Democratic Globalism.

• Author: Nau, Henry R.

America is getting a third chance to strike the right balance between nationalism and globalism. The first chance dates back to its origins: as a new and vulnerable republic in a world of warring monarchs, it opted for nationalism, pursuing George Washington's admonition "to steer clear of foreign entanglements." Even as late as the 1930s, under the Neutrality Act, it refused to take sides in the momentous conflicts brewing in Europe and Asia. The second chance came after World War II. America turned to globalism, adopting Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin Roosevelt's internationalist strategy to transform the decentralized nation-state, balance of power system into the centralized global institutions of the United Nations (UN). When the Cold War paralyzed the UN, the United States became the superpower leader of a politically and economically integrated Western world. It assumed disproportionate burdens and nurtured the West to victory in the Cold War.

Now America is getting a third chance. It can't make up its mind. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush perperuated internationalist strategies to spread democracy and markets across Eastern Europe (NATO, EU), Asia (China in the WTO) and the Middle East (Middle East Democracy Initiative). When costs mounted, however, especially the costs of unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump tacked back toward nationalism. Obama gave up the military playbook altogether, trusting in persistent diplomacy to reset relations with Iran, Russia and China. Trump put America's interests first, sparking fears that nationalism would now destroy the liberal international order.

But the problem is neither nationalism nor globalism. In today's world, the two are complementary. In the 1920s, when nationalism was authoritarian and the balance of power pernicious, nationalism was a destructive force. When nationalism became liberal and globalism built the democratic peace of the 1990s, nationalism became a more constructive foundation of global politics. Today, all major industrialized nations are democracies. In this kind of world, nationalism is not a destructive force but a democratic check on global elites and institutions. Globalism empowered financial, cultural and bureaucratic elites, and they act to this day largely outside democratic control. Not a single official in the European Union (EU), UN, WTO and IMF is directly elected or accountable to a popular vote.

Globalist leaders need to take a deep breath. National interests do come first in a globalized democratic world. They express the free will of local democratic peoples and institutions. Until global leaders are elected, nations provide the only direct manifestation of democracy in world affairs. And as long as these nations remain liberal, a globalized world has nothing to fear from them.

Nationalism comes in many forms--ethnic (blood), cultural (history), territorial (soil) and ideological (creedal)--but liberal nationalism requires that all of these forms respect republican virtues. These are individual rights, competing political parties rotating in power, independent judiciary and a free press. And, because it opposes authoritarian forms of nationalism, liberal does not always mean more interdependence and centralized institutions like the UN; it also means decentralized, independent national republics with robust private economies and citizens voting to choose and hold their leaders accountable.

In short, globalism means a federalist or conservative internationalism, one premised on limited global government that protects, not usurps, republican virtues. The threat to the liberal order comes not from political shifts within...