T. Boone Pickens [...] is motivated by American nationalism. Because of all the money we are shipping abroad to pay for our oil addiction, he says, “we are on the verge of losing our superpower status.” — Tom Friedman

In an otherwise normal column, this is a strange bit of left-footedness. It’s possible that Pickens is moved to pursue energy independence, at least in significant part, by nationalist convictions. It’s also possible that he connects those convictions to America’s standing as a superpower (however that might be defined). But none of those connections are drawn out by Friedman. He’s working in a limited space, true, but the whole little graf begs some important questions…

…such as: is anyone who’s worried about profound change in America’s position in the world a nationalist? Because this is what Friedman’s framing, as it stands, heavily implies. And as it happens there are lots of options that rebuff and defeat that implication. One might suppose, for instance, that rapid change in America’s power position would be extraordinarily destabilizing to the international system of states — because of the nature of that system. Or one might suppose that a quick or poorly governed transition away from America’s current power position would (also?) destabilize and damage American life.

There are weird inverses. A nationalist might think the best thing that could happen to America would be a quick unplug from the tubes of internationalist institutionalism that have formalized and legitimized our power position abroad. Or someone in favor of maintaining that position indefinitely might hold that attitude for non-nationalist reasons (i.e. only a free and independent superpower America can effectively spread liberty, equality, and fraternity to all humans around the world).

No small part of the problem here is that on the right and the left ‘nationalism’ has become mixed up and clouded in its essentials with fundamentallly non- or even anti-nationalist aspirations and convictions. This has been true at least since Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, but since Reagan and Clinton it has really heated up. I could go on about how this isn’t much of a surprise considering the way nationalism frames itself; whereas European countries with a Volk-based model of the nation are inclined to internationalize their model by pushing for territorial and bio-genetic expansionism, American nationalism has had to think along different lines — ideological ones. The pejorative bumper-sticker version reads like this:

We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out.

The more upbeat and decent version goes a step further, to propose that inside every American there is a more perfect American trying to get out…and that inside America, within its confines, there is an America more true to its ideological aspirations that can and should get out — out into the world, where it may take root and flourish in any kind of human soil/soul. 

That kind of Americanist ideology, which is nationalist and anti-nationalist in practically equal measure, makes for a deep (and highly productive) tension on both the right and the left. That Friedman’s snapshot of what Pickens is up to can’t even come close to capturing its depths should, sure enough, suggest to us just how deep it is.