The National Interest and Britain’s Role in the World

Abstract

If ever there was a contested concept in politics, it is the ‘national interest’. The term has been used to mean an expression of the ‘general will’ of the political community, the aggregation of individual citizens’ needs, commitment to longstanding policies and state secrecy, as well as a state’s relative power in the international system (Kratochwil 1982; Morgenthau 1993; Clinton 1991; Weldes 1996; Nye 1999). In a recent reformulation of the idea, Alexander George argues that it is reducible to three core components: the security and physical survival of the state, its independence and liberty, and the economic prosperity of the populace (George 2006, pp. 9–10). However, as he goes on to note, the term ‘national interest’ when applied to such goals is a misnomer. In reality, these are ‘irreducible national values’ rather than interests (George 2006, p. 10). Values can remain constant over time (in the abstract) whereas interests involve more specific and historically contingent ways of preserving these values.

This is a revised and updated version of an article that first appeared in International Affairs, London, vol. 90, no. 3, May 2014, pp. 559–581, and is reproduced with permission.