Wellie well well, I posted a NakCap comment ("Trump 2.0's Eurasian Balancing Act Has Failed," 10/15/25) on this very topic, which I will be so bold as to reproduce here (with minor mods):
National interest is not a thing. It is an ideal, a concept that conventionally imagines what, in some utilitarian way, represents the greatest good for the greatest number. It has one small problem. Power is not utilitarian. Power is what force determines: force of arms, force of money, force of personality, force of argument. Good and truth? Subordinate. Truth is an instrument, not an end. Power has to do with “good” only in the sense of good for the one with power, not the many without it.
In practice states are things not of popular sovereignty but of elite will, or wills, plural, because there is always contention among factions as the respond to internal and external circumstances. Policy emerges from that struggle, not from disinterested consideration of that mythical animal called national interest. When commentators call policies delusional, stupid, or contrary to national interest, at some higher level they may be correct, but, with rare exceptions, it is generally not at a higher level of intellectual disinterestedness or moral concern that policies are made. Analysis gets further in its understanding of interests by heuristically assuming they are appetitive, emergent, local, shortsighted, and selfish.
That is why putting internal politics outside the scope of international relations theory that fancies itself “realist” is … unrealistic. It is like limiting the study of literature to works in English. While it is an administrative convenience within the university and helps carve out a niche congenial to tenured appointments, it is a laughable taking of part for whole. As Mearsheimer might say, it is not a serious argument. Ironically, Mearsheimer, who regularly invokes national interest as if it were a self-evident thing that states pursue among themselves, wrote a seminal and quite courageous book with Stephen Walt on the Israel lobby, an internal faction that successfully hijacks U.S. policy against what Mearsheimer sees as the national interest. Curious, that.
I might add to the NakCap comment that by seeing national interest as a dynamic rather than a thing, questions arise about what maintains it and how institutions "select" for it, in a Darwinian sense. Another thought to consider: when seen by way of evolutionary substrates, elite power concentration can look like a parasitic exploitation of underlying cooperative drives that shape collective culture. That suggests strategies of non-cooperation (vs. elite substitution via largely empty and captive democratic formalism) as an interesting strategy for modification of elite behavior. Another story for another day.
Serendipity. I listened to this audiobook recently and liked it (if "liked" is the word) so much I ordered a physical copy. I've read a fair amount of Chomsky -- well, maybe a dozen or so books isn't that much given his output -- but I found this book to be a great overview of his thinking. I'd recommend it as a starting place for people new to his thought.
It has long been abundantly obvious that the West (Not just the United States) is ruled, not by well-meaning do-gooders who occasionally go too far in their idealism or who at worst are occasionally led astray, but by full-blown Game of Thrones sociopaths and the occasional psychopath thrown in.
This is not peculiar to the West. All political systems are over time eventually ruled by such characters, because, unlike normies, sociopaths will do whatever it takes to get power.
Wellie well well, I posted a NakCap comment ("Trump 2.0's Eurasian Balancing Act Has Failed," 10/15/25) on this very topic, which I will be so bold as to reproduce here (with minor mods):
National interest is not a thing. It is an ideal, a concept that conventionally imagines what, in some utilitarian way, represents the greatest good for the greatest number. It has one small problem. Power is not utilitarian. Power is what force determines: force of arms, force of money, force of personality, force of argument. Good and truth? Subordinate. Truth is an instrument, not an end. Power has to do with “good” only in the sense of good for the one with power, not the many without it.
In practice states are things not of popular sovereignty but of elite will, or wills, plural, because there is always contention among factions as the respond to internal and external circumstances. Policy emerges from that struggle, not from disinterested consideration of that mythical animal called national interest. When commentators call policies delusional, stupid, or contrary to national interest, at some higher level they may be correct, but, with rare exceptions, it is generally not at a higher level of intellectual disinterestedness or moral concern that policies are made. Analysis gets further in its understanding of interests by heuristically assuming they are appetitive, emergent, local, shortsighted, and selfish.
That is why putting internal politics outside the scope of international relations theory that fancies itself “realist” is … unrealistic. It is like limiting the study of literature to works in English. While it is an administrative convenience within the university and helps carve out a niche congenial to tenured appointments, it is a laughable taking of part for whole. As Mearsheimer might say, it is not a serious argument. Ironically, Mearsheimer, who regularly invokes national interest as if it were a self-evident thing that states pursue among themselves, wrote a seminal and quite courageous book with Stephen Walt on the Israel lobby, an internal faction that successfully hijacks U.S. policy against what Mearsheimer sees as the national interest. Curious, that.
I might add to the NakCap comment that by seeing national interest as a dynamic rather than a thing, questions arise about what maintains it and how institutions "select" for it, in a Darwinian sense. Another thought to consider: when seen by way of evolutionary substrates, elite power concentration can look like a parasitic exploitation of underlying cooperative drives that shape collective culture. That suggests strategies of non-cooperation (vs. elite substitution via largely empty and captive democratic formalism) as an interesting strategy for modification of elite behavior. Another story for another day.
I should move that book up my TBR list.
Serendipity. I listened to this audiobook recently and liked it (if "liked" is the word) so much I ordered a physical copy. I've read a fair amount of Chomsky -- well, maybe a dozen or so books isn't that much given his output -- but I found this book to be a great overview of his thinking. I'd recommend it as a starting place for people new to his thought.
Thanks for this!
It has long been abundantly obvious that the West (Not just the United States) is ruled, not by well-meaning do-gooders who occasionally go too far in their idealism or who at worst are occasionally led astray, but by full-blown Game of Thrones sociopaths and the occasional psychopath thrown in.
This is not peculiar to the West. All political systems are over time eventually ruled by such characters, because, unlike normies, sociopaths will do whatever it takes to get power.
Trump did nothing to change that.
Except make it e obvious