A Review of Yoram Hazony’s “The Virtue of Nationalism”

“David Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, embodies the opposite view to that of the EU. Auschwitz was possible because there was one nation not in existence: Israel.”

Yoram Hazony, of the Herzl Institute in Israel, has written a book that not only explains the need for nations. He defends the national state against liberal internationalism, which he argues is really a form of imperialism. As he says, this argument is the “fault-line” at the “heart of Western public life,” and it “is not going away.” He makes the case that while there is no universal right to national self-determination, a world of nation-states is the one we should be aiming for. His case is persuasive, and this book will be invaluable to those who wish to present a reasonable counter-argument against the prevailing liberal hegemony of today.

Hazony divides the book into three parts. Part one, titled “Nationalism and Western Freedom,” lays the historical, conceptual and philosophical foundations for the rest of the book. Part two, titled “The Case for the Nation State,” forms the heart of Hazony’s argument concerning why the national state is the best way of organizing human society, and why an order of national states is the best order for humanity. Part three, titled “Anti-Nationalism and Hate,” deals with the objections to nationalism, which comes from a liberal internationalist perspective. All three sections present a clear and lucid argument, written in engaging and eloquent prose that often rises above the plain English effectively employed for clear communication, and moves into flights of elegance that lift the book above the average thesis of political philosophy.

What is Nationalism?

Hazony argues that fundamentally nationalism is a “principled standpoint that regards the world as governed best when nations are able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions, and pursuing their own interests without interference.” In Hazony’s view, a nation is a community united around a common culture, a distinct language, a shared religious tradition, and a history of struggle against adversity. This view of the world, according to Hazony, provides the best way for humanity to organize itself, in opposition to tribal anarchy and imperialist conquest, both of which lead to conflict. As Henry R. Nau says in National Review in response to Donald Trump’s position on American sovereignty, basing some sort of world order around the primacy of the national-state does not mean that the inevitable outcome is isolationism. What he calls “conservative internationalism” involves national-states cooperating with each other when necessary, engaging in dialogue to solve problems. The key thing that should be remembered at all times is that the national-state is foundational to how we as people experience the world.