Twenty-First Century American Nationalism Needs to Be Profoundly Cosmopoiltan

It’s disturbing. As we face the probable abrogation of NAFTA, possible trade wars with China, Germany, and others, and the total cluster* that is the Trump administration’s policies (if any) toward NATO and Russia, a number of really smart and really well-intentioned people are, I think, making rhetorical–and in some cases substantive–errors that are degrading the quality of the debate and increasing the chances of bad outcomes. And they are doing it while trying to be forces for good, light, human betterment, truth, justice, and the American way…

So let me do some boundary policing here. Let me ask people–all of whom are wiser than I am, or if not wiser smarter, or if not smarter more knowledgeable–to think about whether they really hold the positions they set forward, and think about whether they have set them forward in a way most calculated to guard against destructive misinterpretation. Today: Dani Rodrik. And–hopefully–more tomorrow…

Let me start with Dani Rodrik.

We find Rodrik beating his breast about how “Cosmopolitans often come across like the character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov who discovers that the more he loves humanity in general, the less he loves people in particular…. The best way to serve global interests is to live up to our responsibilities within the political institutions that matter: those that exist…” In today’s political context, that will be read as: “only weenies care about the impacts of policies on people outside national borders, and any consideration of those impacts has no place in any political debate.” In today’s political context, that will be read as: “the well-being of Mexicans and the stability of Mexico must have a zero–nay, a negative–weight in the U.S. discussion about whether to abrogate NAFTA.”

But the major reason to do NAFTA is and always was that it is an important and a big good deal for Mexico. Having a good relationship–i.e., being in a positive-sum gift-exchange relationship–with the country on our southern border is a matter of elementary prudence in international relations. And doing what we can easily and cheaply to increase the chances that the country on our southern border is stable and prosperous is elementary prudence as well.

NAFTA is close to rounding error in terms of its effects on the U.S.–not one of the thirty most important things the U.S. government could do for good or ill for the U.S. economy. It has small net benefits, yes. It had some costs for groups that had flourished under the umbrella of the pre-1993 barriers to imports from Mexico, yes. Those costs should have been better cushioned–and would have been had not Americans voted for Gingrich as House Speaker and Dole as Senate Majority Leader in 1994–yes. But those costs are now sunk, and those firms and sectors have adjusted and moved on. Abrogating NAFTA would impose a new and different set of costs, and would have no net positive benefits as an upside, yes.

But NAFTA is, substantively, not worth committing political capital to attack or to defend if one is required to limit one’s view to its direct effects on the U.S. The rational strategy, therefore, if one is forced to look at the direct effects in the U.S. and at the U.S. only is to let the point go and keep your powder dry for more important struggles, rather than wasting energy and stressing political alliances.

That’s where Dani’s rhetoric takes us.

And that is, I think, very wrong. The indirect and long-run benefits for the U.S. in living in a more peaceful, more stable, and more prosperous world are large and mighty. NAFTA is and was worth doing for the reason that it is and was a stone placed in that still-unfinished arch. But to point that out is to be a rootless cosmopolite–the thing that Dani wants to rule out as a political position. And if one has to argue that abrogating NAFTA is “poor domestic governance” in terms of its direct effects on the U.S. economy–well, that is a very heavy lift indeed…

At the end of the 1910s, the Republicans turned isolationist: America was protected from Europe and Asia by two oceans, and did not need to engage with and spend treasure and blood trying to make the rest of the world better. At the start of the 1940s, the Democrats–led by the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt–undid that isolationist turn. The world and the United States are vastly better off as a result. The true American nationalism is to recognize the importance for American prosperity, peace, and security of being a good neighbor and a benevolent hegemon. Dani Rodrik’s rhetoric says: “the more he loves [global] humanity in general, the less he loves [American] people in particular…. The best way to serve global interests is to live up to our responsibilities within the political institutions that matter: those that exist.” But that denial of global interdependence serves even the narrowest of the long-run interests of the American people ill.

The right pose–substantive and rhetorical–is to recognize that, just as since 1620 the good American nationalism has always held that people anywhere can elect to become Americans by joining our utopian project here at home, so in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that good American nationalism is one that puts global prosperity and being a good neighbor and benevolent hegemon first.

Dani Rodrik: Global Citizens, National Shirkers: “Real citizenship entails interacting and deliberating with other citizens in a shared political community…

…Global citizens do not have similar rights or responsibilities. No one is accountable to them, and there is no one to whom they must justify themselves…. Political representatives are elected to advance the interests of the people who put them in office. National governments are meant to look out for national interests, and rightly so….

But what happens when the welfare of local residents comes into conflict with the wellbeing of foreigners – as it often does? Isn’t disregard of their compatriots in such situations precisely what gives so-called cosmopolitan elites their bad name?… Countries should maintain open economic borders, sound prudential regulation and full-employment policies… because they serve to enlarge the domestic economic pie…. Policy failures… reflect poor domestic governance…. Hiding behind cosmopolitanism… is a poor substitute for winning policy battles on their merits….

Cosmopolitans often come across like the character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov who discovers that the more he loves humanity in general, the less he loves people in particular…. We have to live in the world we have, with all its political divisions, and not the world we wish we had. The best way to serve global interests is to live up to our responsibilities within the political institutions that matter: those that exist.