral stance of Christian humanism within the same encroaching chaos.

Let’s begin with Pat Buchanan’s thought-provoking article, “America’s Role in a Darkening Age.” In the article Buchanan asks hard questions of Robert Kaplan’s essay, “The Return of Toxic Nationalism.” Kaplan’s essay concludes with the claim that, to combat the rise of nationalism throughout the world and to ensure that it can lead with moral legitimacy, the U.S. needs to put our “values” forward “right alongside its own exclusivist national interests, such as preserving a favorable balance of power.” Without “universal values in our foreign policy,” attests Kaplan, we “have no identity as a nation” and no moral credibility as we seek to quell nationalism in North Africa, the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and the Far East.

To which Buchanan asks, “Is this not utopian?”

First, he argues, how are we to affirm our “values” to nationalist groups and polities who have no truck with them? And second, what does it even mean to talk about our “values” when our nation is so internally conflicted about what our “values” are?

Buchanan concludes: “Other nations believe in indoctrinating their children in their own beliefs and values. Where do we get the right to push ours in their societies?”

It’s a good question.

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Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org