Nationalism, Hegemony, and Empire

The people who tell you "nationalism" is bad are misinformed at best, seeking to place you under an "empire" of unelected, often foreign elites. But what they really can't bear is American hegemony.

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by Rod D. Martin
June 26, 2026

Nationalism and Empire

National self-determination has been the policy of this country since the Declaration of Independence. However diluted that may have been in the postwar era, the reality has been clear in the unilateral actions since 1945 of presidents of both parties.

We call that idea “Nationalism”, much demonized today. It’s the proposition that discrete groups of people have the right to rule themselves, and not to be ruled by someone else. And to be clear, those are your options. There are no other.

The American Revolution was an anti-imperialist, nationalist revolution, asserting the right of Americans not to be ruled by distant strangers. Every Latin American revolution against Spain was the same.

Not all of those revolutions resulted in new governments of which you or I would approve. But America defended them all from recolonization through the Monroe Doctrine. Why? Because America has always believed in nations, not empires.

Nationalism does not require or imply any particular form of government. Those are different isms. Nationalism simply requires that one nation not be ruled by another. But that “simple” idea transformed the world (mostly) for the better.

Unless, of course, you think Kenya and Kansas should be ruled without their consent from Westminster.

The common mistake is that since some nations may govern themselves poorly, nations are therefore bad. But the form of government is not the issue we’re discussing. Generally speaking, it is better for Kenya to be ruled by Kenyans, and Czechia by Czechs. There are certainly situations in which that is not true, but they do not disprove the rule.

It would also be nice if all nations were republics. But that’s mostly their business and only in rare cases ours, so long as they respect the nationhood — the self-determination -- of their neighbors, or so horribly violate the human rights of their own people so as to shock the conscience. The world would have been right to overthrow Idi Amin, as it was right to overthrow Hitler. But those are exceptions.

Most of those opposed to this idea seem intent on a new empire, generally these days called “globalism,” and led by unelected elites from Brussels to the Beltway to Beijing. They don’t hate nationalism because nations sometimes go awry. They hate nationalism because nation-states are in their way.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in the EU. It’s why Brexit won. Britons did not wish to be ruled by unelected foreign bureaucrats (which would be bad enough) who, being mostly German and French, hold British customs and British norms in contempt.

Those conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic claiming “nationalism” is in opposition to “patriotism” miss the point. To what are you supposed to be patriotic if not your nation? And to the degree that some wish to be patriotic toward “Europe”, they are admitting they’re building a superstate: if constructed more like the United States a federal republic; if more like the current EU, just another empire.

Of course, in America context, such conservatives are mostly Never Trumpers. Few of them actually hate nationalism: they hate anything Trump likes. Many of them will forget their made-up distinction as soon as Trump is gone, which is to say, in 2029.

They claim “nationalism” means things it does not for the same reason they claimed that the slogan “America First”, used by plenty of Presidential candidates over the years, was somehow a dogwhistle to supporters of Charles Lindbergh. Because there are so many of those running around these days.

The thing is, you either believe in the Westphalian system or you don’t. If you jettison Westphalia (and self-determination) what would be left? Only whatever empire replaces it. Even if America has a bad government (as it sometimes does), I’m still in favor of Americans ruling America, and opposed to other people ruling us from somewhere else.

This, of course, is the point at which Bill Kristol or AOC will say that Hitler was a nationalist. But that’s not actually true.

Hitler wasn’t a nationalist: he was an imperialist, who invoked the word “nationalism” to play off German grievances coming out of the Great War. He did not believe in any nation-state whatsoever other than whichever one he happened to rule.

WWII-era German “nationalism” was just a revival of WWI-era German imperialism, though with a particularly nasty, evil bent. It was no more nationalist than was British imperialism. Both sought the exaltation of their own nations through the extinguishment of other nations and the subjection of them to foreign rule.

That is not nationalism. Nationalism asserts the right of each nation to rule itself, and to not be ruled by others. The key word is “each”.

The British weren’t evil, at least not as a rule. But there’s a reason we had a revolution. And there’s a reason for the nationalist movements that destroyed the British Empire, from Kenya to India, from Belize to Burma, from Aden to Australia. Imperialism is not nationalism, however much it may exalt a particular nation.

Let me say that again. Imperialism is not nationalism. Empire is the destruction of nations. Nationalism is the destruction of empires. Ask Austria-Hungary, or the Soviet Union. That’s exactly why the EU, and their elitist friends here, hate it.

I am using the term in its simplest (and I believe correct) sense: the assertion of the right of discrete groups of people to self-determination, which is to say, to national sovereignty. Everything else is a misunderstanding or a caricature. History makes that readily apparent, should anyone care to look.

Finally, some now assert that nationalism is opposed to classical liberal ideas. But they have clearly forgotten the history of classical liberalism. Whether today or in 1848, nationalism is the only way available to assert classical liberal ideas, since everything else deliberately abolishes them.

Some nations choose to govern themselves poorly, and some have no choice in who governs them. But you will never get anything resembling liberty if you are governed from a distant capital and a foreign people. The idea is just absurd. And all of the people squawking about this now understood that point perfectly when the Soviet Empire fell, or any of the other empires which ceased to be in the second half of the 20th century.

The right of self-determination — which in international affairs means nationalism, or the Westphalian nation-state — is the foundation of liberty. And anyone trying to subvert that is trying to take away your freedom. They are imperialists. Americans are not.

Hegemony and Empire

The left and more than a few on the right have come to believe that America is itself an empire. They are mistaken.

Not all who espouse this position, of course, think that it is a bad thing. The brilliant Niall Ferguson actively argues for it in his 2004 book Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. He says that much of what is wrong with the world can be traced to America’s immaturity and unwillingness to accept and become comfortable with its imperial role, the role it has rightly inherited from Great Britain. He also makes an interesting, somewhat non-traditional case for why America actually is now and ought properly to be understood as an empire.

But as insightful as he is, the truth is quite the contrary. And this headline from the April 22, 2011 Guardian newspaper illustrates that point all too well: “Iraq rejects US request to maintain bases after troop withdrawal”.

Conquered Iraq...rejects? A US request? Why would an Imperial power have to request anything of its “subject” state, its “colony”? And wasn’t that what the Iraq War was all about: colonizing ancient Babylon, the heart of the Fertile Crescent and Cradle of Civilization, for American ambition and glory, for American oil and American business and American power projection for a new American era of American dominance of the entire Middle East?

Oops, guess not. And that’s before we even consider all the backtalk we routinely receive from such other of our conquered imperial subjects as Germany, Mexico, France, and Japan. The nerve of them!

The Berlin Airlift, 1948-49.

Now some might interject at this point that the difference is the 2008 election, specifically, that George W. Bush or John McCain would have stayed in Iraq until the Second Coming, whereas Barack Obama “the Good” acted differently. But this ignores reality. It was the Bush Administration that made democratic elections its first priority after Saddam’s fall. It was George W. Bush who held three such elections in Iraq in the U.S. occupation’s first 18 months; and it was George W. Bush who then duly negotiated with that barely functioning government as an equal on matters no conqueror has ever negotiated.

America was infinitely more heavy-handed in Germany, and ruled Japan as an imperial province under the dictatorial authority of His Majesty Douglas MacArthur...until it negotiated a peace treaty and left in 1952. And indeed, it was George W. Bush who set the terms of this Iraqi withdrawal, by dictating that it would be the Iraqis, not the Americans, who decided the terms of any long-term basing — or lack thereof — after his time.

And note that we’re just talking about military bases here. Where is all that oil we were supposedly taking from Iraq? Certainly not in American hands. To quote a 2009 Time article: “Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction... [This] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests.”

America is not an empire. It is a hegemon, and it should be. A hegemon, like ancient Athens, is a first-among-equals, a very powerful nation that nevertheless deals with its neighbors and allies as much as equals as circumstances will permit, respecting their sovereignty, their internal processes, the rights of their people. It functions together for the greater good of the whole, not simply of the center as does an empire. Does the center benefit? Absolutely. But “benefit” is not the same thing as “exploit.”

One might think it better if the hegemonic power were weaker, if all the involved powers truly were more equal, but this is a pointless exercise. Powers are what they are, and America is a hyperpower: one must take reality as it comes. So to be America’s ally is to enter its hegemony, which has been of almost infinite good for almost all who have done so (a few notable exceptions, such as the Republic of China, South Vietnam, and Afghanistan, leap to mind, with the equal memory that what America committed to them was betrayed by one and precisely one American political party). But as France can attest (but won’t), entering American hegemony does not involve becoming a province of empire.

Under Donald Trump, it does require that the allies become stronger. This is not about weakening America. It’s about strengthening the allies and therefore the alliance. This too demonstrates the lack of imperial rule or intent: it is a deliberate encouragement of a healthy nationalism.

Given America’s strength, hegemony and empire are its only realistic options. The British Ferguson, brilliant as he is, tries to shoehorn America into the British model; Pat Buchanan, rightly concerned that empire abroad would first mean tyranny at home, tries to warn of that imperial danger as well, as do assorted leftists and libertarians with various agendas.

All overstate the case. America sometimes overreaches, but its core belief that one people should not rule another, at least not for any great length of time, and that diffusion of power at home is the greatest bulwark of freedom and of all other American values, remains whole.

Those values have persevered for 250 years. That impulse to protect friends from predatory enemies, even at great cost and little gain to itself, has led much of the world out of tyranny and imperial rule for much of that time.

Hegemony is protecting your weaker neighbor. Empire is ruling him. Nationalism is the difference, which is why it is nothing of which to be ashamed. It is entirely virtuous, requiring a love of neighbor both near and far.

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