Make Nationalism Universalist Again
America First, the Rest of the World a Close Second
Adrian Karatnycky pointedly asks: Why don’t more self-proclaimed American nationalists support Ukraine in its own national struggle? As he notes, the National Conservative statement of principles calls for “a world of independent nations—each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own—as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.” Indeed, it explicitly rejects “the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers” (as well as “liberal imperialism”). Yet America’s most influential National Conservative, Vice President JD Vance, is scornful of the Ukrainian cause. A vocal segment of the right, including influential figures like Tucker Carlson, is more openly pro-Russian. And yet, as Karatnycky writes, Ukraine’s “fight represents the very values that stir the hearts of American nationalists,” including “the heroism, martial spirit, and national solidarity that have enabled the country to fight to a standstill a powerful imperial enemy intent on destroying its culture, language, and traditions.” Karatnycky suggests that hawks have been silent on the issue in order to maintain an anti-woke coalition with isolationists—and that many on the right unfairly associate Ukraine with the Biden administration, the European Union, and the liberal establishment more broadly. He also points to the influence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is both a hero to National Conservatives and an advocate of rapprochement with Russia. But more fundamentally, I’d argue that anti-Ukraine American nationalists are insufficiently universalist in their nationalism.
Universalist nationalism isn’t a contradiction in terms. Rather, it proceeds logically from abstract reasoning. If I care about my land, people, and traditions, it follows that I’m capable of understanding why foreigners care about their land, people, and traditions. I’m then able to empathize with them and form bonds based on our common, though particular, attachments. The prophetic vision of Isaiah is that nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.” In other words, in the messianic era, nations will still exist, but not in violent competition with each other. Nor is universalist nationalism just a matter of theory and theology. In the 19th century, liberty was indelibly linked with national independence rather than just individual rights. Lord Byron, the British Romantic poet, died of fever in 1824 while fighting for Greek liberation from the Ottoman Empire. In 1834, Giuseppe Mazzini, the prophet of Italian nationalism, founded the Young Europe movement to promote republican self-rule across the continent. His guiding principle was that “Without Nationality neither liberty nor equality is possible.” During the Revolutions of 1848, or “Springtime of the Peoples,” European nationalists from Sicily to Scandinavia fought for popular sovereignty and constitutional government. They viewed each nation’s struggle against absolute monarchy and feudal privilege as linked. Though many revolutionary hopes were dashed, the upheavals accelerated the abolition of feudalism in Austria and Prussia, the eventual unification of Germany and Italy (which later strayed into exclusivist nationalism), and the erosion of the Habsburg Empire.
In the wake of World War I and imperial collapse, American President Woodrow Wilson helped redraw the map of Europe by upholding the principle of national self-determination. The newly established, or re-established, nations included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland, and the Baltic states. During the American Revolution itself, Polish patriots like Tadeusz Kościuszko and Casimir Pulaski fought for American independence, embodying the Polish national motto “For our freedom and yours.” So, too, did volunteers from throughout Europe. In turn, Americans consistently viewed their nationhood in universalist terms. In 1776, Thomas Paine declared that “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of the world.” In 1801, Thomas Jefferson wrote that America’s “just & solid republican government . . . will be a standing monument & example for the aim & imitation of the people of other countries” and that its “consequences will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe.” The United States was explicitly founded on the principle that the will of the people, not the divine right of kings, determines sovereignty. The French Revolution, which spread republican nationalism (as well as revolutionary excess) throughout Europe, followed in its wake. During World War II, America—alongside allies including the UK and Canada—led the liberation of nations like France and the Netherlands from Nazi rule. Subsequently, during the Cold War, the United States championed the “captive nations” held under Soviet domination. The West’s geopolitical victory over global communism helped restore self-government to Soviet vassal states like Poland and Hungary, while leading to the independence of the USSR’s own constituent parts—including Ukraine.
Liberal and Marxist cosmopolitans wished to consign nationalism to the dustbin of history. But it would not go gentle into that good night. The workers of the world chose national allegiance over internationalist solidarity, with even the few remaining Communist countries, like China and Vietnam, relying on nationalism for their legitimacy. While multinational states—like the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia—have split along national seams, existing nation-states haven’t merged to form supranational states. (Though it has significant governing authority, the European Union is still an international organization, not a state, and lost one of its most powerful members, Great Britain, regardless.) The populist backlash in the West is a reaction to mass immigration, economic globalization, and cultural liberalism—all of which are seen as threatening the integrity of the nation. National Conservatives are too cavalier about the dark side of nationalism, which has also been used by Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion of Ukraine. But post-nationalists ignore nationalism’s primordial roots, inevitability as a modern form of political identity, and positive role in promoting social cohesion, civic equality, and self-defense. The Ukrainian national salute is Slava Ukraini (“Glory to Ukraine”), not “Glory to the European Union” or “Glory to the End of History.” Ukrainian nationalism, too, has its dark side, which must be acknowledged; but the question is not whether nationalism is a force for good or evil. History amply demonstrates its potential for both. The question is rather what form of nationalism a society should adopt. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, one side seeks territory while the other fights for its continued independence. National sovereignty is compatible with the sovereignty of other nations—a Westphalian peace—and so is universalist by implication. Imperialism is not.
Universalist nationalism is an ordered universalism: it holds that we care most for those closest to us, but that we should also extend that care outward. As the Jewish sage Hillel rhetorically asked, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” The Stoic philosopher Hierocles systematized this sentiment as a series of concentric circles, beginning with the self and immediate family, then gradually widening to encompass all of humanity. Vance has referred to the related Catholic concept of ordo amoris (“order of love”) in defending the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid. And indeed, the basic principle of “America First” is compatible with universalist nationalism. But the all-too-frequent corollary, “The Rest of the World Last,” is not. Vance’s declaration that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other” isn’t correctly ordered love: it’s solipsism. Worse still is actively taking Russia’s side in the conflict, as Tucker has done. In 1821, President John Quincy Adams declared that “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” But in the same speech, he remarked that “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.” There is a long American tradition of foreign-policy restraint, but not of indifference toward the plight of oppressed nations—let alone sympathy toward autocratic empires. You don’t have to, like Lord Byron, organize a brigade to help the Greeks fight the Ottomans. But you can, at the very least, not give a fawning interview to the Grand Turk.
In 1786, George Washington wrote a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette—the French hero who fought for American independence—in which he called himself “the member of an infant empire” but also “a citizen of the great republic of humanity at large.” As both a patriot and a humanist, Washington expressed a vision that modestly echoed Isaiah:
I cannot avoid reflecting with pleasure on the probable influence that commerce may here after have on human manners & society in general. On these occasions I consider how mankind may be connected like one great family in fraternal ties—I endulge a fond, perhaps an enthusiastic idea, that as the world is evidently much less barbarous than it has been, its melioration must still be progressive—that nations are becoming more humanized in their policy—that the subjects of ambition & causes for hostility are daily diminishing—and in fine, that the period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal & free commerce will, pretty generally, succeed to the devastations & horrors of war.
Note that Washington didn’t dream of the abolition of nations. Rather, he envisioned their gradual “humanization,” and the eventual replacement of war with trade. In the meantime, he wondered “how is it possible the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary” and pined for “a navy able to reform those enimies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.” A nationalism tempered by universalism isn’t pacifistic, but it fights for more than just narrow self-interest. The United States subsequently won the Barbary Wars and helped free the Mediterranean from piracy, both against its own ships and those of other nations. In the centuries since, America has vanquished much more barbaric enemies of mankind—and, in so doing, served both its national interest and the greater good. Universalism or nationalism is a false binary. You can put your country first without abandoning your humanity.
