The origins and nature of U.S. foreign policy nationalism

Jack Thompson

The resurgence of nationalism is not a new US foreign policy tradition. Its historical roots stretch back to the early republic. But it was marginalized for most of the Cold War and only began to resurface in the 1990s. It represents a threat to US interests and values as well as to its allies and the broader international system.

In November 2019, Republican Senator Josh Hawley sought to publicize a significant development that had been quietly underway for years – the unraveling of the longstanding consensus on U.S. grand strategy. In a high-profile speech at the centrist think tank Center for a New American Security, he suggested that liberal internationalism – or what he derisively called “progressive universalism” – was to blame for many of the problems confronting the nation, both abroad and at home. Given the changed global landscape, and the fact that U.S. resources were increasingly limited, he called for embracing a less ambitious foreign policy more narrowly focused on keeping “Americans safe and prosperous” and that was “” – in other words, nationalism. He urged his countrymen to focus on Asia, where “the great security challenges of the twenty-first century were playing out.” He called for embracing a more limited goal of “thwarting” would-be hegemons, primarily China, and defending “workers by protecting their livelihoods” from predatory trading practices, especially those practiced by Beijing. And he argued that US foreign policy should be built upon a recognition of the country’s “unique way of democracy,” one that he called “a gift–to us and to the world.”[1]

 

Hawley’s speech captured a seismic shift occurring in real time. It represented one of the most high-profile attempts to flesh out the intellectual underpinnings of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. It also underscored the reappearance of nationalism as a mainstream school of thought and its embrace by the GOP as a framework for portraying its opponents as out of touch with mainstream values and interests. Yet the current resurgence of nationalism does not represent a new foreign policy tradition. Instead, it is the descendant of an approach with origins in the Revolutionary War era that prevailed until World War I and was influential until the mid-1950s. It was marginalized during the Cold War but gradually began to resurface in the 1990s.[2]

 

For the purposes of this essay, nationalism can be defined as skepticism of multilateralism and collective security, an intense belief in the superiority of American institutions and values, and a conviction that the best way to promote American security and prosperity is to focus on upholding US – and not some broader set of – interests in the international system. The return of nationalism is noteworthy because nationalists tend to be ambivalent about or hostile to the European project. Many nationalists also sympathize with illiberal political ideas, both at home and abroad, and are prone to conspiracism. At the same time, the right’s embrace of nationalism is one of its most effective strategies for building a multi-racial coalition of working-class voters. This is both because of nationalism’s historical resonance and its harsh critique of globalization. This means it will remain a key influence on the right and on U.S. grand strategy for the foreseeable future.[3]

 

The history of nationalism as a grand strategy

Nationalism emerged as the dominant worldview in U.S. strategic culture under the leadership of George Washington and other early leaders. During the nineteenth century, Americans were staunch unilateralists – though never isolationists – avoiding what Thomas Jefferson called ‘entangling alliances’ with any state. They were convinced of the superiority of their republican political institutions and social values, such as individualism. And they tended to be skeptical of Europe, which many Americans viewed as a source of potential threats and as inferior because it was riven by military conflicts and encumbered with monarchies. Nationalism predominated until WWI, when President Woodrow Wilson proffered an American version of liberal internationalism and collective security as a potential alternative. After World War II, a variant of liberal internationalism emerged as the foundation for Cold War foreign policy. A bipartisan consensus embraced a grand strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, as well as a leading role in multilateral institutions and alliances such as NATO.

 

During the initial post-World War II decades, a vocal minority on the right opposed key components of liberal internationalism. Three sub-categories of nationalism exercised varying degrees of influence. Conservative nationalists, led by Republican Senator Robert Taft, advocated reversion to the nineteenth century tradition of unilateralism and non-entanglement. Taft opposed the North Atlantic Treaty and the extension of post-war aid to Europe in the form of the Marshall Plan.[4]

 

Under the guise of anti-communism, populist nationalists were less concerned about specific policies abroad – aside from a fixation on the ‘loss’ of China to the communists – and more interested in weaponizing national security issues against Democrats and the mainstream establishment. For instance, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy embraced anti-communism as an effective issue on which to campaign for re-election. His speeches avoided strategic issues and focused on populist political attacks. In his famous 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy mocked the Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a prominent Democrat, as a “pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent.” Though his career ended in disgrace, the brief period of success he enjoyed as an anti-communist crusader demonstrated the potential power of conspiracy theories in national security debates.

 

After McCarthyism fizzled in the mid-1950s, nationalism ceased to be a respectable option for mainstream figures in either party. But on the fringes of the right, paranoid nationalism flourished. Groups such as the John Birch Society combined nationalism with a conspiracist worldview. They were hostile to Western European allies – viewing them as having succumbed to the “disease of collectivism” – and opposed NATO and the United Nations. They portrayed internationalism as a conspiracy intended to erode U.S. sovereignty and impose “one-world government” upon Americans.

 

The renewed appeal of nationalism after 1988

For the remainder of the Cold War, GOP gatekeepers – all of whom embraced internationalism – mostly ostracized nationalists. However, these leading Republicans, such as William F. Buckley Jr., limited their criticism of fringe groups such as the John Birch Society because grassroots voters appreciated the energy and rhetoric of the nationalists. Marginal members of the rightwing elite, such as the activist Phyllis Schlafly and Governor George Wallace, connected with grassroots voters using the language of populist and paranoid nationalism.

 

As globalization accelerated in the 1980s and the Cold War ended, some on the right recognized that nationalism would hold renewed appeal for many Americans. The foremost spokesman for this school of thought, Pat Buchanan, mounted several presidential campaigns in the 1990s. He crafted a message of nostalgia for an idealized past, reviving conservative social values, and embracing foreign policy nationalism, focusing on working class white voters angry about the outsourcing of traditional manufacturing jobs, increased immigration, and a sense that both the left and rightwing establishments cared more about foreigners than they did about Americans. He frequently invoked the specter of a so called ‘New World Order’ – repurposing a term coined by George H.W. Bush to represent the hope of a peaceful post-Cold War order – to harness paranoia among the grass roots about the elite-led Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the United Nations. Buchanan’s campaigns failed, but he created a prototype for weaving nationalist foreign policy themes into appeals to working class voters. Though mostly latent during George W. Bush’s presidency, nationalism re-emerged in the late 2000s. It helped fuel the energy of the Tea Party and conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama and other members of the political and cultural elite.

 

Trump and foreign policy nationalism

Building on Buchanan’s template, Trump embraced an updated, if ad hoc, version of nationalism during his successful 2016 presidential campaign. He promised to make America great again by tackling the downsides of globalization and by forcing allegedly free-loading allies pay for their own defense. Trump’s success was unexpected, and his efforts at party-building were almost non-existent, so little in the way of an intellectual and administrative infrastructure existed to execute his vision. In addition, many national security officials constrained Trump by resisting his extreme initiatives. This meant that, policies such as tariffs and the withdrawal from a number of multilateral institutions and agreements aside, the impact of Trump’s foreign policy was more limited than his rhetoric suggested. Today, the situation is more conducive to implementing a modern version of nationalism.

 

For one thing, foreign policy nationalism is more developed than it was during Trump’s presidency. There is a pool of experts and officials, all of whom embrace his vision, poised to staff the next GOP administration. A roadmap for administering a nationalist presidency already exists, in the form of the Project 2025 presidential transition plan. The document vows, for instance, to dismiss ‘large swaths of the State Department’s workforce’ that are ‘left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.’ It promises to refocus on serving ‘the national interest’ as ‘the most enduring foundation for U.S. grand strategy.’[5]

 

Three variations of nationalism today

Just as during the post-World War II era, three variations of nationalism have emerged, each with distinctive roles and emphases. Contrary to common belief, they differ less on grand strategy than they do on how to incorporate their nationalism into domestic politics.[6] The modern version of conservative nationalists, such as former Department of Defense official Elbridge Colby, tend to hold prominent academic or think thank positions. They discuss nationalism in the academic language of the realist school of international relations theory, invoking terms such as balance of power and hegemony. Competition with China is their foremost concern and dictates their views on other issues. This includes calls to de-prioritize the Russo-Ukraine War and European security in order to maximize limited resources and rebuild industrial capacity. Though generally aligned with the GOP, they focus less on domestic politics.

 

Populist nationalists, such as Trump, are also concerned about China and inclined to limit involvement in the European security architecture. But they emphasize the domestic aspects of national security issues – such as the threat of Chinese espionage or predatory trade practices – in order to consolidate support among working and middle class voters and to attack Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans. Many are in the process of building transnational networks with rightwing populist movements in other countries. They embrace or discard national security-related conspiracy theories, such as QAnon or the Great Replacement Theory, depending on their utility.

 

Meanwhile, paranoid nationalists, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, or media personality Tucker Carlson, are closer to the grass roots. This type of nationalist goes beyond the opportunistic use of conspiracy theories to fully participating in and spreading a wide variety of them. While vaguely concerned about the Indo-Pacific and in favor of reducing U.S. participation in multilateral institutions and alliances, their main emphasis tends to be the perceived domestic threat from foreign actors, such as China, terrorists, or immigrants. Along with populist nationalists, they frequently use nationalism as a means to portray their opponents as disloyal or outside the mainstream. Many embrace, to one degree or another, authoritarian actors such as Vladimir Putin. [7]

 

Today, there are several think thanks that have either partly or fully embraced the nationalist foreign policy worldview, including the America First Policy Institute and the Claremont Institute. The most prominent is The Heritage Foundation, a GOP-leaning think tank that had previously tended to publish work supportive of internationalist foreign policy initiatives. However, in the early 2020s, Heritage began to promote conservative or populist nationalist perspectives. Most notably, some Heritage fellows began to question the provision of U.S. aid to Ukraine. Heritage has played a leading role in Project 2025.

 

The consequences of American nationalism

The nationalist vision addresses some pressing problems that have plagued liberal internationalism, such as a tendency toward overreach and an overreliance on military force. Conservative nationalists make valid points about the need to use limited resources as efficiently as possible and for allies to assume more of the security burden so that the United States can shift attention to the Indo-Pacific.

However, nationalism is saddled with significant shortcomings. Conservative nationalists lend a patina of respectability to the movement, but their influence is limited when it comes to the formulation of policy. In a nationalist-inclined White House and Congress, populist nationalists will predominate and paranoid nationalists will wield a considerable degree of influence in shaping and amplifying the mood of the grass roots.

 

In addition, the outsize influence of populist and paranoid nationalists would mean continuing further down the path of illiberalism, both domestically and abroad. At home, nationalists will seek to gut foreign policy and national security expertise in the administrative state and undermine democratic norms by weaponizing congressional investigations. Abroad, it would mean further encouragement and deepening of ties with anti-democratic regimes, such as Hungary.

 

Most importantly, the populist and paranoid versions of nationalism are incompatible with the maintenance of the current network of international alliances and institutions that undergirds US security and prosperity. Figures such as Donald Trump, his running mate senator J.D. Vance, and Greene have made clear their ambivalence about NATO and distrust of allies. The system of alliances is the foremost asset the United States has in confronting China – one that China cannot match. Many rightwing conspiracy theories fixate on cosmopolitan elites or the multilateral institutions they staff. While flawed, the multilateral order has overwhelmingly benefited the United States and its allies since the end of World War II.

 

In short, nationalism represents a threat to US interests and values as well as to its allies and to the broader international system. However, it will remain the predominant school of thought on the right and will exercise considerable influence on U.S. grand strategy for the foreseeable future.

 

Footnotes

[1] Josh Hawley, Senator Hawley’s Speech on Rethinking America’s Foreign Policy Consensus, November 12, 2019, https://www.hawley.senate.gov/senator-hawleys-speech-rethinking-americas-foreign-policy-consensus/.

[2] Academics typically treat foreign policy, grand strategy, and national security as related but separate categories. However, for the purposes of this essay they are used interchangeably, because in practice nationalists mostly also treat them as analogous.

[3] There is little useful scholarship placing the resurgence of nationalism in historical context. The most notable work is Colin Dueck, Age of Iron: on Conservative Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), though Dueck’s work is an apologia for nationalism and elides the considerable influence of populist and paranoid nationalism. See also Henry Nau, Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (Princeton University Press, 2013), 11-46.

[4] Dueck subdivides nationalism, or what he calls conservative nationalism, into noninterventionists, hardliners, and conservative internationalists. This typology precludes any role for the conspiracism and illiberalism that plays a vital role in modern foreign policy nationalism.

[5] Paul Dans and Steve Groves, eds., “Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise,” Project 2025, 171, 196-197.

[6] Dueck, Age of Iron, 27-37.

[7] Walter Russell Mead wrote a brief history of nationalism and U.S. foreign policy in “The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy: What Populism Means for Globalism,” Foreign Affairs 90/2 (March/April 2011):

28-44, with a focus on what I call populist nationalism. But like Dueck, Mead’s treatment is sympathetic, and ignores the conspiracism and illiberalism that are integral to this worldview.

[8]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore