Nationalists vs Globalists vs Tribalists

If you look at the title and the cover blurb and Hazony’s shorter essays, it is not hard to see why conservatives loved this book. Hazony sets up the contrast between the nationalists (good) and the globalists (bad). The globalists are those liberals who really want to run the world by creating all sorts of international rules that will stop all those deplorable little people clinging to God and guns. The UN and the World Bank are globalist. So is the EU.

The Nationalists on the other hand are the good noble people who care about their own people. They don’t want international bureaucrats telling them what to do. Brexit is a nationalist triumph. The rise of all sorts of politicians in country after country who care about their own nation is also a good thing. They stop the globalists running roughshod over the nations.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Nationalists are bad. Why do you think that? Well, the Nazis were bad, right? And they were nationalists, right? (That is the N in Nazi after all!) Ah, but Hazony cleverly notes. The Nazis were…globalists! The Nazi moment was when the Germans decided to take over all the other nations and tell them what to do. Just like the EU!

And now you see why conservatives love this book. Nazi=EU=Clinton! The thesis of this book is indeed what a particular slice of conservatives desperately wanted to have. It is perfect, perfect!, for those high-brow Twitter debates.

Then I read the book with one of my reading groups. The conclusion: there is no possible way that any of the judges for that Conservative Book of Year award actually read this book.

Don’t get me wrong. I am entirely sympathetic to the argument that the globalist crowd are doing vastly more harm than good. I am very sympathetic to the argument that nationalism is not inherently a bad thing, that it is a viscous calumny to equate nationalism with hatred, racism and intolerance.

But, with friends like Hazony…

Hazony’s argument runs as follows. We are not individuals; rather we are born into clans. You don’t get to pick your people (your immediate family and other more extended relations). Your clan has a loose affiliation with other clans based on mutual loyalty. These group of clans, called tribes, have good and bad things about them. We could organize society with tribes as the distinguishing unit; this is what Hazony dubs the anarchical order

But, there are some people who want to unite everyone in the word under a commons set of rules. These are the proponents of empire. Empires don’t care about tribal differences; they want to erase them in some grand superproject in pursuit of fairness or justice or some other goal.

Anarchy and Empire are both bad. What is good? National states. Nations are collections of tribes in mutual harmony. They inherit all the good things about tribes and none of the bad things. Nations are also concerned with fairness and justice and so inherit all the good things about empires but none of the bad things.

In other words: nations are good by definition. If a collection of tribes does not improve things, then that collection of tribes is by definition not a nation. It would be an empire.

Globalism then by definition is bad. It tries to unite nations in a way that is not built upon mutual loyalty and does not improve things for all the tribes. By exactly the same logic, tribalism would by definition be a bad thing…but curiously, Hazony never defines tribalism or warns against it. I think that would be off message. Globalists are the bad guys in this book.

The rest of the book is thus an exercise in tautology. If nations are good by definition then Nationalism is good and virtuous by definition. The key to understanding the argument of this book is simply to remember Hazony is right by definition and if you disagree with him, then you are wrong by definition.

So, take the Nazis. Nazis are bad, right? We all agree about that. So, the Nazis can’t be nationalists because nationalists are good by definition. Thus, when the Nazis try to take over Europe, they are not uniting the German people into a single nation, they are acting as globalists trying to make other nations bow to their will.

Now, here is a test for the reader. Who was right in the American Civil War? The South asserting its right to be its own nation against the globalist tendencies of the North? Or the North asserting that the North and South form a single nation? Easy! The South had slaves; slavery is bad; so the North was right because if the South seceded then the evil of slavery would have continued and the North would have been a weaker nation, so the South has no right to self-determination. I know you think I am making up this argument. But, here it is in Hazony’s own words:

He [Lincoln] needed only to look at the biblical account of the fratricidal wars between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which in the end weakened both of them and paved the way for their destruction, to see the future before him. And this future, together with the evil of allowing slavery to endure in America forever, did indeed justify denying national self-determination to the Confederacy. The reasons for distinguishing the case of American independence from that of Confederate independence are thus not to be found in the way we define what a “nation” is, or in the way we formulate a proposed universal right to national self-determination. The cases are distinguished only in the balance of moral and prudential considerations of supporting or opposing independence in a particular case.

See how easy this is? When the rule becomes simply if Hazony thinks it is good, then it is by definition a nation and if Hazony thinks it is bad, then it is by definition either globalist or tribalist, then it is really easy to figure out why nationalism is good.

I had a merry time arguing Hazony’s point with my students. But, honestly, as fun as it was, it was a pretty hard argument to sustain. The EU is bad; the Nazis are bad. That part is easy. But, then my students (who are annoyingly clever at moments like this) started asking questions like this: should Hawaii be a part of the United Sates? Should Scotland be in Britain? What about Ireland? Desperately, we can look back at Hazony’s definition of a nation:

By a nation, I mean a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language or religious traditions, and a past history of joining together against common enemies—characteristics that permit tribes so united to understand themselves as a community distinct from other such communities as their neighbors.

Using that definition, distinguish between England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland; the continental United States/Hawaii/Alaska; and Belgium/Netherlands/France/Germany/Italy/Greece/and the rest of the countries in European civilization. Which combinations can be united into a single nation? Well…uh…have I mentioned that the EU is really bad and they are a lot like the Nazis?

I know what you are thinking. Surely there is some principle here on which Hazony is building his theory, right? It can’t be this shallow, can it? Surely, Hazony’s argument could address a simple problem in international affairs. My nation wants to rule over your tribe. You don’t want to be ruled by me (for some unfathomable reason). Do you have the right to be independent from my rule?

Here is Hazony’s principle: “the order of national states is one that grants political independence to nations that are cohesive and strong enough to secure it.” (Italics in original, so you know it is important!)

OK, what does that mean? Is your tribe a nation? How do we find out?

Whether a people should be supported in a bid for independence is a determination that must be made in consideration of a number of factors, including the needs of the people in question; the degree of its internal cohesion and the military and economic resources it can bring to bear; its capacity, if continued as an independent national or tribal state to benefit the interests and well-being of other nations; and the threat that this people, once independent, may pose to others.

Yeah, Hazony really wrote that. So, when I determine that my military can roll over your military then it is obvious that you do not have the military resources to protect yourself and thus you do not merit independence. When I determine that your nation does not benefit my interests and well-being, then you do not merit independence. When I determine that your nation poses a threat to my people, maybe the threat of your bad example, then you do not merit independence. And then when I determine that the needs of your people will be better met by my rule, then you don’t merit independence. So, what exactly was the problem with globalism again?

In the end this was a ridiculously frustrating book. I really wanted to like it. I liked the idea of a book demonstrating that the globalists do not have the moral high ground. But, Hazony’s argument was ridiculously sloppy. Hazony should have stuck to the 2000 word version of his argument so I could have at least imagined that there was a cohesive longer version.