I would probably agree that the rush to war in Iraq was in part facilitated by nationalism, but a distorted nationalism. These distortions are created by the heavy hand of political correctness in the US which represses the more healthy aspects of nationalism (e.g. defence of traditional American culture and values, opposition to mass immigration). Nationalism has therefore comes to be channelled through militarism and hostility to the “Other” abroad in a way that cannot be expressed to the “Other” at home.

Anti-anticommunism interests me as an example of how someone such as Kennan responded to popular enthusiasms given his distaste for elements of democracy and his concern that democracies could not engage competently in foreign policy, and also because I think his analysis of the role of nationalism in undermining Soviet power and limiting Soviet ambitions was remarkably insightful and prescient. I find the subject interesting because it offers a case of thinking about the role of different ideologies in foreign policy, and because I think it complements my critiques of the way some people conceive of jihadist enemies as one undifferentiated blob all pursuing the same goal. You might say that this is another kind of hobby-horse, but I think it is actually valuable for understanding the nature of our jihadi foes.

I should have said: This is all academic and paleos/isolationists/etc. are only discussing it to bring things around to their hobby-horse, Iraq.

I mean, c’mon. No one really thinks it matters if the Nazis or Communists were distinguishable as to evil, do they? It doesn’t even go to whether or not one thinks they should have been attacked, does it?

I mean, who was worse: John Wayne Gacy or The Green River Killer?

It doesn’t add anything to the whole Paleo/isolationist critique of George Bush other than EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD SHOWS THAT IRAQ WAS WRONG AND DUMB JUST LIKE BUSH!!!!!

Stalin didn’t attempt to do in the heart of Mitteleuropa what he had done on Europe’s fringe. Ironically, Hitler was worse precisely from a nationalist point of view (as well as from other perspectives).

Perhaps one could apply similar thinking to contrast expansionist Japanese militarism to nationalistically-oriented Vietnamese Communism, though that’s more of a stretch than the Hitler-Stalin example.

Lukacs was quite perceptive in the 1940s. He saw Hitler as the greater threat at that moment and he was right about that. But he’s tried to stretch his perception too far to cover more recent political conflicts. Each subsequent development is seen through the same template.

Lukacs versus Buchanan looks to be more a battle of the historical baggage we carry from 60 years ago, than anything that will make us see the world with fresh and clear eyes.

Americans, Liberals and Conservatives, have also approved or abetted nationalisms, both because they recapitulate our history and express our values, but also because we have often had an interest in seeing fissures develop in the old world empires touching us and our interests. Our most bitter surprises and regrets in foreign affairs arise when we seem to have mistaken a genuine nationalist movement for a disguised agent of International Communism — a conclusion we have drawn only by the very costly experience of warfare.

What was different about the German and Japanese nationalisms that emerged in the first half of the century is that they combined particularism of their national self-regard and the universalism of broad, implacable hegemonic drive. They were nationalism as a cement, though aiming to build a pyramid, rather than, anything remotely equalitarian. Their contempt for those they conquered was murderous and unapologetic. Inequality among Communists corroded legitimacy, for Fascists such as were the Germans and Japanese, it validated it.

The nationalisms we defeated in the Second World War were different in this essential regard, and therefore in the threat they presented us and the world. Policy-makers in the aftermath of the World understood that International Communism’s threat was inherently less dynamic and that their greatest challenges lay in effectively combatting it without the miscalculations that would escalate into very costly, hot war from which both sides knew nothing commensurate could be gained.

To end on a directly Lukacsian note, the proof that these were two different kinds of threats, holding vastly different potencies is demonstrated by the fact that we interrupted a limited war of skirmishes with one, and allied with our adversary in it so that together we could conduct a second total war, nearly to the death, only after which could we permit ourselves to resume the first, though now as lone superpowers succeeding the preceding century’s empires.