one feels towards one’s compatriots with the wider duties owed to the whole of
humankind.”
8
Nationalism represents, according to Elie Kedourie, a “politics in a new
style,” in which ideology and narrow, parochial interests prevail over liberal notions such
as public reason, the rule of law, and the common good.
9
In the US case, concerns for
nationalist-driven revisionism are augmented by the potential abuse of power inherent in
the American unipolar position, an international-political condition defined by the
absence of any restraining or countervailing power on the US foreign politicy decisions.
To the extent US nationalism is acknowledged in the international politics
literature, it is therefore either a sympathetic response to September 11
th
or an irrational
force in the conduct of American foreign policy. The confluence of nationalism,
dissatisfied revisionism, and unbalanced power threatens international stability and order;
Nationalism is the scourge of both liberalism and realism; reactionary at home, and a
source of imprudence abroad.
The view that nationalism is exclusively expressed in US foreign policy as a
revisionist chauvinism fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between
nationalism and foreign policy in the American context, and particularly as it relates to
how the United States manages its position of primacy. I will show that American
nationalism is not detrimental, but is in fact central, to the enlightened, liberal character
of US hegemony, and specifically with respect to the promotion of democracy.
Lieven’s observations may in the end be correct, but the relationship between
nationalism, hegemony, and American power is far more complex, and the causal logic
8
Charles King, “Nations and Nationalism in British Political Studies,” in The British Study of Politics in
the Twentieth Century, eds., Jack Hayward, Brian Barry, Archie Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).
9
Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson, 1960).
Convention