"National interest" is the most durable escape hatch in the history of power. It works because it sounds like an argument when it is actually a deflection.
https://x.com/nxt888/status/2105194233787212254
"National interest" is the most durable escape hatch in the history of power.
It works because it sounds like an argument when it is actually a deflection.
When an American official says "we acted in the national interest," they mean: "the justification for this action exists at a level of abstraction that insulates it from ordinary moral scrutiny."
Not: these specific people are better off.
Not: this specific outcome produced more justice in the world.
The national interest.
Abstract, unverifiable, self-defined by the people invoking it, and conveniently coterminous with whatever decision they had already made.
The national interest required Guantánamo.
The national interest required the intervention in Libya.
The national interest required the bombing of Yemen.
The national interest required the coup in Venezuela.
The national interest required war with Iran.
The national interest required continuing military support for Israel through the genocide in Gaza.
At some point the honest question becomes: whose nation? Whose interest?
Because from where much of the world stands, what gets called "national interest" looks a great deal like the specific financial and strategic interests of a specific class of people, wrapped in a flag large enough to obscure the accounting.
posted by Satish Sharma at
13:53
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