National Sovereignty and The Trump Doctrine

The following essay is by Michael Anton, author of "The Flight 93 Election." It's excellent, in my opinion. It explains how globalism is in essence imperialism, and is the opposite of nationalism. While it doesn't solely address immigration, it does touch on the EU situation, and of course, Trump's nationalistic policies. A good read.

The Trump Doctrine - An insider explains the president's foreign policy, by Michael Anton, Foreign Policy, April 20, 2019. Excerpts follow:

... Yet Trump does have a consistent foreign policy: a Trump Doctrine. The administration calls it “principled realism,” which isn’t bad—although the term hasn’t caught on....

... speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, he made the same point by referring to a “great reawakening of nations.”

In both cases, the president was not simply noting what was going on: a resurgence of patriotic or nationalist sentiment in nearly every corner of the world but especially in parts of Europe and the United States. He was also forthrightly saying that this trend was positive....

The other, more familiar phrase for the president’s foreign policy—“America First”...

Countries putting their own interests first is the way of the world, an inexpugnable part of human nature. Like other aspects of human nature, it can be sublimated or driven underground for a time—but only for a time....

The practical effect of suppressing nature, moreover, is likely to have damaging long-term effects. At a minimum, it will produce a backlash, as we’re already seeing in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe. Another, underappreciated danger is that, in declining to act in their interests, Western and democratic countries create opportunities for unfriendly powers, unashamed to act in their interests, to exploit what they see as Western naiveté....

As thinkers since the ancient Greeks have recognized, all political entities—from the smallest village to the largest empire—are based on a distinction between insiders and outsiders, between those who belong and those who do not, between citizens or subjects and foreigners....

Love of one’s own extends beyond the family to the clan, to the tribe, and to the nation. Human beings have always organized themselves around some concept of civic friendship that takes the bonds of family and extends them outward—but not indefinitely. On a fundamental level, politics is about banding together to do together what can’t be done (or done well) alone....

So there will always be nations, and trying to suppress nationalist sentiment is like trying to suppress nature: It’s very hard, and dangerous, to do....

Anton continues to explain the problem with imperialism as currently manifested by the globalist paradigm:

That’s the problem with imperialism: It requires the crushing of natural nationalist feelings through violence....

... while traditional empires may have gone out of fashion, globalization has taken its place as the imperialism of our time. Globalization represents an attempt to do through peaceful means—the creation of transnational institutions, the erosion of borders, and the homogenization of intellectual, cultural, and economic products—what the Romans (and Cyrus and others) achieved through arms.

No surprise, then, that globalization and imperialism suffer from the same flaws. Like the latter, the former is also hubristic and prone to overreach. It also erodes and even subverts and attacks liberty. It requires centralization.

Globalization also has the same stifling impact on ideas, and for the same reasons, that Machiavelli diagnosed as a problem with imperialism 500 years ago. Globalization reduces differences in thought in any number of ways: through media consolidation, for example, or through the homogenization of the elite—who these days all seem to come from the same background, attend the same schools, and go to the same conferences. The champions of globalization also aren’t above stooping to outright censorship and coercion when threatened. Indeed, this impulse is perhaps the most important root of political correctness....

... the final pillar of the Trump Doctrine: that it is not in U.S. interests to homogenize the world. Doing so weakens states whose strength is needed to defend our common interests....

Anton concludes by observing that:

Trump’s foreign policy is fundamentally a return to normalcy....

And that's a good thing. As Anton points out, we will always have (and need) nations. Similarly, we need regional and city governments, each with more localized political and managerial scope. Conversely, it's immensely difficult to imagine a Global Pothole Commission sending a truck to repair the streets in your neighborhood. There are some things that simply do not benefit from global homogeneity and economy of scale.

Without borders there can be no real nations. At best, they will be entities in name only with no real sovereignty.

Mass immigration has become a tool of the globalist imperial elites to actively undermine national sovereignty. To see this in play, take a good look at the Strange Death of Europe. America isn't that far behind Europe.

Returning to normalcy returns America to an environment where we actually can control our borders - and our destinny, as the globalists / elites / open borders leftists vociferously object.

Tough. This is precisely what America needs.

Read the entire article, The Trump Doctrine - An insider explains the president's foreign policy,