We’ve all seen various Leftists denouncing “Nationalists and their dumb wars.” While it can be tempting to argue the point regarding past interventions, the future of Nationalism must lay in the future, not the past.
It’s important, in attempting to define a new form of Nationalism, to understand that dumb wars don’t just have a price paid in blood and treasure, but also in the national spirit. Dumb wars undermine and destroy Nationalism.
Nationalism is not only an ideology, but it’s also a form of ideological or political capital. The will of the people to support the government and fight on behalf of the country, while necessary to secure the national defense, is an exhaustible resource. It is very precious, for without it there cannot be a nation. Therefore, in addition to acting to promote it, we must also act to conserve it. A nation that can rise up as one in military response has far greater power and sovereignty than those with only fragmented support, as both its threats and defense are more credible.
Propaganda cannot be the answer, as truth has odds of coming out eventually, since it is less in conflict with reality. And it was some truth or another that lead many of us to become Nationalists in the first place.
Think about it. Suppose you get into some dumb, unwinnable war in the middle east or southeast Asia. In order to pay for the war, you have to raise taxes (if not now, then later), diverting resources from the civic goods those taxes might have paid for. To get the necessary manpower, you must either create a draft, which creates opposition to the draft and thus empowers internal opposition and counter-culture, or your have to raise taxes higher and send some of your most loyal men to get shot at.
Then the history comes along later and says that not only was the mission not a success, but you didn’t even get any resources out of it for the country.
Not only does this make people less likely to sign up for or provide material support for the nation’s wars, but they may come to believe that the nation is bad and turn against Nationalism itself.
How much less powerful would left-wing anti-Nationalists be without the Iraq War? How much less powerful would they be without the Vietnam War?
On top of this all, it may end up preventing the country from having the ability to fight wars in ways that it can win. Having sowed substantial doubt about the virtue of the nation’s military action itself, it will be harder to obtain the necessary political will for the required partial cultural conversion needed to ensure the invaded territory is permanently no longer an enemy.
(Of course, there are other factors that can lead to declines in Nationalism, even in countries with less substantial military adventurism. But those must be addressed separately.)